PASSENGER ARRIVALS FROM WHERE? ETHNIC IDENTITY VERSUS BORDERS #4

Today a region once called Galicia is in Poland, but Galicia, ruled as part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, now would be parts of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. But on a ship manifests a person with these ethnic identities might have left "Austria."

Basically, you've got to research the history of war and politics. Be niche specific. Get out your maps. Look at borders. Remember borders as we think of them today weren't so official or supervised. It could be that a road was blocked but people traveled through the woods or well known farm roads. Try not to get that genealogy myopia that would have you think people couldn't move, travel, or live past a "border" be it a city, county, or country. Don't think that certain ethnic groups wouldn't deal with each other because you'll find that there are stereotypes to bust. Ethnic and religious intermarriage, for instance, did happen. 

I'm communicating this because people using passenger list databases sometimes disqualify a listing over ethic identity or location.

We also need to research the changes in the names of settlements, some which have had three different names in a short lifetime. More obscure even with today's maps on the Internet that zoom, are tiny settlements that back in the day locals knew as farmsteads.

I once searched a half dozen paper and on line maps looking for a location an immigrant gave as the place he left, which appeared on a ship passenger list. In 2020 a Polish genealogy site listed this habitation and to my surprise hundreds of people lived and died there over a hundred years with about a dozen surnames repetitive. Yet it was not on these maps. At another location however, on another map listed a huge Communist Era "commune" named after one of these families. Today I understand this place must have been like - like a vale of hobbits* and only one decided to go on an adventure to America! Finally I found a reference to it in a text, basically alluding to it as a fork in the road. Maps often have some criteria such as listing only places that have a population of, say, 500 or more.

With change of place name also comes the difference in the way a place is spelled and how it's pronounced by a native speaker who also has a regional accept and may also speak a "high" or "low" form of that language. Great Grand Ma kept saying she was from a certain place but you can't find it. (It turns out she was naming the biggest city, not her suburb! Kind of like what some men do to state their football team preference as Boston Celtics so you think they're from Boston when they're from Massachusetts.

You've got to run that place name past a native speaker.

Along with ethic identity, consider the reportage. I've seen so many manifests where it seems men are ghettoized by an ethnic identity or assumption. Hey, maybe they stuck together the whole trip. But maybe not. I wonder.

I can imagine these men having conversations. Why they're traveling. Where they left and where they're going. What kind of work they're seeking and who is waiting for them. Giving advise on trains, boarding houses, and employment. Who has an unmarried sister who needs a husband? I also see how immigrants helped each other, some brothers, some brothers of a different mother, I think we today could envy the friendships they made.

C 2021

*Hobbit as in Bilbo Bagging.

ELLIS ISLAND PASSENGER RECORDS and THE MYTH OF NAME CHANGES and ETHNIC NAMES #3

There's a popular myth that passengers debarking from steerage (3rd class) off steamships at ELLIS ISLAND sometimes had their surnames changed by authority figures - clerks. It's not true. 

However, if you were an illiterate passenger who spoke your name in your own language, it's possible that the person hearing and recording your name could make an error. But wait a minute! You have a ticket. You were added to a list of passengers departing from another port where your surname was also recorded, and by someone whose first language was German or your native language. Even if you never went to school and couldn't read and write in your own language, you might have learned to sign your name. (And signing your name might mean that on American census, when asked if you're literate, the answer is yes.)

Did some immigrants change their own names or the spelling of them, given and/or surnames? They did. Sometimes more than once. Usually they did so informally, by use, rather than what we do now, go to court. Making a break from the Old World and starting anew in the New World was an opportunity to develop a new identity. (And yes, some immigrants would drop a religion they felt held them back or disappear and never send for a wife left behind.)

What this has to do with finding an ancestor on a database that includes the port of New York - or really any other port - is that you might be looking for the name of the person to be consistent with the name you know them by, which might be the name on a census or naturalization papers or not.

My experience is that the given name is the first to be changed to be Americanized. There are thousands of Maria's who become Mary's. I found one who became Mammie. That's easy. 

You should always consider the name and its variants, Americanized, then go back to ethnic origins. Doing so and running a given name through databases has helped me find some ancestors whose surnames were really screwed up by census takers and other recorders. Screwed up in spelling or in confusing bad handwriting that was then transcribed into bad text, but not, if you go forward, changed after all.

Take the name Walenty. I found him using not Walter, but Valentine. An accurate translation by the way.

Elizabeta became Betty, Beth, and Lizzy.

Consider Lawrence, a man who self identified as Polish and left a village near the Ukraine, which was Galicia. (But who turned out to be Ruthenian and in Greek Catholic records.) In Polish his name is Wawrzyniec. In German, one of the languages he spoke, Lars. Lorenz, Lauren, or Leuz. In Russian, Lavrent, Levrentiy. And so on. Lawrence went to work as a crew member on a ship where his given and surname were Germanicized.

Although you might think that English versions of a name were prioritized, for central and eastern Europeans, German was a second language so using German equivalents was more comfortable and useful. German speaking people were already in America and used that language in common, especially in the workplace. So I've seen Slavic given and surnames become German by spelling or meaning. 

Consider a name change when your ancestors just doesn't seem to be on records you seek.

C 2021

This post is part of a series of posts focused on Ellis Island, New York Harbor, and Industrial Age immigrants.