COLLECTING THE FINAL WORDS THAT DYING PEOPLE SAY...

FINAL WORDS PROJECT  Lisa Smartt and Dr. Raymond Moody...

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CHERBOURG PASSENGER LISTS and MUCH ELSE at GJENVICK- GJONVIK ARCHIVES

GG ARCHIVES - CHERBOURG PASSENDER LISTS   The last port the Titanic stopped at before it's fateful journey across the Atlantic was Cherbourg,

GG archives presents these French passenger lists as well as much much more.  

I don't usually like to link to sites with ads, and this one has them, but it's an impressive collection.

Ads will pop up.  You'll have to be careful that you don't enter an ancestor's name into the ad for a search for living humans or search for singles to date. I find the distractions difficult but...

If you find what you needed I suggest it's reasonable to support the site with a contribution.  It's been up a long time and the owner is an educated person who has an interesting collection to share.

You may also find Antwerp Belgium 1892-1939

Belfast Ireland 1923-1939

Boston 1887-1939

Boulogne sur Mer 1899-1933

Montreal, Naples.... and more...

ROADSIDE FLOWERS

 

SAN FRANCISCO 1906 : COLORIZED FILM

So glad women no longer have to wear those trip and fall hazard long skirts!  This film and the previously posted one re New York could be about TRANSPORTATION OPTIONS - trolley cars, horse drawn carriages and carts, bicycles... but notice how chaotic it is.... People sauntering near trolley cars.... horses passing between trolley's. 

I have newspaper articles on ancestors who were almost hit by trolley cars and now I know why.

STEAMSHIP TICKET PRICES DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION : MAIDEN VOYAGES

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

EXCERPT:

Before the Depression the transatlantic liners had been plying their trade across the ocean with nearly full capacity in both directions.  It was a boom time for the travel industry and women passengers of all classes benefitted from the more comfortable conditions on board and the comparatively cheap fares for long-distance ocean voyages, while their seafaring sisters enjoyed ample employment in physically demanding but remunerative jobs afloat. But as the crisis deepened wealthier passengers canceled their plans for leisure and visits, communicating with their commercial contacts overseas by letter or telegram rather than in person.  Cut-throat competition drove ticket prices down by 20 percent as companies struggled to fill their ships.  Cunard cut its third-class transatlantic return ticket price from 20 pounds to 16 pounds per person, which meant that a 6,400 mile round trip from Britain to America now cost approximately one and a half pennies per mile. (Page 184)

(Note that some women employees on the ships stayed employed simply because it was less expensive that living off board and most accepted that their tips were paltry.)

This book is just so good and I've excerpted so much.  It goes into the World War II era.

A DAY TO CELEBRATE AMERICAN LABOR

 

 

Ancestry Worship - Genealogy

GELLEY GIRLS IMPORTED TO BE DOMESTICS IN CANADA : MAIDEN VOYAGES

 

EXCERPTS: Conditions in third class transatlantic ships had continued to improve markedly during the early 1920's, and now bore little resemblance to the horrors of the notorious steerage class before the Great War.  On the Zeeland, hot seawater baths were available with special soap that would lather in brine. The women could clean themselves and wash their clothes.  On one occasion an impatient chief steward tried to speed up the process by making two girls share the same bath. Edith insisted each woman should bathe alone, in privacy, and her argument prevailed.  Her tussles on behalf of her charges, who were looked down on by some of the crew as racially inferior, often  made her unpopular.  When she insisted that the third class women and children were moved to better quarters in the Zeeland, to minimizes the likelihood of them getting seasick, she encountered hostility from some of the crew, though she won her case...  (page 122)

Quote from Edith (page 123)

We had many Jews - all types -traveling as emigrants from Europe.  The looked as if a terror was behind them, running away with a real sense of fear... all the tragedies of the world seemed to be in their melancholy eyes.  They also seemed to have an awful fear of the sea on this, the first time they had ever seen the ocean, or  experienced what it could do when in the the mood.  How terrible it was for those poor, ground-down peasant types, and the persecuted Jews, to be storm-buffeted on a rolling ship, knowing little of what they might expect, only that it was a land of opportunity that awaited them - a strange land, a better life. Others had gone before and written home to say so....

Many of Edith's adult female charges had been recruited in their hone countries to be domestics, and were known as Gelley Girls, after the Commissioner of the Canadian Immigrations who had invented the assisted places scheme.  However, some would try to escape their escorts before their intended destination, having arranged clandestinely to meet a boyfriend or a family member.  They didn't get far...

*****

Edith also safeguarded unaccompanied children from possible sexual predators on board ships.  She would sometimes encounter very young girls who were being sent alone to a distant relative in the far country, and who had been laced, with the relevant photograph, on the passport of some unrelated male.  The man accompanying them was usually form the same home town or village, and of course this arrangement might be entirely innocent.  However, Edith would step in if she discovered that any young girl or boy had been booked into the same cabin as an unrelated adult male....

Picture Brides were another intriguing feature of Edith's shipboard life.  These were European born women who had consented to marry men already living in Canada or the USA without ever having met them. These women took life-changing decisions after answering a newspaper advert, then exchanging letters and photos, arranging their marriages by post... (page 125)

The Canadian immigration system was well organized' having interviewed each woman and noted her details, Edith would giver her a colour-coded piece of ribbon which showed her eventual destination: red for Manitoba or Saskatchewan, blue for Ontario, white for the maritime provinces.  The women proudly wore these ribbons like badges of honor, or campaign medals, pinned to their clothes....  They were grouped according to their ribbon colors  and then taken to their various destination all over Canada by so-called 'train girls.

(Page 126)

THE ROLE OF A CONDUCTRESS : MAIDEN VOYAGES

Edith Sowerbutt was one of a small but influential group of women who traveled the North Atlantic as a conductresses,  She started working for the Red Star Line, which was owned by White Star, in 1925, and continued in that role for six years, when assisted immigration to Canada ceased and she was made redundant, although that was not the end of her maritime career.  (page 118)

She had a great deal of practical experience of intercontinental travel, as well as fellow feeling for people who were prepared to travel to better their lives.  Edith was also a natural champion of those who were discriminated against on the grounds or race, class, or gender. Her innate sense of justice made her a formidable advocate on behalf of the passengers in her care, and she was delighted to be taken on as a conductress by Red Star in 1925  (page 119)

While Edith was available to unaccompanied women in all classes, her primary role was looking after the interest of those in third class, and processing their immigration applications.  She would introduce herself to each one, explain that she had a list of official questions, and record the answers by hand, then type up the details later.  On each voyage Edith complied detailed lists of all unaccompanied women immigrants across all three classes for the Canadian authorities.  To extract this information from each woman was often a race against time, because third class passengers were housed in the least stable section of the ship, and were therefore prone to seasickness....

(on the open Atlantic which was rougher) Edith relied on the services of interpreters, and was particularly fond of a remarkable character called Terps, an Orthodox Jew who spoke fourteen languages.  (page 120)

USEFULNESS OF EARLY STATISTICAL UNITED STATES FEDERAL CENSUS RECORDS

With the 1950 census in hand, we may wonder how the early census records can be helpful to our research.   

Just to refresh, in 1776 Independence was Declared. Then there was the Revolutionary War.  Before a first President, George Washington, who was a military war General, was installed it was April 30th, 1789. He was an eight year, two term president.  The first Federal United States Census was 1790.

The earliest census are, but for the name of the head of household, usually a male and a husband, and the rest rather statistical. If you haven't seen these the questions are about how many males and females are in the household and what their age categories are. So we can't expect the names of every member of a household until 1850.

First if you do have ancestors on the 1850 you can reasonably related to at least some the family members ten years back based on the statistics, sometimes more.  You can also go forwards to see if people are named, depending on if they are alive and so on.

However, perhaps the most important aspect of finding the state and county and town or place of residence of a family member is because of how that relates to court records. Before there were civil record requirements (Vital Records) people pretty much kept a record of when people in the family were born or died in a Bible or such.  So, the older census are still helpful for locating them.  Our early colonial ancestors moved a lot, usually as the family expanded for the purchase of land to farm or ranch. If we know where they were, we can then attempt to find records of land purchases and sales, wills, and so on.

As a note, we would also like to find them on maps.

C 2022 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

BACK TO SCHOOL!

 

US IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1924 : MAIDEN VOYAGES

Note : This excerpt is about what was happening after the US Immigration Act of 1924 that was more restrictive than that of 1921. The government felt that America was overloading with the unskilled laborers that had come in previous decades.

 EXCERPT:  The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 was even more restrictive than that of 1921.  The total number of European immigrants now allowed in annually was slashed to 161,5000 in any one year.  By comparison, in 1913. 1.141 million European immigrants had been admitted to the U.S.  In addition, visas were now required, and those were issued by US Consular offices in the countries of origin.  Any shipping line bringing in an immigrant without a visa, or surplus to the annual quota allowed to that country, could face a punitive $1000 penalty.  Immigration figures plummeted though some nations were still favored over others: British and Irish-born immigrants were allowed a generous proportion of the annual European allocation, and anglophones with valuable skills, such as British-born servants or nurses, were actively encouraged to emigrate to the North American continent.  (page 76)

Would-be immigrants could be deported if they showed signs of physical  or mental illness, but less well known is the discrimination against the illiterate.  Adults arriving at Ellis Island were required to read out loud forty words of a printed language - any language -; a wide variety of texts were supplied - to prove they were literate. This discrimination policy often split up families, and it particularly effected women from remote and traditional communities in eastern Europe, who were less likely to have been taught to read  (page 78)