You learn things chasing ancestors..things that aren’t in the history books, nor quite spelled out in anthropology texts.
American kids hear a lot of Pilgrims seeking religous freedom in the Colonies, and not a great deal about the English Civil War, phase 1 and phase 2, which were about the same time. The two groups, the Pilgrims and the dispossessed landholders, hated each other, both settled in the colonies, and there was no great amount of trust. Ultimately the politics of the US reflected the Whigs and the Tories of England, but took some really strange turns based on US geography and economics, and who originally settled where.
History students hear a lot about emigration and seeking opportunities, but not very much about the reasons…like the Black Death, the several really apocalyptic city fires, national depression, and another really curious item: families. Families and associated families moved together. One couple from a village goes, the widowed father goes, then a cousin joins the party, with his wife, and her father and mother; and pretty soon another cousin—the number of people you run across who share the same heredity in a given area-of-origin is quite amazing. And if you think about the psychology of it all, the notion of one person or a couple deciding to throw it all up and move to the ends of the earth would be pretty remarkable. The fact is political pressure, economic pressure, and a horrific death rate from annual bouts of plague and such were pretty strong inducement, but when people went, they didn’t go alone. Families weren’t willing to be separated by what was, in effect, a voyage halfway to Mars, with incredibly cramped conditions on the ships, some of my relatives dying of things like smallpox, aboard ship, and then landing on a muddy, swampy (or rocky) coast, depending on whether you came in at, say, Isle of Wight, VA, or Plymouth, MA. It was pretty scary stuff, and probably (knowing real estate deals) wasn’t as advertised once they got there. Just some odd observations, and a suggestion our history books aren’t observing the first rule of good storytelling: put yourself in that position and ask what you’d do.
For me there’s always been a kind of disconnect, and was even when I was a kid. Hmmn, we’re supposed to believe these persecuted people who immediately set about burning their neighbors at the stake could afford boat fare and were all here because they wanted religious freedom. Seemed kind of divorced, to me, from all rational human behavior—I mean, I couldn’t see why here was better than there. They were still burning witches. And none of that togetherness with the tribes quite rang true with that behavior, either. People who burned witches for thinking a little different from them were going to get along with native people who really viewed things differently from them?
So why were they really here? Hmm.
Again I say…hmmn. Interesting to find there was a lot more to it.
I think at a certain point, especially in our society, but even in older times, there’s an urge to establish an independent domicile—though, say, in old England, this might be a house a village away. With our relatively easy mobility and ease of communication (if we want it) it takes a long distance to be independent. Sometimes as people get older, they draw in again, re-establishing ties: I see this a lot, too.
for my english ancestor, the reason was to escape the law and hanging. for my much later irish ancestors on the other side of the tree, the potato famine and ensuing hardships in ireland was likely the impetus tho’ i don’t have any family stores to confirm that but the tiiming is about right. don’t know why the german side emigrated, am hoping that as my father writes down the info my grandmother told him some of that may come to light. western europeans didn’t – and still don’t – tend to up and move alot. hubby is an exception. most of the rest of his family are still in or very near the city of birth.
My immediate family up and moved in the late 1930’s from West Australia to New South Wales (the equivalent of New York – Los Angeles). Dad was the only one of all his siblings to have any training after junior high school and he went where the bank sent him. In a prior generation his family followed the gold, from Victoria in the south-east over to Western Australia. They were all miners and I still have a cousin or two in the industry. As a result, we were never close to the family; too expensive to get over there and too expensive to phone. It’s only in the last 10 years that I’ve reinstated contact.