Well, we're told that's a Crisis... again. It's come around again after fading a bit during the pandemic's worst days -- which we're supposedly actually still living through despite vaccines and such. But we're told people are on the move, all over Europe and forgathering in Latin America for more "caravans" to the USofA.
And I've pondered some of this in the context of my own migration to New Mexico from California, as well as in the context of my German, Irish, and English ancestors. What impelled them and what impelled Ms Ché and me on our journeys?
Simply: why?
Though I was told no stories of it growing up, the Irish Famine was clearly a factor and probably the main one in my Irish ancestors' decision to emigrate to the United States. The whole family left at once in 1849, all except my great-grandfather who stayed behind for some reason while his parents and five of his siblings took ship to -- surprisingly -- New Orleans and then made their way upriver to Ohio where a relation had been since 1835 or so.
My great-grandfather doesn't show up in the US records until 1856 when the family and their relations had moved to Iowa -- with no clear indication of when he arrived. Part of what struck me about this is that the most of them arrived during the California Gold Rush, but they didn't go to California, though it would later become the home to all their descendants (none are left in Iowa) including my own self.
So far as I know, none of my Irish ancestors' descendants are left in Ireland. Or if they are, they aren't in County Offaly or Tipperary where my Irish roots were planted.
I can understand the Famine impelling them to leave Ireland. But why would they not go to California right away? Clearly it was a longed for dream destination. But it's a question I can't answer.
They went to the United States because they could; there were no restrictions on emigration from Europe at the time. They encountered sometimes extreme levels of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic discrimination once they got here, but that wasn't the same as prohibition from entry. I'm pretty sure they were driven out of Ohio by the Know-Nothings back in the day. But they put a brave face on it ("There were better opportunities on the Iowa frontier") and made a success of farming and later the law.
As for the German side of my ancestry, I'm not at all sure. I know very little about them. My German great-grandfather left his little town in Baden-Wurttemburg when he was 14 -- 1854 -- after two of his brothers had already left. He arrived in New York when he was 15 (taking almost a year from the time he left home till the day he arrived in NYC.) He apprenticed to a bookbinder in Brooklyn until 1863 when he moved to Iowa, got married to another German immigrant and lived among his brothers there. He took work as a carpenter on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, a job he held till he died in 1901.
One thing I discovered was that there were still people with my great-grandfather's last name in that little town in Germany, so it's likely the whole family didn't emigrate to America the way my Irish ancestors did. What I found was that my great-grandfather, his parents, and two of his brothers all emigrated at various times from 1852 to 1856 or '57, but other relations stayed behind and their descendants are still there. Why the ones who left did so, I don't know. The situation in Southern Germany was unsettled to say the least after the Revolutions of 1848, but how that affected my ancestors and whether it was a motivation for them to leave I don't know.
Unsettled or deadly conditions at home and the opportunity to emigrate to somewhere else appear to have been the motivations for my ancestors to leave their homes in Europe. It wasn't adventure and conquest -- such as it was for many British emigrants during the Colonial era.
I've been able to trace my mother's British ancestors to arrivals in New Jersey in the 1640s. That was a surprise. There was no hint from her that she had ancestors that were practically on the Mayflower -- and in fact, if some of the stories I've found being told are true, she may well have other ancestors who were on the Mayflower. The impelling cause of their emigration from England is not entirely mysterious. Religious animosity and civil war seem to be obvious. Together with opportunity to live somewhere else, why not leave?
But the opportunity to emigrate in the 1620s and 1640s was risky to say the least, and if one survived, it was the opportunity to live rough. Colonists until the late 1600s and well into the 1700s were largely a miserable lot. Most lived rough on a frontier where the Natives were no longer inclined to welcome them.
So why would my ancestors take that kind of risk and endure such discomfort?
I didn't know anything about them until did all that research in the Ancestry archives.
And that gets us to current events and the masses of migrants all over the world, many impelled by wars and social disruption as well as the acceleration of climate change.
Many seem to see no other choice but to take the risk and endure the discomfort -- and if it comes to it, lose their lives in the attempt.
Dreadful. But it's happened before, and it's happening now.
When my ancestors went abroad to America migration was celebrated in song and story. Not so with current migrants whose suffering and deaths are a "tragedy" -- but apparently unavoidable. There is no welcome for them. Anywhere.
Like the Jews trying to escape Pharaoh or the Nazis. Nope. Can't come here!
For the millions on the move today, there is no welcome anywhere.
Still they come, still they try, still they long for succor.
And some, a very few, will succeed.
As for our own migrations to California and from California to New Mexico, that's another story I think I'll leave for another time.
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