What was Immigration Like in History?

Part of understanding our ancestor's journey is understanding the laws and regulations at the time. The topic of immigration laws and restrictions, and when they began is one that comes up frequently. There's a very good Timeline of Major US Immigration Laws from 1790 - 2006, but it also includes a lot of laws on naturalization, deportation, and changes to enforcements of these laws. So, here's my breakdown of the most important parts:

The first federal immigration act to restrict who could come into the country was the Page Act of 1875, which prohibited the entry of East Asian forced laborers and "immoral" East Asian women, which is less racist than it sounds. It was an attempt to reduce the amount of Chinese women being trafficked into the country for prostitution. In 1870, roughly half of Chinese women in the US were prostitutes, keeping in mind many of those not recorded as prostitutes were children, so it's probably safe to say most adult Chinese women in the US were prostitutes. It was difficult to prove one wasn't a prostitute, so it was effectively a ban on most, if not all, Chinese women. It was heavily enforced, much more so that the ban on forced laborers.

It was shortly followed by the much more significant Immigration Act of 1882 and the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Immigration Act banned anyone considered a "convict, lunatic, idiot, or person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge." You may think that would only affect the mentally or physically disabled, or sick, but it could also include pregnant or single women considered to not have financial support from a man, like a father, brother, husband, etc. It also put a tax of 50 cents on each incoming foreigner, to be paid by the ship's owner. I imagine this may have driven up the cost of passenger tickets, making it harder (but not impossible) for the most destitute of people to immigrate, though I can't say that was the intention - the intention was merely to raise funds for the regulation of immigration.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was pretty much as racist as it sounds, it suspended immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. Over the next 20-some years, there continued to be additional laws that further restricted Chinese immigration, and allowed for easier deportation of existing Chinese residents, such as the 1888 Scott Act, which prohibited lawful Chinese residences from returning to the US if they left. Also, the 1892 Act to Prohibit the Coming of Chinese Persons into the United States aka the "Geary Act", which required all Chinese citizens living in the US to obtain certificates proving their lawful residence, and any Chinese person found unlawfully living in the US, instead of being deported, could be imprisoned and sentenced to one year of hard labor. Fortunately, the hard labor part was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1896 under the 5th Amendment, but it was probably a small win for the Chinese who continued to be harshly discriminated against.

Also worth noting is that although there was never a law with specifics, from 1892 to 1924, the determination of who was likely to become a public charge was left to the discretion of immigration officers, who typically required immigrants have a certain amount of money at the time of immigration. The amounts varied by the immigration officer, but if you did not meet their requirement, you could be deported. How unfair to not have a set national limit on this so immigrants were prepared and could save up enough money. However, there was a backup option if you didn't have enough money: there were immigrant aid societies who would sometimes cover the missing required funds. Some people refer to this as a "sponsorship" but sponsors as they are today (someone who promises to support an immigrant and be financially responsible for them until they get a job and can support themselves) were not required until during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

In 1917, the harsh laws restricting Chinese immigration were extended to essentially most of Asia and the Middle East with the 1917 Immigration Act. It also prevented immigration of anarchists, persons previously deported, and all individuals over 16 who are deemed "physically capable of reading" but who cannot read (of any origin).

But basically, if you were literate, not a convict, not likely to become a public charge, and not Asian, there were no restrictions on your entry up to this point. That changed starting in 1921, and became even worse in 1924.

The 1921 Emergency Quota Act was the first to set "quotas" based on nationality, meaning it limited the number of immigrants from each foreign nation allowed in. The limit was set to 3% of the number of existing residences from those nations based on the 1910 census. So if there were 1,360,000 people on the 1910 census who were born in Italy, only 3% of that, or 40,800 Italians would be allowed to immigrate per year. This significantly reduced the amount of overall immigrants into the country.

In 1924, the quota was reduced to a mere 2% with the 1924 National Origins Act, and more than that, it was based on the 1890 census instead of the 1910 census. It may seem like an odd choice to go with an older census year, as it would be less up to date, but it was a strategic, and arguably discriminatory decision, as it restricted southern and eastern Europeans more than others. Most southern and eastern Europeans immigrated after the 1890s, so basing the quota on the 1890 census meant their numbers were smaller, making their quota smaller. This was the first act to discriminate against certain Europeans (good thing all my Italian ancestors were here by 1914). There were exceptions: students, citizens of Western Hemisphere nations, people of certain occupations, and wives and children of US citizens were all exempt. The act also for the first time required visas be obtained abroad before entry.

Granted, in 1927 the discriminatory selection of the 1890 census was changed to the 1920 census. However, you can see the dramatic drop in immigration due to these two acts in the historical stats. In 1910-1919, the number of people immigrating from Europe was 4,985,411, but in 1920-1929, there were only 2,560,340. By the 1930s, there were only 444,399 immigrants from Europe. The Golden Age of Immigration was over.

The next major immigration changes came in the 1940s, when they actually allowed for more immigration due to the war. During the war, Mexican temporary agricultural workers were allowed in with the 1942 Bracero Agreement (though immigration from Latin America was still relatively low at that time and did not significantly increase until the 1960s), and following the war, the War Brides Act (1945) accepted foreign wives and children of US soldiers into the country. Finally, the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 allowed for 200,000 people displaced from their homelands by Nazi persecution into the US, which actually doesn't seem like a huge number in comparison to the millions that were immigrating prior to 1921. 

In 1965, regulations shifted from the quota based system to one of united families. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act based admittance on immigrants relationship to a US citizen or lawful permanent resident family member or US employer. However, caps were placed on the total number of immigrants admitted each year in most family and employer based categories. Additionally, a limit of 120,000 was placed on the total number of permanent residents admitted from the Western Hemisphere.

There were also a number of refugee acts in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and I could go on up to modern times, but it becomes more and more complicated, and this is only a look at the history of immigration laws and regulation. Hopefully, it's helped you have a good understanding of your ancestor's experience in coming to the US, depending on the time period.

Sources:

• Timeline of Major US Immigration Laws 1790-Present
• Immigration Legislation Timeline
• Wikipedia Immigration Act of 1882
• Wikipedia Immigration Act of 1924
• USCIS Early American Immigration Policies
• USCIS Public Charge Provisions of Immigration Law: A Brief Historical Background
• Family Tree Magazine Genealogy Q&A Researching Immigrants' Homeland Departure
• Yearbook of Immigration Statistics - Homeland Security

9 Reasons Indentured Servitude Was NOT "White Slavery"

Now and again I see people who bring up "white slavery" in US history when what they really mean is indentured servitude. Indentured servants were mostly uneducated Europeans who were contracted into the sometimes lengthy and harsh service of an American employer to pay off the debt of their ship passage to the US. It's true they were frequently taken advantage of, had few rights, and often treated poorly, but there were fundamental legal differences between indentured servitude and chattel slavery in the US. A lot of racists and white supremacists have put out propaganda memes about "white slavery" or "Irish slavery" (see example left) in attempts to undermine the fact that slavery in the US was race based. There's other good articles on this topic from The New York Times, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and History.com but I want to detail point by point how legally, indentured servitude was not the same thing as chattel slavery in the US.

1. Most indentured servants went willingly. While the terms of their service were often misrepresented, these were primarily people who wanted to immigrate but couldn't afford the ship passage, so they agreed to let an American employer pay their passage fee in return for their service to pay off the debt. Granted, some of them only wanted to go to America because it was the only way to escape religious persecution in Europe. Others were criminals who were sent to indentured servitude in the colonies instead of being sent to jail. There have also been some recorded cases of Europeans being kidnapped and involuntarily indentured to the Americas, but that was rare and more importantly, illegal.[2] Most indentured servants chose the path they did, even if that path was misrepresented or their alternate choices were worse, it is not the same thing as being physically forced or born into legal slavery on a mass scale.

2. The duration of their service was finite and once complete, they were even given a payment of "freedom dues" to start them off in their new, free life. This may have been cash, new clothing, or even a parcel of land, and therefore some historians argue that at this point, these servants would have been better off than those who came to America on their own dime. It's true that many indentured servants had years tacked onto their contract if they tried to escape or otherwise broke their contract, and others were so maltreated that they did not survive to the end of their contract. But many also not only lived out their contract, but prospered afterwards because of it. The typical length of indentured servitude was 4-7 years, which is nothing like a lifetime of slavery.[1][3]

3. Indentured servitude could not be inherited like hereditary slavery. An indentured servant's child was not automatically indentured too. In fact, indentured servants were not allowed to marry without their employer's permission[2], which was typically not granted[8] (because this would mean more expense for the employer, without an extra laborer) so most of them did not even have children until released from their service. An employer could tack more time onto the service of a female servant if she became pregnant (usually extended by 18-24 months)[8], but her child could not be indentured to the employer.[1][3] Theoretically, a cruel employer could have raped a female indenture and then used her pregnancy to extend her contract so he could continue raping her. But the child was still free and more importantly, this was an illegal abuse of the system, compared to the hereditary slavery that blacks endured, generation after generation, on top of the legally sanctioned and encouraged "breeding" they were forced into to perpetuate their hereditary slavery.

4. There were several acts passed by the British and US government which deterred and reduced indentured servitude and had no impact on slavery. These included the Passenger Vessels Act 1803 and the abolition of Debtor's Prison in 1833.[2] If indentured servitude and chattel slavery were the same thing, why would laws influence one but not the other?

5. While the rights of indentured servants were limited (they could not vote, for example), they did have certain rights that slaves did not. Indentures had the right to medical care (and the time of service lost to illness or injury could not be held against them)[8], food, shelter, and clothing, as well as the right to take abusive employers to court, and they could not be cheated out of their freedom dues[8], none of which were rights afforded to slaves.[3][4][7] Of course, these rights may not have always been well met, and suing an employer was not always realistic since indentures may not have had the money to hire a lawyer or file a law suit, but there were cases that did occasionally appear in court.[8] And the legal distinction is still important in terms of how the law viewed indentured servants versus slaves. Slaves did not have the legal right to sue anyone, and slave owners had the legal right to treat their slaves however they wished, including abuse. If a slave owner wanted to starve a slave to death, he had the legal right to do that, whereas this would have been consider murder if done to an indentured servant. Legally, indentured servants were given a status similar to children, not slaves.[8]

6. As African slavery grew in the US, indentured servitude declined and their work load became different from those of slaves; they were given lighter and more skilled work. This meant the working conditions of indentures improved and they may have even gained skills they could use to prosper once their contract was finished. The very reason slavery grew and indenturing declined was because slavery was absolute in its lack of freedom, whereas indenturing was not, meaning plantation owners got perpetual free labor out of slavery, whereas they didn't with indentured servants, once again highlighting the difference between them.[1][5] In 1756, a Philadelphia merchant said “All importations of white Servants is ruined … and we must make more general use of Slaves.”[5] This shows how they were considered different, and as servitude declined, slavery increased.

7. The first Africans brought to America were actually indentured servants, not slaves. Before 1641, there were no slave laws in the US, so when Africans were first brought her in 1619, they were indentured servants with the same contracts and rights as white indentured servants. That obviously changed and they or their descendants were eventually sold into the slavery system that developed later.[1] But it illustrates a distinction.

8. An indentured servant's contract could be sold to a new employer, but the servant themselves could not be sold or owned as property as slaves were.[5] This may have only been a legal distinction which made no difference to the servant in reality, but it shows how the law viewed indentured servants as human beings, but slaves as property.

9. Indentured servants were recorded as free on the US census. On the early US censuses, "free white" people were grouped by gender and age, then there was a category for slaves, and then one for "all other free persons". The enumerator's instructions were to record indentured servants as free: "free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, from all others".[6] So, white indentured servants were recorded as "free whites" and indentured servants of other races would be classed under "all other free persons" (or "free colored persons" depending on the census year). The very definition of slavery is not having the legal status of freedom, so the fact that indentured servants were considered free by law makes it impossible to call them slaves.

I am not saying indentured servants weren't exploited or didn't suffer at the hands of their employers, many of them did and that was a great injustice. But for the poor, life was always hard, and many people suffered at the hands of their employers even if they weren't indentured. Before labor laws and unions protected the rights of employees, even paid servants (not indentured) were often exploited, beaten, received wages too low to feed them, suffered long, grueling hours of hard labor, were sexually assaulted by their employers, etc. It didn't make them slaves. What made someone a slave was not the conditions they lived or worked in, but their legal status, and I hope I've illustrated how the legal status of slaves (ie, not free) in the US was very different from those of indentured servants (ie, free) and therefore they should not be lumped together. 

And of course, throughout all of history, people of all kinds were enslaved at some point. I am not saying no white person was ever enslaved in history - the Romans, for example, enslaved lots of white people. But the topic of "white slavery" is normally brought up in relation to US history and it's hereditary, chattel slavery as though they were the same thing when clearly, they were not.

So the next time someone tries to tell you about "white slavery" or "Irish slaves" when they actually mean indentured servitude, remember these facts and take whatever agenda they may have with a grain of salt.

Sources:

1. Indentured Servants In The U.S. - PBS
2. Indentured Servitude - Wikipedia
3. Indentured Servants 
4. Race and Ethnicity in America: From Pre-contact to the Present [4 volumes] by Russell M. Lawson (Editor), Benjamin A. Lawson (Editor)
5. Slavery and Servitude - Confronting History at Cliveden
6. 1790 US Census Enumeration Instructions, Page 101
7. Suspect Relations: Sex, Race, and Resistance in Colonial North Carolina Paperback by Kirsten Fischer, Page 102
8. Family Life in 17th- and 18th-Century America by by James M. Volo and Dorothy Volo 

Newspaper Mentions of Incoming Ships

My ancestors were the few who stayed on board the Australia
in spite of the disabled engine

Here's a tip many people may not know about. Newspapers typically reported the arrivals of ships, so if you're looking for more information on your ancestor's immigration, check newspapers.

For example, I had the passenger list for my ancestors, Giovantomaso Scioli and Lorenza Palladino, arrival in New York City on March 10, 1880, but frustratingly, the passenger list didn't mention the departure port or date. Wanting to know when and where their ship left from to get the full picture of their journey, I found NYC newspaper articles on March 10th and 11th, 1880, which told me not told me the ships departure details, but also that the ship made the journey on a disabled engine and hit a storm just before arrival!

That's probably a unique situation, but at the very least you should find a listing of ship arrivals with the details of its departure (example below). Sometimes, passenger names are even listed so if you're struggling to find any passenger list to begin with, you might want to try newspapers too (example below.

Names Crossed Off Passenger List

First and second pages of NY passenger list of Taormina
with names crossed off, Jan 28, 1914

I've recently seen a couple misunderstandings about what it means when someone's name is crossed off a passenger list. The first was that it means the individual died while on board. This is sometimes true but not always. The other assumption was that it means the individual never got on board to begin with. Also sometimes true, but again, not always.

What it really meant was that the person did not get off the ship. As mentioned, that could be because the person died on board, or because they never got on board to begin with, it could also mean that the individual didn't get off the ship at that port of arrival but rather remained on board until disembarking at a secondary port of call. This was the case with some of my ancestors, who arrived in New York on January 28, 1914 on board the Taormina - their names are crossed off so they didn't got off the ship there. There is then a second passenger list from their arrival in Philadelphia a couple days later on January 30, 1914 where their names were not crossed off.

Meanwhile, I have an infant relative in my tree who was born and died on board a ship in 1880 but her name is not crossed off the passenger list on her arrival. It does note "died" beside her details but she's not crossed off (see below). I see the crossing off more commonly in 20th century passenger lists.

Australia Domenica Scioli was born and died on board the ship she was
named after in 1880 - while it notes she died, her name is not crossed off

First and second pages of Philadelphia passenger list of
Taormina with names of those crossed off in NY,
Jan 30, 1914

The ship had a record of who boarded at the departure port and then the immigration officers at the port of arrival made a copy of those lists, crossing off the people on their copy who didn't disembark at that port. The passenger lists we see are usually the copies that were made at the port of arrival from the ship's records. The immigration officers probably didn't care why an individual on the passenger list didn't disembark and therefore didn't always note whether it was due to an on-board death, or whether they were just carrying onto the next port of call, or whether they never boarded to begin with. Their job was probably just to record who disembarked at their port of call.

So if you see an ancestor or relative whose name is crossed off on a passenger list, don't assume they died on board, or never boarded to begin with. Do some more investigating to see if the ship carried onto another port of call where they might have disembarked. If you're not finding anything by searching for the person's name, try searching by the arrival year and the ship's name. The arrival port officers were working off of the ship's records, which meant the handwriting could sometimes be misinterpreted and copied incorrectly (this doesn't mean a misspelling was a permanent name change). And of course, there's always the digital transcription which could be incorrect too and preventing you from finding the record by the individual's name. This also works for when you may have gotten an individual's immigration data from a naturalization record but can't find the passenger list by searching by name. Of course, by the time of naturalization, the individual may have been misremembering the exact details of their immigration so if you don't find the passenger list by the arrival date and ship name, you may need to make use of wildcards in the name. You can use a '?' in place of a letter, or an '*' in place of several letters but you must have at least three real letters in there for it to work.

Happy searching!

US Immigration Stats in History

2000 US Census Data on Self Reported Ancestry

I often see people trying to determine which European ethnicity most Americans are descended from. Some attempt to use self reported ancestry from census data to show the major European groups Americans today claim to descend from. The trouble with this is that self reported data is unreliable and most Americans are a mix of ancestries but only able to report one. Many actually reported 'American', which although technically may not be inaccurate (if you have ancestors born in the US, then you have American ancestry - the census did not ask what our non-American ancestry was), it's not helpful for these purposes. Probably because of these reasons, the US Census has since dropped this question and therefore the most recent data for ancestry is from 2000.

Others try to calculate which group most Americans today have roots in by using immigration numbers plus basic multiplication to determine their population growth. The trouble with this is that the multiplication is an estimate, and again, so many Americans today are a mixture of European ethnic groups. In the end, we can only say that it's impossible to determine with any real accuracy which single European ethnic group most Americans today are descended from. But the immigration stats are still helpful by showing us the largest European groups to legally settle in the US.

Over the course of history, from colonial times up to 1969, the largest groups to immigrate were the Germans totaling just over 7 million, followed by the British totaling over 5 million. The Italians came in a close third, also equally just over 5 million, with less than 100,000 fewer than the British numbers. Finally, we have the Irish amounting to slightly more than 4 and half million. Those from Austria-Hungary came in fifth at a little over 4 million, and then the Russians with just over 3 million. Finally, we have those from Norway-Sweden with barely over 2 million, and if you add in the Danes and Finnish to maximize the Scandinavian results, it still only equals about 2 and a half million. The spreadsheet (linked below) shows numbers for more groups in case it interests you but none of them exceed 1 million.

When estimating the amount of descends today from each of these groups, it's important to consider the time periods in which they immigrated. The longer an immigrant has been here, the more descendants they will likely have because they had more time to multiple. For example, the Italians may have had more immigrants than the Irish, but the largest period of Irish immigration occurred decades before the bulk of the Italians arrived so theoretically, it's possible the Irish have more descendants. Considering many Irish and Italians intermarried, it would not surprise me if they were about equal though.

With this in mind, if you look at the stats I compiled in this spreadsheet, you'll see that the Germans and British not only have the highest immigrant numbers in total, but also are the only groups to have been consistently immigrating in mass numbers since colonial times all the way up to 1969. I think it's safe to say that most Americans today have German and/or British ancestry. It would probably be impossible to determine which out of the two of them would rank higher, and many people probably also have some other groups mixed in there - personally I also have Italian and Norwegian, but not everyone else will. But it seems obvious from these stats that most Americans with European heritage have some German and/or British ancestry, even if they don't know it.

Sources:

1. Demographic History of the United States
2. US Department of Homeland Security Yearbook 2008

The 'Not-So-Once-in-a-Lifetime' Immigration Trip

When we think of our ancestors stepping on a boat and taking an enduring trip across the Atlantic that could take weeks or even months before stepping off again in a new land, a place of unparalleled opportunity, we tend to assume that this was a one-way journey, leaving behind their home country, culture, and sometimes even family. But actually, by around the turn of the century, it was not unusual for people from certain cultures to make several trips back and forth between their home land and America. For Italians, this was especially true.

The Lahn, the ship which Angelo returned to the U.S. on
in 1903.

Over two million Italians immigrated to America during the 1910s, with a total of 5.3 million between the years 1880 and 1920 but about a third of them actually returned to Italy after an average of about five years of working in the United States. They went to America for the work and would return to Italy, sometimes briefly, sometimes permanently, for various reasons. One reason was for marriage. Many Italian males who were working in the US would return to Italy to find a bride who would later follow him back to America. This was probably because many Italian immigrants were males looking for work and although some of them were in the process of moving their family, including unmarried daughters or sisters, over to the U.S. with them, many had not. Many were young, unmarried males and the "dating pool" of unmarried, young Italian females was probably much bigger back home in Italy. My 19 year old Italian 2nd great grandfather Angelo Scioli found himself in this situation when he traveled from Philadelphia to Monteroduni where he married Josephine Biello in January of 1903. Angelo quickly returned to Philadelphia and Josephine joined him there later in the year.

So it's important to remember that our ancestor's immigration was not necessarily a once-in-a-lifetime trip and that by this period of time, it was not unusual to see a few back and forth travels, especially among Italians. Keep this in mind during your research so you're not overlooking passenger lists and immigration records or looking for a marriage record in the wrong country.

Family History Writing Challenge Day 26: Wahr and Bauer

Almost done!

The Wahr family are relatively new to me, having only discovered the maiden name of one of my ancestors recently, so there is not a whole lot of information but enough to dedicate a chapter to them. Originally from Wurttemberg, they spent about 7 years in Alsace-Lorraine, France before immigrating to America and settling in Allegheny/Pittsburgh. They married into the Bauer family and so I thought this would be a good time to also post the Bauer chapter. I originally skipped this one because it was already up to date but in light of finding the Wahr family, I had to amend a couple little bits. Keep in mind, I've edited out a lot of info to respect the privacy of living people. The Bauers came from Saxony, Germany and settled first in Butler County before migrating into Pittsburgh, then out to Reading, and finally Philadelphia.

Family History Writing Challenge.

Family History Writing Challenge Day 23: Scioli and Smith

Two families that probably could be more different! Scioli is an Italian branch from my dad's side that immigrated to Philadelphia sometime in the mid to late 19th century, I still don't know exactly when or from where. However, the Biello family, who married into the Scioli's and don't yet have enough info to have their own dedicated chapter, where from Monterodui. The Scioli's married into the Demore (D'Amore) family.

The Smith family, on the other hand, is on my mom's side and is a Scotch-Irish colonial family who initially settled in Virginia for a few generations before making their way to Kentucky and eventually, after a few more generations, to Alabama and Pennsylvania.

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Family History Writing Challenge Day 21: Reiff, Rorer, Russell

Playing catch-up again here.

Reiff is another Swiss/German colonial Pennsylvania family who started out with the Reformed Church but converted to Mennonite and settled in the Skippack area of Montgomery County. They married into the Godshall family.

Rorer is yet another a Swiss/German colonial Pennsylvania family but not a part of the Mennonite community that settled in Montgomery and Bucks Counties. They settled in the Frankford area of Philadelphia and were founding members of the Presbyterian Church there. In later generations, they did move out to Montgomery County but to the Springfield Township area. They married into the Fallows family and much like them, were very involved in the community. 

The Russell family came from Northern Ireland and immigrated to Pittsburgh sometime in the 1870's. They married into the Bauer family (Anna Jane Russell was the woman previously discussed as the alcoholic who was estranged from her family).

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Family History Writing Challenge Day 5: Fallows

The Fallows family is one of my favorites to research and write about, I think because there is SO much information on them. They were fairly wealthy and so there's hundreds of mentions of them in their local newspaper and dozens of surviving photographs - even a scrapbook I think my great grandmother made! Plus, my grandmother collected some more personal and character information on them, I gather from her mother-in-law before she died. This adds a personal touch to it, which can be rare in some parts of genealogy - we collect facts but how much do we really know about the character of these individuals?

Originally, the Fallows were a poor family from the Oldham/Royton area of Lancashire, England during the industrial revolution until my 3rd great grandfather, Josiah Fallows, immigrated to America in the mid-19th century to make a better life for himself. And that he did! By the time he died, he owned a large estate in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and produced a brood of seven boys (what a household that must have been to grow up in!). The Fallows married into the Godshall family.

So here's the latest update of one of my longest family histories - 3,134 words, 23 sources, 14 photographs (I mean to add more photos, there are literally dozens more): Fallows.

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Colonial Facts and Stats: Immigration and Settlement

According to Family Life 17th and 18th Century America by James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo, "fewer than 20% of those now living in America can trace their ancestors to the 17th and 18th century [in America]". So if you're one of those fewer-than-20%, here's some interesting factoids and demographics about life in colonial times that you may find informative about your ancestors (all found in the above mentioned book), keeping in mind that many of the stats are approximate. They may be particularly helpful if you're writing a family history, I have worked a number of these facts into my own. I really recommend buying the book to pick out your own personally relevant facts but it is a textbook and therefore pretty expensive so here's some of the highlights for me. There's so much to share, I will start with some immigration and settlement facts and include other subjects in future posts.

Immigration and Settlement:

• There were seven major groups to migrate to British North America in the 17th and 18th centuries: four different waves of Britons (Puritans, Royalists, Quakers, and Scotch-Irish), the Dutch, the Germans, and the Africans. While there were other minority groups, if you have colonial ancestry, they were likely British, Dutch, German, and/or African. 
• The British mostly settled in New England, the wider area of the Colony of Virginia (not the state), the lower Delaware River Valley, and the back country of Georgia and the Carolinas.
• The Dutch mainly settled in New Amsterdam and along the Hudson River.
• The 18th century saw the flood of German speakers who settled in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.
• Most Africans were of course brought over unwillingly as slaves but recent research suggests a minority may have been indentured servants or even free craftsmen.

• About 250,000 people left Britain between 1607 and 1660, though not all went to North America, more than 100,000 went to the Caribbean and another 100,000 to Ireland.
• Most recent research (keeping mind this was released in 2005) estimates the number of Africans slaves brought over to North America was around 400,000.
• 39% of immigrants were between 25 and 59 years old, 35% were between 14 and 24 years old, 25% were children under 14, and only 1% was over 60.
• Women and girls made up nearly half of the early English colonies (versus the near-absence of female immigrants to New France and New Spain), though Virginian immigrants were dominated by single men while family units of immigrants were more common in New England. By the late colonial period, men outnumbered women 3 to 2.
• The first mass migration was in 1630 with 700 Puritans to Plymouth. By 1640, more than 21,000 people had come to New England.
• Of the approximately 200,000 people who crossed the Atlantic to settle in British North America in the 17th century, sixty percent (120,000) went either to Virginia or Maryland. The peak period of this immigration was during the three decades after 1630.
• More than 20,000 immigrants went to Massachusetts between 1630 and 1640 but then, during the English Civil War, there was a reverse flow of immigration as a third of Puritan males returned to England to fight in the Parliamentary armies. During the Commonwealth, many Royalists and Catholics immigrated to Virginia and Maryland. 
• 23,000 Quakers from England and Wales immigrated to the Delaware Valley between 1675 and 1715 after much religious persecution. As pacifists, they encouraged religious tolerance and actively sought out immigration from diverse religions and had good relations with the natives.
• Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were established by Puritans, Maryland by Catholics, and Pennsylvania by Quakers. After the Restoration, many Royalists in Virginia and the Carolinas were more interested in trade and farming than religious freedom.
• Prior to 1660, the numbers of immigrants to Virginia and the Carolinas was about 45,000 but by 1660 the population was reduced in half by disease, starvation, and Indian attack.
• Scotch-Irish were around 50,000 Presbyterian Scots who immigrated to Ulster, Ireland under the encouragement of James I. But after suffering religious persecution by Catholics and the loss of their political influence with the death of the last Stuart monarch in 1715, as well as a series of bad harvests, they began to move to the colonies, settling mostly in the Appalachian back country of the south (and making up more than 90% of the population in those areas, the small remainder being German speakers) from 1718 to 1775, though the first settlement was in 1632 along the east coast of Maryland. Those arriving after 1728 gravitated towards Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Total number of Scottish immigrants may have been as high as 250,000.
• In the 18th century, the Dutch influence was so strong in New York and into the Delaware Water Gap that some families with English roots were attending Dutch church and speaking the Dutch language within two decades of their arrival.
• The first German-speakers began arriving in Pennsylvania around 1683 in search of religious tolerance but a larger group of more than 2,000 from the Palatinate went to New York in 1710 after the worst agricultural season in modern European history. Many migrated from there to Pennsylvania but some travelled up the Hudson River. From 1717 through the next 50 years saw the biggest migration of German speakers, in one year alone there were nearly 12,000 who arrived in Pennsylvania. Somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 were Mennonites.
• Most German immigrants were from the lower Rhineland (about 42% were from the Elector Palatinate) but some people identified as German were actually from Switzerland, Alsace, Westphalia, Silesia, Saxony, or other Teutonic regions. 
• The lineage of most African Americans can be traced to only a few dozen tribes from the western part of Africa who were mostly agricultural and often already more knowledgeable about farming than their white masters.

I hope you find these facts as interesting and helpful as I did! More to come soon...

The "Our Name Was Changed at Ellis Island" Myth

I am not the first one to write an article on this. But it's an important issue and therefore needs to be covered. One of the most persistent myths in American culture is the one of family names being altered and Americanised at Ellis Island by ignorant and lazy immigration officers who couldn't understand foreign names and didn't care enough to get they them right. We grow up hearing this and it becomes something we all just accept as a universal truth. We don't question it. I've even seen big name authors (ahem, Janet Evanovich) use it in novels.

But I guarantee that Stephanie Plum's family name was not shortened from Plumerri by an "overworked immigration clerk." It's true that many of our ancestor's names, both given and family, were Anglicized in order to integrate into U.S. society. However, it's a myth that it happened at Ellis Island (or other ports of entry) by immigration officers.

For starters, passenger lists in the late 19th and early 20th century were recorded at the port of departure, usually in the passenger's native country, and immigration officers at the port of entry worked off of it. Secondly, most immigration officers were multilingual or made use of internal translators, just like they do today. I won't deny there's a lot of errors on passenger lists, but that doesn't mean their name was changed at that point. Every genealogist will come to realize that any kind of document had the potential to mangled names and that it didn't mean their name was changed. This includes, but is not limited to passenger lists. Additionally, it's important to remember that in history, the concept of a legal, official name didn't always exist. Official birth certificates in the U.S. didn't even exist until around 1900, give or take depending on the state, and Society Security wasn't around until 1937, so who was to say how exactly your name was supposed to be spelled? Name spellings could be a fluid concept and it wasn't a big deal to spell it the wrong way on documentation, if there even was considered a "wrong" way to spell it to begin with.

If your family name was Anglicized, it was probably done so after immigration, and probably by choice of your own ancestor. Many people simply assumed an Anglicized version because, again, the concept of a "legal" name did not yet fully exist. Today, we take pride in our heritages but the truth is that in the golden era of immigration, people came to America to be American, to shed their former cultures and embrace the society that they felt offered them so much more opportunity. My Sicilian great grandfather went from Giovanni D'Amore to John Demore, and legend has it that when my Nan began speaking Italian as a baby, he said "No, we are American now, we speak English." So from that day on, only English was spoken in the house and my Nan soon forgot how to speak Italian. Today, this seems a shame to us. We even encouraged her to see a hypnotists in hopes that she might remember some Italian.

I won't ignore that a large part of an immigrant's choice to change their name and integrate into society was likely due to prejudice they might have experienced. But the fact of the matter remains that in all probability it did not happen against their will by ignorant immigration workers. Since the topic has already been so extensively covered elsewhere (and since this blog is more about my personal journey and experiences through genealogy), I will merely refer you to some of them for details:

Our Name Was Changed at Ellis Island - Dispelling the Myth of Ellis Island Name Changes
Truth v. Myth: "My family's name was changed at Ellis Island"
The Myth of Ellis Island and Other Tales of Origin
They Changed Our Name at Ellis Island
No, Family Names Were Not Changed at Ellis Island
Immigrant Name Changes - USCIS

Even the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says:

"...the idea that an entire family's name was changed by one clerk--especially one at Ellis Island--is seldom supported by historical research and analysis. American name change stories tend to be apocryphal, that is, they developed later to explain events shrouded in the mist of time. Given the facts of US immigration procedure at Ellis Island, the above story becomes suspect."

If you're interested in more reading on the subject, check out American Passage: The History of Ellis Island by Vincent J. Cannato. The myth is so ingrained in us, that one reviewer on Amazon still finds the truth hard to believe even after reading the book! He seems to think that just because his family name was changed, it must have happened at Ellis Island. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the very real fact that the name was changed after immigration by the choice of your ancestor. I'll bet if the reviewer did the research and found his ancestor's immigration papers, he'd find the name was not changed at the port of entry, and that if it was spelling incorrectly, it was just an error.

I have the records to prove that my Italian ancestors didn't change their family name until well after immigration and I'll bet if you look hard enough, you'll probably find it's the same case for you. Happy searching!