Ellis Island Immigrant

For those of us with not only long time Yankee (or tidewater Virginia, etc.) colonial immigrant ancestry but also relatively recent late 19th/early 20th century ethnic ancestry, one of the most the common stories involves a great grandfather escaping famine, subjugation, or just plain bleak prospects in Eastern or Southern Europe in search of a better life in America.  This archetypal American story usually involves a ship full of foreigners who likely can't speak English, have little idea how to spell their name or home town in the mother country, and a two week or more journey across the Atlantic to Ellis Island or similar ports teaming with millions with similar stories.

In many ways, this story resonates deeper with us than that colonial ancestor who arrived with or shortly after the pilgrims in Plymouth or in Jamestown because we many have even met or certainly knew older relatives who remembered their stories which escaped the fog of time and memory and are relatively fresh family legend and anecdotes still bantered around at family reunions and the holidays.

Luckily for those of us with such ancestry, which is most of us in the United States, these ancestors' journeys and arrival are much more likely to have left evidence in the records of our Country and in the trunks, shoe boxes, and photo albums of our older relatives.  Thus, creating a genealogical display of their story which usually resonates much greater with us today is typically an easier project with greater options and avenues for one's creativity.

For this project, I am creating a framed collection of images documenting my great grandfather's (my father's maternal grandfather), Jan Paruch's, journey from southern Poland (Galicia or Malopolski for you Polish purists) to United States citizen.  Jan Paruch left Poland for good in 1912 and although he bypassed the chaos at Ellis Island by traveling to Canada and then to Detroit through Port Huron, MI, the display is no less compelling.

Thankfully, my father had in his possession and was thoughtful enough to save and pass on an envelope that he presumably found when my ancestor's daughter and son in law (my grandparents who lived in the same house) died not so long ago.  In this envelope was Jan Paruch's U.S. Citizenship certificate which although folded for nearly 70 years, was in good condition considering it was issued in 1939.

Framing the original by itself was a wonderful option and one I may pursue but in the meantime I had a very special relative, my godmother and Aunt Arlene (Dad's sister) to thank for her willingness to send to me her oldest and most treasured family photographs of our family so that I could scan them in and use them in another project or to frame by themselves.  Thus, I wanted to create a display for her while preserving the original for myself.

At top is the original Citizenship certificate as I found it in the envelope my father gave me.  As you can it is in great shape considering it had been folded for 70 years after being handled and perhaps displayed or passed around to proud relatives upon receiving it.  While the scan is fine and could be used as is (the folds could even lend an air of authenticity to it being the original I suppose) I wanted to reduce the distortions from a not exactly flat document.  Further, the photograph of my great grandfather has flaws in the hairline and margin of the photograph that likely came from where it was stapled to the original application.

The problem with using the typical flattening techniques (other than just putting it in a dictionary for a few years) is that they usually involves some sort of liquid like water or at least steam being applied to the paper to loosen the fibers in the paper, before applying heat via an iron to the document.  Normally this might be worth the risk but this was an original which contained an actually photograph of some age and the several signatures, two of which were my great grandfather's in ink the durability of which when interacting with water I could not predict or risk.

As a compromise, I placed the document in my bathroom on a shelf shielded from any possible splashing, and turned on the shower on hot with the door closed for ten minutes.  While using steam from the shower was still a risk, it was a minor one compared to the suggested spray bottle, etc.  After about ten minutes of steam, I placed the document face down on a clean sheet of paper and covered it with another, after which I ironed the image using constant motion being sure not to shift the document relative to the paper buffers and with a no steam setting.  This flattened out the document somewhat and was followed by placement of the document including the paper covering in an Atlas which was placed under a stack of uniformly spaced heavy books.

After two days, the document was somewhat flatter but still retained creases as I found it and the imprint of a seal (forget to mention the danger of losing this aspect of the document) which was applied to the document partially overlapping the picture.

Citizenship papers for Jan Paruch, my great grandfather

Finally, I rescanned the document, and used the free online photo editor from Google, Picasa, to touch up the blemishes in the photograph from the staples, which might bother purists, but was minor enough to ease by my conscious without difficulty.

The result was not dramatic but I think useful for this project.  it may be difficult to see but the image below reflects the lessened distortive effect of the folding and the picture touch-ups:


Details of the Journey to Citizenship
While framing the certificate would certainly be a wonderful thing to display by itself, it doesn't so much tell his story as document the destination.  After some work on ancestry.com, familysearch.com, ellisisland.com, etc., I discovered and verified that Jan Paruch emigrated from Poland for good in 1912 via a transatlantic journey from Glasgow, Scotland to St. John's, New Brunswick, Canada, aboard the SS Cassandra, and steamship of the Anchor line.  Thankfully, his name was not particularly subject to the spelling and indexing errors so commonly a thorn in the genealogist's side and I was able easily to discover the ship's manifest which provided very useful information regarding where he came from (Rozdziele, Poland) and where he was going (Hammond St., Detroit, which allowed me to verify I had the correct passenger since he lived on Hammond St. for the rest of his life).

Luckily for my display project, the entry containing his name was fairly close to the top of a page in the ship's manifest so I could use the heading contained at the top of the page as well as the line containing his name without wasting a lot of space with the information of dozens of other passengers, which while interesting and perhaps even useful, would only clutter the display.

The only issue with using this was the quality of the image which was clearly taken from a microfilm facsimile of the original and was therefore pure black and white and not particularly sharp.  Thus, to make use of the image, I decided to add a little color to image in MS Powerpoint (yes, I know, I should be using something expensive and sophisticated like Adobe's photoshop or the like but I already own and know how to use Powerpoint and it has been adequate so far) to give the image a little artificial age and realistic appearance.  The result is below:

Excerpt of ship manifest for SS Cassandra on March 16, 2012

The original manifest covered two pages and using both pieced together would have had some advantages such as more interesting information and the whole "United States" listed on the top, but due to the design I had in mind and the documents I wanted to use, using only half worked better for me this time but that is a great option.  As you can see, the last full line of passengers contains the entry for my great grandfather and I purposely let the document spill over into another line to make it clear that this was a clip and not the entire document.  I left the heading on top regarding "saloons, cabins, steerage....aliens must be manifested" language at the top despite the ability to crop it, to add more color to the story.  Finally, I printed the document out in the size required to fit my inexpensive but relatively attractive 10x20" frame given the desire to print the citizenship paper in its original 8x10" size.

Picture Postcard of the SS Cassandra

Finally, I had a horizontal space available for one more document.  I could have used his WWI draft registration document, or a pay envelope from his early employer Ford Motor Co., which would have been interesting as he worked their so early in the company's history (but which I will use in another display).  Instead, I wanted a picture of the ship to add more visual appeal.  Ancestry.com has a database of immigration ship's images that vary in quality but is surprising thorough given the sheer numbers.  Knowing the name of the ship and line, however, gave me the ability to search online for alternate images and I decided on this attractive, if not a little grubby, picture of a picture-postcard sold to passenger of the Cassandra because it was visually striking and available in a size online that would allow me to enlarge it without losing visual appeal and clarity due to low resolution (see picture above).

With my substantive content selected, it was only a matter of printing them out on my photographic oriented ink jet printer on special matte paper on the high quality setting and placing them in the matting I cut myself using a matte cutter I purchased from an art supply store (Utretch's in DC) which saves a LOT of money, and attaching them to a backing board overlaid by the matting in the frame I selected for the job.  The result, I hope you will agree, is a wonderful display that better tells the story of my great grandfather's journey to US citizenship than simply displaying the certificate itself, which I will send along to my Aunt Arlene later today hopefully garnering much appreciation and her willingness to continue her assistance to my genealogical efforts on our shared Polish ancestry:

I hope you liked it.  Let me know what you think or send along suggestions or thoughts.  Cheers, djm