Notes on America on the 250th anniversary of its birth: Part 1– the random migratory patterns in America
My father-in-law died recently in an assisted living center in Westfield, Indiana. We held the memorial service last Thursday at a Mangiano's in Indianapolis. He would have been 90 years old at the end of this month. Alzheimer's stole his brain and his memories some years ago; his death was a release.
Since his death, my husband has been gifted with some family documents, including a letter with the memories of a distant family member about the history of my husband's family in the US. My own side of the family is pretty new to America - my mother herself was an immigrant from Ireland - intending to stay in America temporarily but met my father in a bar in Chicago and is now buried in a Catholic cemetery in the suburbs of Chicago. Of my four grandparents, three were born in other countries – my maternal grandparents were obviously born in Ireland and my paternal grandmother was born in a shtetl in Tsarist Russia. Her family came to America in 1907 fleeing Tsarist pograms.
In my side of the family, I think the first family member born in America might be John Boyle, my paternal great-great-grandfather, who was born 1825 in Pennsylvania, grew up to be a coal miner and married an Irish wife. Family lore has it that the Boyles missed the sun so they left coal mining and headed to Chicago, where they worked in the stockyards. My own family provides a lesson in how the winds of intolerance, economic insecurity and the hope for a better life blew people across the ocean to "the land of the free and home of the brave."
We knew my father-in-law was born in Pierre, South Dakota and his family moved to Elmhurst, Illinois sometime during World War II That was all we knew.
Family documents my husband got after his father's death show a much bigger picture. And these documents show how the winds of economic insecurity and the hope for a better life blew people across the American continent. One of my husband's earliest ancestors came here as a British soldier prior to the Revolutionary War. According to the family documents, he defected and fought on the American side. In 1800, an ancestor lived in North Carolina. Another ancestor lived in Ohio. That branch of the family slowly worked their way west, landing for a while in Westfield, Indiana, when it was largely unpopulated, to Albert Lea in southern Minnesota, to the Dakota Territories in the 1870s, where they stayed until some in the family headed to Illinois for better opportunities.
Migration is a huge part of the American story. Only people of indigenous backgrounds originally "came" from here. Everyone else came or was brought to this land at some point. And for many of us, our families moved around America whenever economic issues required a move – myself included. People came here seeking opportunity – jobs, land, work. People moved to different areas of the country in search of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." My own family came lately to America. My husband's family came much earlier, and their migration took them from colonial territories to Midwestern forests to then South Dakota territories before statehood.
Marveling at the beauty of the land as we travel
To get to my father-in-law's memorial service in Indiana, my husband and I, based in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina, drive four hours through the mountains before we reach the interstate heading north.
We pass through the Cumberland Gap Tunnel into through the gentle hills of Kentucky, where traces of Daniel Boone's travel can be found. We go past the beautiful pastures of Kentucky horse country.
After Cincinnati, we cross a bridge that takes us across the mighty Ohio River.
In Indiana, we see some of the flattest and most productive farmland in America.
Whenever we make this journey, I marvel at how easy it has become to cross mountains and rivers – and I always wonder how this land was settled, given the geographic barriers encountered by the people who lived here before interstates and cars and bridges.
Behold the Circle of Life!
My father-in-law died in an assisted living center in Westfield, Indiana. He did not know (or did not remember) that his journey that took him from Pierre, South Dakota, to Elmhurst, Illinois, to Springfield, Illinois (where he raised his family) ended up in a town – Westfield – where one of his ancestors had settled temporarily during the frontier era of American history. The trajectory of his life's journey came to an end in a town where his ancestors once lived. One could say that the circle remained unbroken.
Seems time for a Carter family tune... Can the Circle be Unbroken?
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