Drawing : Genealogical & autobiographical sketches

Drawing: Genealogical autobiographical drawing with pencil on paper.   

Welcome to my blog. Be a good digital citizen! Digital Millenium Copyright of 1998 (link here) protects this blog. Share or use an excerpt with appropriate attribution, but do not copy and transfer the content of this blog without permission. If you want to republish or copy content in its entirety you must request and receive permission: emilysfolkart@gmail.com


We stand on the shoulders of immigrants

After my own father died in 2007, I became very interested in my Norwegian ancestors' immigration to America. I researched ships' records and learned their 1871 journey was fraught with hardship. They sailed on the clipper ship Nordens Droning which carried 397 passengers, only 9 of whom had cabins. My 60 and 44 year-old great great grandparents and their seven children, who ranged in age from 22 to 3 years-old, made the trans-Atlantic trip in steerage. It lasted 2-1/2 months from May 5th until July 14th. They endured poor sanitation, a food shortage (Great Great Grandmother had told that the bread they had brought became moldy), and there was an outbreak of scarlet fever. Five of ship's passengers died and as was common practice presumably were buried at sea. 

Mixed Media miniature: Norway home

Why would my great great grandparents take such a perilous journey at their ages? There can be but one reason: their children's futures. As poor tenant farmers in a Norway laden with a burgeoning population and a rising tide of nationalism they may even have feared for their children's futures in Norway. At the very least, they must have wanted to give their children opportunity to thrive.

In this primitive drawing, from about 8 years ago, I depicted my Norwegian great great grandmother sitting on the family trunk (as it was told she had done) surrounded by her husband and children waiting for the eldest son, who had emigrated the year before, to come get them. My great great grandparents and sons acquired 40, then 80, and then 120 acres of their own land to farm. But they also endured drought, grasshoppers, and catastrophic illness. The two eldest sons died of lung illnesses within a decade and a half of arrival. In time the farm was lost. Some of the children prospered, however, and their children would be born to relative advantage. 

My own great grandmother, emigrated at 22, outlived her husband and several of her children, dying at the age of 93, which is a pretty long life by anyone's standards. I never knew her, of course, nor did I know any of these about whom I now write this remembrance.

I stand here upon her strong shoulders to pray mercy on immigrants and their children. That they may be fleeing danger only to face new dangers is too often the case but this is also sure: immigrants have always and always will want to give their children a future.

Copyright 2018 Emily Kretschmer