Post by Maggie on Feb 23, 2014 18:51:17 GMT -6
I have done a fair bit of research on immigrants in my career--a bit on my own family but also on the Germans who went to Alabama ca 1875. But when words fail, photos always speak. What the immigrants went through to get here is quite a story. The poured into this country after the Civil War. By the late 19th and early 20th century the need to "Americanize" them was pressing. It was an odd time. The industrial machine needed fodder but immigrants were looked at (or down on) with a great deal of suspicion. When I see the pictures from Ellis Island, I see faces filled with hope and despair. My great grandparents came through Ellis Island. On one side, the family succeeded beyond anyone's wildest hopes. On the other, a decent, honorable laboring class status was reached. From what I can tell, they thought they had succeeded too--they had come from literally nothing and ended up owning modest homes, and doing useful jobs. Success has many faces.
These are the faces of America.
Dutch women
Italian mother and child in 1905 at Ellis Island
Slovakian women
A Hungarian mother and her four daughters are, according to the pinner's caption, especially dressed up for the arrival in America.
Dutch children at Ellis Island
A lovely picture of 3 little immigrants newly arrived from Scotland
Italian children who would soon find themselves working in factories like other newly arrived (and no so new) immigrants.
A rather lovely protrait of a newly arrived immigrant from Alsace, France (1905)
The newly arrived immigrants were subjected to several examinations. In the following picture a man is being examined for trachoma. European immigrants had to have their eyelids flipped with a button hook and examined upon arrival at Ellis Island in New York. Nine of 10 immigrants diagnosed with active trachoma were returned to their home countries.
The immigrants included a Cossack from the steps of Russia
Many from Poland:
And so many whose origins are not noted.
They came in the most terrible circumstances:
These are the faces of America.
