family migration

family migration


Tracing either side of my family’s heritage is a difficult task. As a child there was never any talk of ancestors during family gatherings and just a passing mention of the home countries of my parent’s grandparents, which are Ireland and Poland. My reflection on this lack of knowledge attributes the cause of it to a couple motives both having emotion as a base. The matrilineal half of my family arrived in the United States from Ireland with my grandfather, at that time a child, and his four siblings. Being one of the younger siblings, Grandpa Mike had to follow his older brother Sean, around the new home country, America. Grandpa Mike had few memories of his earliest years in the new country, when he was three to seven years old, because Sean looked after him so well it was almost an isolating protection. Though there was a cultural clash occurring among my mother’s family, the solace found with each other kept the family intact and increased their number by three in the next few years
The patrilineal half of my heritage is even more obscure. First both Grandpa Leo and my father, Robert had only one sibling each. In 1896 Leo arrived with his brother and parents at New York City from Ireland, by ship. Not content to stay in New York City, a cultural clash with both ethnic and rural/city aspects, especially when compared to Killarney their home town in southeast Ireland. The family moved to Ohio and finally Michigan a few years later. Grandpa Leo’s Brother Phillip separated from his family at a young age and melted into the American culture so well, I never met him or his branch of the family. Uncle Phil separated before the relocation to Michigan.
It was common at that time and still is, that ethnic neighborhoods developed as the immigrant population increased and the need of a comfort zone brought like groups together. The migration from New York to the Midwest wasn’t the unique happening it may appear to be. The family was from a rural...

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