Immigration at the Museum of Family History: A Review of Two Current Exhibitions

For those of you who haven't yet visited the Museum's exhibition titled "A Multitude of Immigrants," may I suggest you do so at your convenience.

The online exhibition contains eleven articles written between 1891 and 1910, and published in such New York City newspapers as the Daily Tribune, the World and the Sun. The articles are interesting in many ways, particularly if you're curious as to how these newspapers portrayed the "flood" of immigrants that passed through New York City ports around the turn of the twentieth century, as well as how they tried to regulate the inflow.

As a sort of "companion" piece to this exhibition, please visit "Castle Garden and Ellis Island: Ports of Immigration." Here you may read any or all of the dozen newspaper articles that talk about the history of Castle Garden and Ellis Island, all written and published between 1887 and 1909.

When read as a whole these articles give us a chance to "taste" the sentiment of the time toward immigration and the Jewish immigrant specifically.

You can find the exhibition "A Multitude of Immigrants" by clicking here.

You can find the exhibition "Castle Garden and Ellis Island" by clicking here.

A Multitude of Immigrants: Three New Articles

There are now eleven articles that can be found within the Museum's "A Multitude of Immigrants" exhibition. Two of the latest articles ran five days apart in 1903 in the New-York Daily Tribune about the large number of immigrants that should be expected to be landing on U. S. shores. This was right after the Kishinev pogrom, and it was suspected that a lot of these new immigrants would be paupers, undesirable, etc.

Thoughts were also expressed in these articles about the steamship lines who employed agents to recruit potential immigrants, etc.

Reading the third article--entitled "Immigrants Patched Up: Trachoma Getting In," I learned something new, that at least during the time of the article in 1905, there were "clinics" set up in such locales as Marseille, at stations along the Russian and Austrian borders, as well as at theRussian-Polish border, that promised the potential immigrant a cure for his orher trachoma. At that time, trachoma was considered incurable, and ship passengers were turned away at such ports as Ellis Island. Whatever "cures" might have been offered to those afflicted might have worked only for a night or for a few weeks, but perhaps this was long enough to pass inspection--or perhaps not. I also learned that for a time steamship companies were fined one hundred dollars for every diseased passenger who arrived in the U.S. for inspection. This was not much of a deterrent for the steamship companies. Read the entire article at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-multitude-immigrants-1905.12.18.htm.

You can find links to each of the eleven articles at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-multitude-immigrants-toc.htm.

250 Years in America: Parts II and III

The second and third parts of the Museum's short series of articles published in 1905 is now available. These three articles commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Jewish presence in the United States, one article specifically discussing the contributions of the Jews of New York.

The first article of the three (announced one week ago) was written by Oscar S. Straus, who was U. S. Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Teddy Roosevelt (the first U. S. Jewish Cabinet secretary) as well as a Minister to Turkey. Straus wrote about the early history of the Jewish immigration, and the presence of Jews in the U.S. in such cities as Newport, Rhode Island; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and several states and cities to the South, such as Georgia, Charleston, Maryland, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia. He also wrote about the early Jewish presence in the Ohio Valley, Chicago and California. This article, previously announced on this blog, can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/lia-250-sfcall.htm.

There was actually a second article published in this same edition of the San Francisco Sunday Call (on the opposite page) entitled "The Future of Judaism in America: What Leading Hebrew Thinkers Prophesy For the Race," partly written by the Rev. Mendola de Sola. This interesting article can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/lia-250-sfcall-future-judaism.htm.

The third article in this triad is from April 1905 and is entitled "Jews in New York 250 Years." This article talks about the early history of the Jewish people who lived in New York and the contributions they've made. The article can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/lia-250-nydt-ny.htm.

All three articles, of course, are educational. None of us were alive in 1905, so reading the opinions of Jews and non-Jews alike on what the Jewish contributions had been to that point to the well-being and prosperity of the U.S. and more specifically New York is important, or at least should be. We can't actually go back a hundred years in time to experience what Jewish life was like back then; we can no longer speak to anyone who used to live in the U. S. during that period, but at least we can read what others read during 1905 about our collective Jewish contributions, and then use our imagination and analytic thinking to 'paint a picture' in our own minds of a society that our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents once lived in and helped build.

A Multitude of Immigrants: American Newspapers and How They Addressed the Immigration Issue

Obviously back in the 1890s and first decade of the twentieth century, there was no television, and radio wasn't yet available to the general public. During that time people received their news, at least commercially, via the local newspaper. These newspapers then affected public opinion.

The English language newspaper was readily available to all during this time. The general public would get their news by reading newspapers. This newest Museum exhibition "A Multitude of Immigrants: American Newspapers and How They Addressed the Immigration Issue" gives you just a small glimpse into the portrayal of the immigration question, especially how it relates to Jewish immigration.

This exhibition is a series of eight articles from three New York City newspapers--The New-York Daily Tribune, The Sun and The World--all published between 1891 and 1910. As we know, between these years, immigration to the U.S. was extremely high, and politicians and the public alike were split on what the policy of the U.S. should be toward immigrants, especially the uneducated and unskilled ones, not wanting the immigrants to become "pauperized." What kinds of restrictions should be imposed, not just on Jewish immigration, but on other nationalities?

I would urge you to read each article; more such articles may be added to this exhibition in the future.

The exhibition can be found at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-multitude-immigrants.htm. Just click on the "enter" link at the bottom of the page, and in order to proceed from one article to the next, simply click on the "next" link at the bottom of each page.

250 Years in America: The Jewish Contribution

This is the first in a short series of articles published at the end of 1905, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Jewish presence in the United States.

The first "Hebrew" (at least some of the newspapers during this time referred to Jews as “Hebrews”) who stepped foot on American soil was one Jacob Bar Simson, who came from Holland, followed the next year by a “band” of twenty-three refugees, probably from Brazil.

These articles are generally praiseworthy, and list the contributions that the Jews have made to the U.S. from 1655 to the time of the article in 1905.

You can now read the first such article (though in all there are three articles on this one newspaper page, published in the San Francisco Sunday Call newspaper.) The first of these articles was written by Oscar S. Straus.

Oscar S. Straus (1850-1926) was U. S. Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Teddy Roosevelt (the first U. S. Jewish Cabinet secretary) as well as a Minister to Turkey.

In the first of the three articles on this page, Straus discusses the early history of the Jewish immigration, and the presence of Jews in the U.S. in such cities as Newport, Rhode Island; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and several states and cities to the South, such as Georgia, Charleston, Maryland, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia. He also talks about the early Jewish presence in the Ohio Valley, Chicago and California.

The other two articles within this triad are entitled “What American Hebrews Have Done” and “Hebrews in Philanthropy and Society.”

More articles will appear in the near future about the Jewish presence in the U. S., and one at least about the contributions at this 250th anniversary of Jews to New York City.

The link to these articles is www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/lia-250-sfcall.htm .