ROOTS & BRANCHES

Tom Liszka, an emeritus English professor at Penn State’s Altoona campus, had some interesting questions that he posed to your “Roots & Branches” columnist about immigration during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Now those of you who’ve been hanging around the “R&B Bar & Grille” for awhile know that I’m pretty conversant with 18^th century immigration, especially of German-speaking people, but when it comes to what we might call the “Ellis Island generation” of immigration, my knowledge is more scattered.

Thank goodness I know the guy I’ve dubbed “Mr. Immigration Research,” Rich Venezia, who trades as Rich Roots Genealogy, and knows this stuff backwards and forwards.

Liszka says that both his and wife’s families came from Europe during the last one to four generations. “I see a similar story playing out over and over,” he wrote. “The man came first and then several years later (in one case 20) the wife and/or kids came later.” 

He said he’d heard previously that this was due to the expense of immigration but noted that the men must have made annual visits back to Europe since children continues to be born and wondered about that expense.

“So why didn’t mom and the kids come sooner? And these conjugal visits, counting travel time, must have been close to a month long.  How did dad get that much time off work?” Liszka asked. “How expensive was the trip?  And is there a way to get passenger lists for the boats going to Europe?”

As I expected, Venezia had the answers at his fingertips. “The man coming first and bringing wife/kids over later was super common,” Venezia said.

Unfortunately, he said, there are few departure lists from America to Europe, although Ancestry.com does have an incomplete database of them.

As far as Liszka’s question about “time off,” that answer revolved around different labor conditions than today. “Most of our immigrant ancestors were day laborers,” Venezia said. “They had ad hoc or odd jobs and worked when they could. As such, ‘getting a month off work’ back then wouldn’t be what it was like today.”

After 1924, immigrants needed visas to come as permanent residents, Venezia noted. “This was done based on a visa quota system. Preference visas were given to immediate relatives of citizens. As such, especially starting in the 1920s, men would come over first, naturalize as soon as they could (i.e., five years afterwards), and then have their wife and minor children apply for visas as the immediate relatives of a U.S. citizen.” Getting a visa for one person would have been easier than a family.

As far as cost, Venezia said that the affordability of steamship tickets—the average fare in 1900 was $30—helped spur the immigration boom and make visits back affordable. “As well, it could be that wives or children did not want to go to America, so the husband toiled for years to earn money to send home before eventually persuading them to come or returning back to the home country himself.” Additionally, some countries had military requirements that would have prevented the boys from leaving until after fulfilling this obligation.