we're dawning upon the era where the concept of first generationers and even the children of immigrants are becoming more rare. this means that over time, even just two generations on, we lose our link to how we got here. grandparents who would rather not reminisce about the hard times in the old country are failing to pass on the stories in hope of instead focusing on the present/future. the funny thing is, the future seems to keep coming no matter how hard we try, and instead all we are doing is forgetting the roots of our past. not saying it matters if we descended from royalty or paupers, but to know the story of how our lineage moved through the centuries perhaps would help us all to realize that we aren't all that different. thinking of the hope the young families had as they sent their children in waves across the Atlantic or through the desert makes what we do today somehow have meaning. maybe our rewards are not merely for our own benefit, but fulfilling the dreams of those who brought us here.
so, after minimal digging, a reassurance of why i love the internet, some creative spelling guesses, and a new membership to the ellis island foundation, i found not only the passenger info for my dad's paternal grandparents but for his mother's family as well. hard to believe only two generations back and the holes had already begun. here's to keeping the story alive and an experiment in where a day online gets you --
La Bretagne - Sailed from Le Havre, FR to Ellis Island, NY, USA
Landed 1 April 1902 carrying my great-grandfather Eugene
La Savoie - Sailed from Le Havre to Ellis Island
Landed 30 August 1902 carrying my great-grandmother
Anna and 6 month old son Eugene
SS Cameronia - Sailed from Glasgow to Ellis Island
Landed 21 May 1921 carrying my great-grandmother
Anne & her children John, May and Gertrude
(meeting their father Michael already in NYC, arrived in 1920)
{taken out the window when driving through Trentino,
travelling from Verona to Innsbruck, Spring 2011}
originally Eugene and Anna were from the beautiful towns of Merano and Bolzano in the Trentino - Alto Adige area of the Tirol region of Austria (northern Italian state Sud-Tirol after 1919) and they were listed as last residing in nearby Brixen and Mals. the entire area is world-renowned for Alpine ski resorts, wine making the arts, towns that have been settled continuously since Roman times near 800 CE. a place franz kafka and ezra pound found inspiration, in good company...
interesting to think all of these years feeling out of place from my overwhelmingly present Anglo-Celtic-Dutch roots in all my blonde cousins/mother, plus figuring that all Austrians looked like Heidi and the Von Trapps, my dark curly hair, strong bone structure and arty mentality was all explainable. And takes up a full 1/4 of my being.
my dad's side always proved a mystery, since even my grandfather (first one of the kids born in san francisco, 3 before he and 4 more kids to follow) seemed to not know al the details. i envision a long line of tirolers who worked the fields, sowed the earth and knew the alps for centuries; a hearty line. carpenters, cabinet makers, laborers, good cooks, and excellent wine drinkers. ultimately they settled in Bernal Heights, overlooking the burgeoning city and proudly boasting the last cow in San Francisco (yes, i've seen the news clipping). 7000 miles from home and settling in the hills and dependent on dairy. you can take the austrian out of tirol but you cant take...
but the most surprising of all? how old my relatives were when starting their families. maybe other priorities came first, but my great-grandparents were 29/30 when their first child was born and when they emigrated, stretching to 44 when the youngest was born making them nearly 60 years old, with all 8 children living at home during the 1930 census. my grandmother's parents were 35 when she was born. and she had my dad at age 40. kind of secretly made me feel like they all got a chance to live a little.
i know my aunt has done extensive research over the last 30 years on my maternal lineage, so I figure the secret is not all lost there. someday i'd love to see the links. i know on my maternal grandmother's side a solid link to prez fillmore. and think i remember ulysses grant being in there unless that was lore from my youth, but if he's there then that means an easy link to FDR and of course Teddy and about 6 others including numero uno mr washington. doubt he had 'me' in mind when he envisioned the future of his bloodline.