Migration Story

My family’s migration is extraordinarily common amongst people today. Aside from one very distant relation from early America most of us came from industrial revolution immigrates looking for opportunity. My family’s many decedents came from Germany, Ireland, and apparently Switzerland. During this time, 19th century, America was the worlds industrial power house and the focal point of all migration in the world at the time, especially those coming out of Europe. So this makes it absolutely no shock that when they came here, they came for money.

Many of them ended up in Cleveland and surrounding areas but despite that none of them worked in the Steel industry which at the time was one of the sole reason s to come to the area at all. Its my understanding that many of them worked in the education system and one for sure worked in the Akron chemical plants later on.

Its hard for me to describe struggle when it comes to migration since other than the cookie cutter description of how one manages life in the new American world since there were language barriers, and there were small communities of migrant ethnic groups that are still extraordinarily prominent today in Cleveland.

As far as I’m concerned my family has almost never left the Cleveland area despite all the separate peoples coming here and having zero connection to this place as a whole. I’m sure this template is applicable to many other major industrial cities as well such as Chicago, Cincinnati, and New York.

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