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Immigration Timeline
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The Potato Famine
It is a grey, cloudy day. My family’s farm looks like a graveyard. Nothing grows in the once fertile soil. My brother and father are digging up the earth, trying to find anything that will sustain us. I can tell that they are using up every last bit of strength, when my brother colapses onto the ground, hunger and weakness overcoming him. We try to help him but there is nothing we can do. We have no food, none of us have have eaten for weeks. He dies within hours in my mother's arms. -
Immigration to America
It is just after New Year’s and my family landed in America five days ago. We have been staying at Ellis Island since that time, waiting for our turn to go through the never ending line of new immigrants. We have gotten through the legal test, but during the health test, my father failed because he had developed a cough and cold on the journey over. The official said that he was to be put back on a ship to Ireland. It was one of the hardest things for me to do to say goodbye to him. -
City Life
Since my father has been sent back to Ireland, my mother needs me to work as well as her to barely make a living. We have to reside in a slum, which is filled with other people's filth and sickness. I work at a fabric factory and it is long hours in the blistering heat. There is no air conditioning and everyone is tightly cramped together, making it hard to breathe, especially with all the cotton fuzz flying around in the air. The pay is only 1 dollar per week but it is better than nothing. -
Moving West
Since my mother and I are living in horrible conditions in the city, we decide to save up the little money we have to move west, where the air is clean and there are big, open spaces of free land. It sounds like a dream. We purchase an ox, a horse, and a wagon, and set out to Washington Territory to see what we will find. The journey is hard and treacherous, even though it is not winter. We finally make it to Washington Territory though, and make a small farm by the Pacific Shore. -
A Hard Winter
The first winter in Washington Territory was not that bad, but this one brought severe blizzards and froze the ground solid. My Mother and I almost died of starvation and cold that winter. The little store of food that we had ran out at the beginning of December and now it is the end. We think that we are both going to die, until The Quileute Native American tribe finds us shivering and half dead in the cold. They nurse us back to health and give us their food. I am very grateful for them. -
A Better Life for Settlers, but not Native Americans
Because of the Native American’s kindness and generosity, my mother and I are now living happily in our small little farm by the coast. The Quileutes have taught us how to properly grow crops on American soil, and they also taught us how to fish and hunt big game. It makes me sad to think that more people are moving west, and are taking land and resources from the Native Americans. They are also taking their children away from them and forcing them into assimilation. This is not right.
