He was born in Berlin in 1857.
For what I've been told, he came to the United States through Baltimore (not everyone entered the nation through Ellis Island, after all) looking for work in construction, probably in bridges. I think he had an engineering background, one of the few books he left behind to us is on Road Making by W.M. Gillespie, and it's filled with handwritten notes (and it's really dinged up).
If I recall my family's oral history right, he married a fellow immigrant named Rose who hailed from Ireland.
My Aunt Dot visited recently and shared a photo of him. This is so far the only photo I have of my great-grandfather Ernst Paul.
This is the man I am named after.
This is the immigrant who came from Germany to settle in the United States and start a family here.
He is why I consider myself the son of immigrants.
I should not be the only one who should think that way.
We Americans are all - in some form or another, and voluntary or otherwise - the sons and daughters of immigrants from a hundred other countries and a thousand different cultures.
On this 4th of July, on EVERY 4th, we Americans should take a minute and remember those who braved the journeys and took the risks to make it to a new nation, to put down new roots, to BUILD America into what it is today. Regardless if our ancestors came from Germany or Ireland or France or China or Japan or Vietnam or Mexico or Peru or Brazil or Nigeria or Egypt or India or anywhere else on this Small Blue Dot floating in sunlight.
We are all, each of us, the sons and daughter of immigrants and GOD BLESS every single one of them coming today to America in genuine search of the Dream (good job, good home, good families, good futures).
This Independence Day is as much for them as anyone else.
1 comment:
My grandfather, Nathan Raum, sailed from Germany in '06 and landed in the gulf of Mexico. From there he started northward and made it as far as Ardmore, Oklahoma, where he was captured by an English woman named Thelma who would become my grandmother. I'm told that there is still as youth ballpark in Ardmore named after him, but as I haven't been there since the seventies, I don't know for sure.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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