Thread: old military uniforms help identifying

How interesting Rockzmom!

Did your grandmother ever explain why they decided to emigrate?
I mean, there can be lots of reasons why someone does that... They don't look poor to me at least. Maybe it was politically or religiously motivated? Perhaps one of the people in the picture is your great grandparent, or great-great grandparent?

From the European perspective, when we think of people who emigrated to the USA prior to say.... 1 st World War, we think of people who quite simply put was poor and oppressed - maybe close to starving - and looked for an opportunity to start over somewhere where they'd have better possibilities to get ahead...

Or else, people who were religiously persecuted because they had some non-standard Christian views, or they were a political/religious minority that was persecuted.

It's really fascinating when people both sides of the Atlantic do family research and find out what interesting links exist.. I have some very relatives (don't know them) who own a small sugar plantation in Georgia, and some others who live in the state of Utah, I think one of them is a teacher. In both cases it was the Americans who tracked down my grandfather. Neither was very stereotypical of a Swedish emigrant to the USA - supposedly most went to Minnesota and became farmers. But not mine! Funnily enough my other grandfather tried to do some research into a relative who moved to the USA, but was not able to find out what happened to him.

Originally Posted by Hanna

How interesting Rockzmom!

Did your grandmother ever explain why they decided to emigrate?
I mean, there can be lots of reasons why someone does that... They don't look poor to me at least. Maybe it was politically or religiously motivated? Perhaps one of the people in the picture is your great grandparent, or great-great grandparent?

From the European perspective, when we think of people who emigrated to the USA prior to say.... 1 st World War, we think of people who quite simply put was poor and oppressed - maybe close to starving - and looked for an opportunity to start over somewhere where they'd have better possibilities to get ahead...

Or else, people who were religiously persecuted because they had some non-standard Christian views, or they were a political/religious minority that was persecuted.

It's really fascinating when people both sides of the Atlantic do family research and find out what interesting links exist.. I have some very relatives (don't know them) who own a small sugar plantation in Georgia, and some others who live in the state of Utah, I think one of them is a teacher. In both cases it was the Americans who tracked down my grandfather. Neither was very stereotypical of a Swedish emigrant to the USA - supposedly most went to Minnesota and became farmers. But not mine! Funnily enough my other grandfather tried to do some research into a relative who moved to the USA, but was not able to find out what happened to him.

I've been doing research on her family off an on for the two years now since she passed away and I must say, the more I find the more I am amazed. I always knew that she came with her mom here to New York when she was a child as her mom had been offered a job and that they came first class. I also knew that her mom hated it here as she thought New York was so, hmmm how should I put it, uncultured and filthy and just so different from the lifestyle they had back in Austria. So they actually went back to Austria. Well, her family was so upset with her mom that she did that and made her try New York again. So my grandmother and her mom came back yet a second time, again first class. This time they stayed.

I finally found the 1909 ship manifest for the second trip, as there are no Ellis Island records, that said they were going to stay with a brother-in-law, so they already had relatives in New York.

They were all sisters by the way, and one younger brother that came here. Why it is that they did come here to begin with, except for the fact that my great grandmother was offered a job, I have no idea. For as you correctly pointed out, they were all doing very well in Austria. Once they got here, their husbands did even better. They all started businesses and did very well for themselves. They really did the "American Dream" thing that you only read about or see in movies. One owned a children clothing store, one owned a candy store, one went into the diamond wholesale merchant business, one became a watchmaker/jewelry store owner, one a dry goods store and so on.

It is interesting, I have only learned now that my grandmother gave up everything when she married my grandfather. She had a VERY comfortable lifestyle and he was, shall we say, from a not so well-to-do family. They actually moved to DC to start over again because he lost everything when he tried to open a business and it failed. Yet, I never heard my grandmother complain about not having the life she used to have. But I have heard from many people that he changed after that and became a very different man, a more bitter and unhappy man, maybe it was because he knew he could no longer give her that kind of a life.