2025, Family, Government, History, Travel, Uncategorized

Newcomers

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I was fascinated to read that today is the date in 1562 that the first French settlers arrived in North America. They arrived in Florida, of all places! I may need to research further how they fared.

When we lived in Winnipeg we would talk with our friends about our and their families’ immigrant experiences. My family came over in the 1850’s and the early 1900’s. It was a little daunting to hear that some or our French Canadian friends’ families arrived in Canada in the early 1600’s.

I have become rather close with the Newfoundland Psychology Board representatives who attend the licensing board conferences we just went to in Montreal. We were lamenting the current political strife between our countries, and two of them told me that they were registered with the Canadian Government as formal refugee sponsors, and said with all seriousness that if we needed to claim political asylum they would be happy to have us come to St. John’s and stay with them. I told them I was very touched by their offer, but that I was sure there were far more people in need of asylum than we would ever be. Since Son was born in Canada, and since that means Canada will always claim him if he fills out all the proper paper work, he could sponsor us in. I don’t see that as happening, but it is nice to know there are options out there.

What were your families’ immigrant experiences like?

43 thoughts on “Newcomers”

  1. I don’t have any actual accounts of my family’s immigrant experiences but I have some knowledge.

    On my father’s side, his father came from Sweden in 1916, right in the middle of WWI. He was about 18 at the time and, with U-boats prowling, that must have been a tense passage. He had an aunt in Grygla, Minnesota, so I expect he came there first. Soon after, he and a friend made their way to Washington state to look for work. I have a couple of cards from Everett, Washington that reflect that, and also this photo I expect they had made when they got out west:

    Buckaroos

    The photo was printed with a postcard back and I would assume he sent a copy home to Sweden.

    Washington apparently didn’t pan out and he made his way back to Minnesota, settling in Barrett, in northwest Minnesota, a heavily Scandinavian settlement at that time.
    There he met my father’s mother, who was herself the child of an immigrant from Sweden and the granddaughter of Norwegian immigrants.

    I first find my Norwegian immigrant great great grandfather in Owatonna, MN. He married there to a doctor’s daughter who died in her first childbirth. He then married my great great grandmother, who was herself the daughter of Norwegian immigrants. Some time in the 1870s, they made their way by oxcart up to Barrett.

    On my mother’s side, her father on his father’s side was Swiss. Although my great grandfather was himself born here, in Goodhue County, some of his older brothers were born in Swizerland, in the extremely picturesque village of Iseltwald. I think they entered the country through New Orleans and were in Indiana for a time Those brothers ultimately settled in the Red Wing area and Plum City, Wisconsin. My mother’s father’s mother’s people go back to New York and Vermont at least to the eighteenth century. I don’t know their point of immigration.

    My mother’s mother’s people were all Bohemian Czechs. They came over from the town of Lisov in the 1880s, I think, and settled in northeast Iowa—Clayton County—in an area that was strongly Bohemian. All their friends and neighbors were Bohemian. I don’t know the circumstances under which my grandparents on my mother’s side met.

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        1. What a great picture, though. I really like your grandfather’s fluffy pants and his elaborate belt; nice hat, too. What line of work was he in, Bill? Do you know?

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        2. The pants were called “woolies”. In this case they were photographer’s props. I don’t know what sort of work he had in mind at that time but it wasn’t cowboying. In later life he was a (wall) painter.

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        3. I was wondering about the clothes whether or not they were costumes. They must have had a pretty good sense of humor to pose that way.

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  2. There is some genealogy that traces my maternal grandpa to Wales – and his Sterling ancestors settled near Hamburg, Conn – I have a printed card picturing the Sterling Farmsted.

    My mom’s mom – Ruth Thyra August Blom, was orphaned at age 4, lived with relatives, and then came over at age 15 (1906) to stay with her sister near LeMars, IA.

    My dad’s mom Helga Kvalem was from around Bergen, Norway, and came over on a boat at age 12 when her father (worked related to fishing) had died, and her mom could no longer support all the children. An aunt was already here (at first in New York?), and she ended up in Roland, IA (10 miles from Ames). There she met my grandpa Art Britson, whose parents were from Norway, though he had come there from Texas.

    I can’t express how much I wish I had known enough to ask all these people about their experiences before they passed on. I was just too young to know how much I didn’t know.

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    1. Sterling family histories indicate that your first immigrant Sterling, William Sterling, was born in about 1637 in London and by the early 1660s was in Massachusetts in the area around Haverhill. There are extensive accounts of William in North American Family Histories.

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    2. Forgot to add that my grandpa Sterling (mom’s side) was part of a large family, the men were carpenters in Sioux City IA, built one of the grade schools, etc.

      Grandpa Britson owned a lumberyard in Roland, which they lost during the Depression. Later became the town clerk there.

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  3. On Mom’s side, the Fairbanks came from England in 1633 and settled in Dedham, Massachusetts. The house great×9 grandfather, Jonathan Fairbanks built still stands. It’s the oldest timber framed home in North America. It’s a museum now.
    The Tuckers came from England in 1635 and eventually settled in Milton, Massachusetts. Great×8 grandfather Robert Tucker, also built a house which still stands…a mere 3 miles away from Fairbanks House! There is no record of those grandparents ever meeting but considering their better-than-average financial situations, it’s fun to speculate.

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  4. Well before statehood 4 interrelated German families settled in west central Iowa. Names and dates are recorded all the way back to the sixteenth century. But no stories of their settlement are known. If you count all 4 families, I have hundreds of relatives in Minnesota and Iowa and thousands in Washington, good Trumpites all. My sister and I are liberal black sheep. My German great grandmother married a man 100% Scots Irish, meaning in all likelihood all Scots. My mother had stories to tell but did not.
    My father’s mother would be the interesting story. Why did a young woman of low intelligence end up in the Wausau area in about 1905? How did she meet a Scot who was basically moving through and have sex with him despite her lack of English? How did she then with my toddler father tow end up married, or not, to a drunken abusive German in the Sebeka area. Again my mother knew some details but would not share them.
    I always thought of myself as about 7/8 German, but with recent discovery of who my father’s father was, I now realize I am now close to as much Scot as German.
    Clyde

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    1. Your father’s mother sounds very vulnerable to exploitation. She may not have had much choice in the situation. That was incredibly common–more so then than now. And it is still too common now. There are a few of those stories in most family trees, but what a heartache that is.

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      1. That is the question I would like to have answered. Abuse may be what brought her here, what happened during my father’s conception. Severe of her and my father was known by everyone in the area, but back then . . .
        My mother does not talk about it because she was rude to my mother.
        It does leave me with three possible last names: drunken carpenter’s which I have, her name on my father’s birth certificate, or now known name of genetic father. None of them very appealing

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        1. I read something recently about how women were treated in the 1800s. If a woman was raped, the man might or might not be punished, but if the woman wound up pregnant because of the rape, she was sometimes charged with immoral or wanton behavior.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons

    Eleven years ago when I signed on to Ancestry.com I was looking for the history of my Norwegians, prior to the trip to Europe, including Norway, that we planned for 2014. I never did find much on Ancestry about that family, although I was able to connect with the Norwegian Emigration Center in Stavanger, Norway. They gave me more history than anyone ever passed down. Apparently there was a stow away on a ship involved , so the ancestors were pretty guarded about that process and simply refused to discuss it. My aunts said they did not know much. The little bit that they did know, was incorrect. All of the Jorgenson/Jurgenson/Hoel family moved to the USA and are using the three names here. My grandmother’s family used the name “Hoel”, shortened from Grubhoel (probably the name of the farm). None of the family remains in Norway.

    However, during that search I learned so many interesting things about other branches of the tree. I discovered that in 1620 there were a number of settlements in Maine, financed by a rival of the Plymouth (The Merchant Adventurers) financeers. All of those settlements failed. The conditions in Maine were incredibly harsh. My ancestor, James Harding, died there, but sent his pregnant wife, Martha Doane Harding to Plymouth to live with his brother. She survived that trip by boat, then gave birth in 1621, but she also died, leaving her son, John, to be raised by his uncle in Plymouth. The family then developed as more Puritans emigrated to America from 1621-1700. One guy, Nicholas Jackson from Salem,MA, turned in his sister-in-law as a witch. Elizabeth Howe Jackson was hung in Salem as a result. Family tensions must have been high at that point.

    I had not known anything about the early settlements in Maine which occurred at the same time as Plymouth. There were a number of them attempted in the Southern bays of Maine. They sounded poorly planned and like a real chaotic mess.

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    2. I looked at the records again because I had not looked at it for a long time. Some of my names and dates are off. The settlements actually started in 1607. John Harding was the son. The emigrant was Joseph Harding. He and Martha had made it to Plymouth, and they died in 1630 or so. The dates and place of their marriage varies in the records.

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  6. My Boomgaarden great grandfather was about 3 when his parents left Emden, Germany for the States in 1853. They travelled on a ship named the Gertrude. He was saved from being swept overboard in a storm by another traveler from Emden, a newly married woman. Both families settled in Iowa. My great grandfather married the daughter of the woman who saved him.

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  7. My maternal grandmother, her sister, and mother immigrated to New York City in June of 1914. They left from Bremerhaven. Her father had gone on ahead by a couple of month, leaving from Rotterdam. He was fleeing creditors for business debts and the police for smuggling butter on the Hamburg wharves. They stayed in NewYork for a couple of years, then moved to Foley, MN to farm.

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  8. I know very little about my ancestors. I have more information about my dad’s side than my mom’s.

    The brown, aged, cloth-bound book that was in my possession for a while, then was given to my cousin, told me that “Will the Shoemaker” had been a French Huguenot who left France to escape religious prosecution, and wound up in Prussia Germany. My ancestors stayed there until the late 1800s or early 1900s. They crossed at some point before the great wars, and settled first in Wisconsin, then near Morristown. My grandfather was the town doctor in Morristown, and my dad and my uncle were born on the Wilkowske farm near Morristown. There are still Wilkowskes in the area. Most have moved away.

    I know much less about my mom’s side. I’m certain my grandpa was mostly Irish. His family was from Waseca, and they were very strict Catholics. When he fell in love with my Protestant grandma, he was disowned. He was forced to abandon Catholicism when he married my grandma. She felt guilty about that until she died.

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  9. My Dad’s side is pure Scandinavian.
    Grandpa came from Denmark in 1900 to work for North Dakota Norwegian Bachelor Farmers. Accepted despite being Danish. He married one of their sisters despite her being recently from Norway. Grandpa Axel was 5 foot 5.
    Grandma Anne was 6 foot 1.
    He needed the strength of Powdermilk Biscuits to eventually have 12 sons and 1 daughter.
    Every time I hear Garrison talk about these supposedly fictional people, I know they are my relatives.

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  10. My paternal grandfather’s family were Quebecois, arriving in Quebec in the 1640s. At the time, France was trying to solidify its foothold in what would become Canada by encouraging young men to settle there; my male ancestor arrived from Poitou. The men needed wives, so the government offered dowries to poor young women who agreed to go to Quebec to be married. My female ancestor was one of these “filles de roi” (king’s daughters). She was born in Paris. The men and women were kept separated, chaperoned by nuns and clergy, until they were matched up and married.

    My paternal grandmother’s family were from Bohemia. They arrived in Wisconsin but eventually settled in St. Paul. Family stories tell that my great grandfather met the Bohemian/Czech composer Dvorak when he visited St. Paul in 1893. Dvorak was honored at a big reception at the Czech community center on West 7th Street in the neighborhood where my great grandparents lived.

    I don’t know as much about my maternal side. My maternal grandmother came to Minnesota on the orphan train from New York. She never knew who her parents were. My maternal grandfather’s family came from near Trier in Germany and settled near St. Joseph.

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    1. That is great about Dvorak. My grandmother met Enrico Caruso when she was living in Manhattan and helping out in her uncle’s grocery store. He came in to shop and patted her on the head and commented about her blonde hair.

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    2. In the summer of 1893, Dvořák was living and composing in Spillville, Iowa, about 10 miles or so from Decorah. Spillville is worth a visit. There’s the Bily clock museum, with dozens of clocks intricately carved by two bachelor brothers and upstairs in the museum is a commemoration of Dvořák’s residence in the town.

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      1. I agree, the Bily Clock Museum is a gem of a tiny museum, and a must see if you are in the area. The tiny upstairs apartment where Dvořák and his family lived gives you a whole new perspective on that community.

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  13. I don’t know much – all of it word of mouth. On dad’s mother’s side, the Halls came from England/Scotland at the turn of the 20th century to northern Wisconsin. Built what we always called “the homestead” in Barnes. No information on my dad’s dad’s side except that Carter is a very English surname. He passed away when my dad was a kid.

    My great grandmother on my mom’s side was the youngest of 8 kids and the only one born here. I’ve always assumed Germany but I wouldn’t bet my life on it. On my mom’s dad’s side, the story is that they were “Rumpf” and changed it to Von Rump when they came over. Another story I wouldn’t bet my life on but most of the Von Rumps out there are relatives of some sort.

    This is if you discount that family tree that my dad paid somebody for (when I was in college) that says I’m descended from Eleanor of Acquitaine!

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  14. My Danish ancestors on dad’s side of the family tended to stay put and not wander too far afield. I don’t know much about my mother’s Irish ancestors, but of her immediate family, her sister and three of her brothers ended up in England, and my mother settled somewhat tenuously in Denmark. I view my own coming to America much like I view my mom’s ending up in Denmark. It wasn’t planned or intentional, it merely happened because of circumstances.

    I think of an immigrant as someone who deliberately sets out to create a new life somewhere else, but of the immigrants I know, very few fit that profile. When you’re forced to move because of circumstances beyond your control, I suppose you do what you have to do to survive. It’s hard to imagine the hardship and struggles of early immigrants.

    When I was fifteen or sixteen years old, dad was enamored of the idea of immigrating to Australia. He and mom filled out scads of paperwork in preparation for moving to Perth. My sister and I were not keen on the idea, and as the final decision needed to be made after all of the paperwork had been completed and approved, mom decided that she was already far enough away from home. And that was the end of that.

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  15. My father’s side of the family were the most recent immigrants. My father was seven when they came to America from western Germany. There is a record of the arrival at Ellis Island. My grandfather’s brother and his wife followed a few years later. The two brothers built houses next to each other on Brainerd Avenue in St. Paul, and if you look at an early plat map of the east side, the area is labeled Ruecker Addition, after my grandfather and his brother.

    Most of their descendents have remained in the St. Paul area.

    My mother’s side of the family is harder to trace, since they came earlier and records aren’t very good. They mostly came from Austria or Germany, and settled in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. I had a great-grandmother who was Roma. Like African people in the US, Roma people in Europe were considered too inferior to keep birth, death, or marriage records, or identitydocuments of any kind, so that’s a particularly murky branch on the family tree.

    Here’s a photo of my paternal grandfather at the house on Brainerd Avenue. Looks like he’s putting up storm windows.

    Carl Ruecker

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