I Am a Proud Descendant of Immigrants

Who was your first immigrant ancestor? What countries did your ancestors live in? What jobs did they do? What traditions and items did they bring with them? Have you ever wondered about them?

I often wonder, and am especially drawn to family stories, and thoughts of their daily life. My most recent immigrants were Scots who arrived in 1880 from Glasgow. They were carpet weavers and worked at Bigelow in Thompsonville. The Northern Irish ancestors in my family tree settled in Suffield, making the trip across the ocean around 1850; they grew tobacco here. The Acadians (now Nova Scotia) probably wouldn’t have come on their own if they hadn’t been deported to Connecticut by the British, in 1755, for being “French neutrals”. When my Prussian ancestor arrived in 1726 after ten-weeks at sea, he wrote home, “It is certainly a good country.” After twelve years of living here he still felt the same: “Neither must you believe the stupid talk of people who say that the contents of letters are changed. Anyone may write what he wants to, he may have contempt for this country or praise it. It is definitely a good country where people need not live in a pitiful way.” My Swedish ancestors left Skaraborg in 1627, and the first English ancestor was a guy who fell off a ship named Mayflower in 1620. My North African ancestors were also here long before we were a country, their descendant fought in the Revolution in 1777 when Black people were allowed to join. Did they perhaps arrive in 1619 on the first ship to bring enslaved people to this part of the continent? Did any of my ancestors marry into the tribal nations already here when we arrived, and squatted on the land?

My ancestors were primarily farmers, with a mix of sail makers, ship captains, blacksmiths, doctors, lighthouse keepers, seamstresses, policemen, riggers, teachers, privateers, pirates, rumrunners and – librarians. They were, and are, veterans of the Seven Year War, the US Revolution, War of 1812, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Iraq… Some went a little crazy leaving families in the East to pan for gold in the West. And my favorite surname? Love.

Though Fahrenstück is the most fun to pronounce. I wonder what it was like to leave their homes and come to a new land across an ocean. Who was your first immigrant? Do you ever wonder?