LIFE AFTER LIFE - DEATH AND BACK : FILM REVIEW

This film, which contains four testimonials by individuals who had near death experiences,

was possibly the most tremendous film on the subject that I've ever seen. It has beautiful images but the sincerity and the details of the experiences as spoken impressed me most of all. One person was an atheist. Another person was agnostic and telling her story to an atheist doctor ended up with her being put into a psych ward and doped up. What a shame! (Are most doctors atheist?) Fortunately, she got her life back and came away with new beliefs. These people had transformative experiences. 

I put the word Jesus in my tags. The film's not preachy. These are English speaking Westerners who live in a culture informed by Christianity.

I hope the film- maker, Craig McMahon, makes more film on the subject.

Every day people are born and people die. The sickness and death of the Covid Pandemic has effected our consciousness. Maybe we shouldn't be so afraid. Have an open mind and watch this one!

C 2021

CITIZENSHIP APPLICATION : UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -2021

I photographed the front page of the current Application for Naturalization which comes from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. I picked up a citizenship packet from my local public library, which pre-Covid also had tutoring available for the civics part and it's included.

I suggest you look at an application and read the questions. Many are concerned with an applicants legal behavior. Of course, entering the country legally is important. Overall, the United States government seems more concerned with serious crimes such as being associated with terrorists or radical groups. Don't know if this picture is at all readable. It starts off with "If your biological or adoptive mother or father is a U.S. citizen by birth, or was naturalized before your 18th birthday, you may already be a U.S. citizen."

In my years of living in Southern California, I've had strangers - and I do mean strangers - suggest I marry them to keep them in the country. I've always thought this was outrageous. Maybe I'll write more about that for my book. Let's just say that if you aren't wearing a wedding band and walk down the street, you can be targeted. Just how crazy or desperate is someone that they would do that? 

American Citizenship is, in my opinion, prime reason women are willing to be imported as brides.

I guess I'm of the traditional mindset. Marry for love.

C 2021

 

WERE THEY AS POOR AS YOU THINK? #10

I love the genealogy series Finding Your Roots. I recently binge watched it. But while it's just stating facts when someone, even Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says it, I tend to question how poor someone was when I hear that a laborer came over with only $6. because that's what's recorded on a ship manifest/ passenger list. We start to think $6 will buy us a burger and fries instead of the value back in the day.

That's the amount declared. Noone was going through his socks or shoes or money belt or that secret compartment in his one suitcase. Or in her undies or babies' diaper. I'm sure lots of things were kept safe by being sewn in to clothing.

I know how we think of steerage passengers. Early films and photos don't tend to depict thin gentleman in suits strolling along with their luggage being transported by a worker. They show fat women with scarved heads, their worldly possessions all bundled up in sheets. The motion of the film suggests they move awkwardly (you would too carrying a heirloom carpet on your back) and as quickly as possible (Gotta get that train to Pittsburgh.) It doesn't help that the words on the Statue of Liberty suggest she's a beacon for the bedraggled. But am I to believe the ignorant were stupid? How it is then that so many of the descendants of these passengers have made their way through college, into professions, and some have earned PhDs? Three or more generations in America makes a difference but so does inherited genius.

No doubt third class tickets/ steerage and poverty tended to go hand in hand. But sometimes it's just that a person was cheap or wanted to spend less on a ticket and have more in the pocket.

It's also true that the tickets were often purchased by family already in America and striding those fabled streets of gold while breaking their backs in mines and factories. Men first, wives later.

There is only one thing to do in order to better wrap your mind around just how much money a person brought with them on the ship that they declared. Use an online inflation calculator that turns that $6 in 1901 into 2021 U.S. Dollars. (The U.S. Department of Labor has one.)

Ok, it's not perfect in predicting value because prices fluctuate but it's the best.

Ever wonder who figured out what the dollar value was when the immigrant had left with Italian, German, or Austrian money? When and where would he convert that into American dollars? 

According to one such online calculator $6 in 1901 is about $184 dollars today.

Let's do another example. $25 in 1914 is $650 today.

Another. $65 in 1921. $945 today.

You get the idea. 

The inflation calculator is so useful.

Using census information you can calculate rent, mortgage, home value, and get a better idea about your ancestors money. If your Ellis Island ancestor goes to a house that he owns or pays a high rent on, what does that tell you?

I'm going to go on a little about the cost of tickets here too.

You may want to look over a short paper online that was presented in 2012 at a gathering of the Economic History Association in Vancouver by Brandon DuPont, Drew Keeling, and Thomas Weiss. Its called Passenger Fairs For Overseas Travel In The 19th and 20th Centuries.

The report mentions that advertisements for fares didn't give particulars - the company might actually quote higher or lower. Fares varied by direction - West higher, luxury of design and location of cabin space (ocean view or inside with none) speed of the ship, and other factors. Some ships converted cabins into third class to profit by quantity. A head tax on incoming passengers generally made west travel on the Atlantic a bit more expensive than east. (Where are the outgoing passenger lists for New York?)

There were four major carriers, CUNARD line generally most expensive. Cunard's star attractions and most expensive travel being the three sister ships - the Lusitania (which got torpedoed and sunk), Mauritania (called The Grand Old Lady), and the Aquitania. 

Holland-America, and North German Lloyd line were two others in The Big Four.

I learned about another line I hadn't known about called Anchor. It was the least expensive. You might think of it as a steamship equivalent of Jet Blue. 

The authors of this paper do a lot of statistics but overall they play with the discrepancy between advertised prices and profits. 

So let's use that inflation calculator on some suggested fares from that report and see just how expensive ocean travel was in 1908.

$151 on The Grand Old Lady going east is $4275. Highest fare. (We can assume people of wealth paid that ticket price.)

Cheapest first class on that ship was $121. $3425 today.

Cheapest ticket on that ship was $54. Now $1528. (I assume steerage.)

Holland America average fare using all ticket classes $141. $3992.

Holland America cheapest ticket west was $41. $1160. 

North German Lloyd cheapest ticket was $70 west. $1981. (If your ancestors left a German port there's a good chance they took this line.)

Anchor cheapest ticket was $62 west. $1755.

I think it's fair to say that a typical Passenger in steerage,  scarf, carpet, and all began their trip to America with a personal net worth of more than many an American today who gets government EBT / Food assistance. They were better off than our homeless.

(I look forward to learning if the companies charged less for children and babies.)

C 2021 

This post is part of a series that focuses on Ellis Island immigrants.

MAYBE THEY DIDN'T COME THROUGH NEW YORK #9

Previously I've mentioned that New York City was a popular destination for immigrants because they could hop on a train and get almost anywhere in the nation by train. I feel sure that, though there was great demand for tickets, there must have been competition as well, reflected in fares.

I know that winter seas were generally rough and the fear of icebergs and sinking existed before the Titanic disaster. A rough Atlantic Ocean could make that steerage compartment a terrible ride and raise the risk of illness also because of close quarters, crowding, and shared air. (You wouldn't want to be in steerage with a virus.) A ship could carry over 1000 passengers in steerage. (The largest ships could carry near 3000 passengers - 800 or so being crew.)

Other ships besides the Titanic did sink. It was the Titanic that was marketed as unsinkable and we've never gotten over the irony. 

Winter tickets were less expensive than summer. In 1900 an average steerage ticket is said to have been about $30. That is over $900 today. 

Try to research the price of a ticket by ship, ship line, voyage, and season.

New York Harbor and Castle Garden, which has its own online database, or Ellis Island were not the only destinations for ships full of immigrant passengers.

Consider:

Canadian ports including Great Lakes ports. (Immigrants sometimes walked into the United States from Canada. They may or may not be listed in Border Crossings.)

Baltimore: A bustling port. Popular for immigrants who wanted to avoid New York. Railroad service also very good. If they settled on the east coast, this might be the port they used.

Boston : a favorite of the Irish. Why arrive in New York or Phili instead?

New Orleans : A popular port for the Gulf of Mexico and Southern states.

Philadelphia: Popular among those heading for life in Pennsylvania and New Jersey but also the Southern states. Some competition with New York.

San Francisco: Ships brought Chinese and other Asian immigrants including Hawaiins to America along with European passengers and some coming from Central and South America. (Including Picture Brides.)

Also consider:

San Diego : note also Border Crossings (on foot) from Mexico.

Los Angeles (San Pedro -Long Beach)

Alaska (multiple ports)

Mobile, Alabama

As steam ships got bigger, they needed deeper water ports. Smaller ships continued to run. 1870 is about the time steamships took over from sail ships re immigrants. 

Many on-line indexes exist for ports including at FamilySearch.

C 2021

RAILROAD TIES: ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

 RAILROAD TIES : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

A short and sweet film, Railroad Ties is the perfect film to watch in celebration of Black History Month. Six people who did not know each other were found by Ancestry TM, the genealogy database company, to come to Brooklyn, New York to learn about the abolitionist preacher, the fiery Henry Ward Beecher, at the Plymouth Church. They learned why slaves on the Underground Railroad avoided New York City. Slavery might have been illegal in the north but runaway slaves were still considered property and there were fewer slave catchers in Brooklyn. The Fugitive Slave Act meant they weren't safe till they got to Canada.

Another place on tour is the home of abolitionist Lewis S. Tappen. 

And so the reveal is that the six are connected by history and in five cases by genetics. One descends from Tappen. The others are cousins related to a woman slave he helped escape slavery.

It was touching. My only problem with the film is that we are not told how Ancestry TM found these people. Was it the traditional paper trail or DNA testing or both?

For those readers unfamiliar with The Underground Railroad, terminology like conductor and passenger and station were used but there wasn't a physical train. The terminology was suggestive. You may find archived posts by searching through this blog or clicking on the tag below.

C 2021-2025  Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Quick Note  February 2025  As I recently visited the African American Cultural Center in Long Beach California, I was apprised that at one point slavery was legal in all then-existing states of the United States, however laws changed by state.

VALENTINES DAY

The day to wear your heart on your sleeve but why buy chocolates or flowers when you can write a love letter or poem and leave it under a special person's pillow?

STEAMSHIPS and LINES - WHO WAS THE CAPTAIN? #8

Since you'll want to include some rich details to your family immigration story and it's so easy to do now with databases and Internet sites offering pictures for personal use, you can include information about the ship and shipping line and the ports your ancestor encountered. Was the ship one of the largest? What was the décor like? You might find books published that feature photos of the interior. There's lots available about the various shipping lines, such as White Star.

Go to the beginning of the ship manifest for the voyage your ancestor was on and you'll see that it begins with the name of the captain and surgeon and crew. What nationality do their surnames suggest ?

Then first and second class passengers are listed. Do any of the passengers sound familiar to you? You might want to include details such as how many passengers were on the ship and how many were in steerage. 

I notice that the steerage passengers often seem to be listed by ethnicity or origin.

You want to go to the beginning of the manifest as well to get the port of departure and date it left. Did it stop in Southhampton, England? Did it sail the Mediterranean before heading across the Atlantic?

As a side note the Queen Mary is available for touring as it is an attraction in Long Beach, Los Angeles, California. I took the tour and the ship was emptied out to be a pitch black empty space below the waterline where the engines and cargo would have been. It was so much smaller than today's ships, which are like cities on the ocean. Scenes from the novel Marjorie Morningstar, by Herman Woulk, which came out in the 1950's, take place on the Queen Mary. It's one of my favorite books. I wanted to see the swimming pool, which was described in a scene in the book. It was a surprisingly small tiled square. I could imagine the water in it following the movement of the ship but not the scene depicted in the book of swimmers using the tiled space as a beach. More surprising to me seeing it, the Queen Mary was larger than the Titanic.

No, I didn't see any ghosts.

C 2021

Keep reading! This is part of a series!

GET THAT VALENTINE INTO THE DAILY MAIL

 

IS THE AGE (AND OTHER DATA) RIGHT ON THE MANIFEST? #7

I began to question this after seeing ELLIS ISLAND passenger lists where a whole page of immigrants were listed as five foot six tall. I began to wonder. Surely these men were not actually measured.

Well, when you're dealing with trying to find or follow a person with a common name, their age can be important.  

This is also about trying to locate records of birth in another country. 

Example from my research:

The same fellow is listed on various documents such as his wedding to his second, much younger, wife, and census records, federal and state, at different ages, leaving me with a six year range of birth dates to deal with. Was he chipping away at his age due to that younger wife, trying to minimalize the age difference? Did he himself not know his age or did other family members report false information to a census taker?

On all these documents from ship manifests forth, all other family members including that wife and children have correct ages.

It gets curiouser and curiouser. I've employed every tactic I know to locate his baptismal and have the names of his parents on his first marriage. I've spent hours on Familysearch. So you see, even someone with thirty years experience in genealogy research can hit a brick wall. I must conclude that his birth and baptismal records do not exist or his mother gave birth somewhere far from the family stead. It doesn't help that there were military actions in the potential years of his birth.

Wish me luck on this one!

C 2021

Note: Obituaries, tombstone, death certificates, can provide good information but I've found erroneous information on all of these. Yep, even carved on a very expensive tomb stone.

 

Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

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MISSING MOM : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

 MISSING MOM : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

Although this film reaches its conclusion with mom found, after near a quarter of a century missing, and it was an act of bravery on her son's part to be willing to risk such a personal story, sadly I felt like there was a whole lot unsaid and untold. Maybe the real story actually began after filming.

Beginning in 2014, two brothers with different fathers went looking for the mother who abandoned them. They gave it a year max. They didn't use genealogy but they did interview relatives (an important skill for genealogists), network, travel extensively, and mostly depend on social (internet) networking and Canadian police officers willing to give small clues, not much more.

One of the cool things they did was use an app that uses a photo of a person and ages them. You'll have to decide how close the app came.

What's weirder? A woman marries twice and has two sons, one with each husband, but splits? Or that when she split not a single family member kept track of her or filed a missing persons report? Seems to me she was thrown away. And these people didn't say a word about her until the sons started asking. Rob, born in 1960, whose quest it was first, also had a dad that abandoned him so he was raised by his mother's parents.

What could have happened that this family didn't care to find their daughter? Or ex-husbands  - the mother of their sons?

Reportedly, mom had a normal childhood in which she exhibited talent as an ice skater and an outgoing personality. She got work in the hospitality industry, restaurants and resorts, which makes sense to me since she was a people person. Implied is that she was partying. 

But hey. What do average people do for work or fun in Canada?

What if this were Appalachia?

They didn't want to hire a PI and I don't blame them. 

Rob's mom's father doesn't care if he ever sees her again. Why not?

Through posting on the Internet, which they did as well as taking paper flyers around to restaurants, the sons get a phone number for mom, call, she readily agrees she is the mother and she and her son tell each other they love each other.

They do? They don't know each other. But OK, they mean well.

I'm sorry, she might have "disappeared" but she probably knew where they were all along. She had given up. Maybe forced to. What were the terms of the custody agreement?

Something more was going on. Something as simple as poverty. Or as complicated as alcoholism or bad men.

I watched this film hoping to learn some new tricks. I didn't. I saw the value of public postings and photos but winced at the lack of privacy; mom's all over the Internet without her knowledge or permission then gives her side of the story at the end.

Sad.

C 2021 -2025 Ancestry Worship BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

GO SEE WHERE THEY WENT WHEN THEY GOT OFF THE SHIP #6

It's so easy now to print out ship manifests that are not so easy to read. It helps to enlarge the manifest on the computer screen and print close up images. All the information can be important.  A family group may be clear to you, but it's also possible some of those people on the same manifest not identified as a husband, wife, and children, or a mother and children, are also related to the ancestor you're focused on. 

Something I like to do is search by where they left - the village. And look for common surnames.

What you want to do next, after finding an ancestor on a ship manifest, is see where they go. If they're heading to the same town, that might be the reason to note the larger group. 

ELLIS ISLAND immigrants were steerage immigrants - on the cheapest tickets. Their motivation in coming to America was to earn money. They're generally poor rather than cheap. With that six hard earned dollars they've got in their pocket they have to get to their destination and a place to stay. Cabs, train tickets, a night in New York, a meal...

Though information about employers looking to hire immigrants was important to them and was exchanged in letters and on the voyage, so was information on where to stay. 

Boarding houses were not all big houses with nicely furnished rooms rented to individuals. A room could be rented to an entire family. A number of men could be sleeping on a floor. Sometimes immigrants stayed in churches until they found work. They could begin to network at Church or go to a local club meant to support people of their ethnicity - other Irish, Polish, Italian...

There were also big manufacturers, employers, who went to Europe looking for employees - usually those considered skilled. 

There were also incentives such as earning land; if a little town needed immigrants to populate or settle it, usually through farming or homesteading, they might have been invited to settle there.  (That's less applicable to immigrants coming into New York Harbor/ Ellis who came to settle on the east coast and more about certain areas of the mid-West and Texas.)

Did many people from the same place go to the same place? Did your ancestor live in a company town? A company row house? They may have gotten the job while still in Europe and the offer might have included housing. But a person willing to take any work at all, listed as a laborer, and not traveling with a wife or children, is probably heading to a boarding house or hotel.

Boarding houses were sometimes owned as businesses. If a woman with children was widowed, and she had a house, taking in boarders was a practical way to become self supporting. These women worked from morning till night. They had to provide meals, and do the shopping, cooking, cleaning, and importantly, all the filthy workman's laundry.

So. Let's take a look at the address the immigrant gave about the place they are going and who's there. If there is an address on the ship manifest you must go to it on the map and on the census. If a person and place are listed such as "brother in law John Richards, Camden, search for John on census.

If they came in 1906, who is there in 1900? 1910? If there's a state census look there too.

You can get to the right page for the address given on a ship manifest when the person named did not come up on census in a database. For every census, and you have to do so by census year, there is a district description/ map which will give county, city, and then ED, which means Enumeration District. That's the area a census taker was assigned to. Go to the ED without going page by page. 

However, if it's a small town, it may not be too much time to read each page till you come to that address. 

Remember this is the first place an immigrant went. It could be a family home, a boarding house, a hotel, a church. It could even be a house a relative owned.

I always run addresses given on ship and census through present day real estate sites and Google Earth. This is how I found out a relative who had a humble occupation bought a house with money he brought from Europe that's now on a historical tour and that another house, though more than a hundred years old, was up for sale a couple years ago. I got to see a townhouse in a bad part of town on Google Earth that was once new and when it was a good part. My ancestors lived on that street, went through that door. There were only two bedrooms for six children but so it was for their neighbors. Using maps and historical society information I learned they could walk to church and were near a vibrant shopping district, that streetcars ran nearby, and that they were the first generation to give up on an agricultural way of life for what was an ethnic ghetto but one from which sprang good citizens who stuck together during the Great Depression.

Such details certainly will enrich the family story I write. 

C 2021

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