Grandma was a school teacher before she married grandpa. This was back in the day when school teachers were required to be unmarried. Grandma taught what we now call kindergarten. A teacher in a small coal mining town in southern Illinois, grandma’s first challenge was to teach all her “little kids” how to speak English.

When grandma was a teacher, immigrants from all parts of Europe flooded into southern Illinois in order to work in the coal mines. Most immigrants of that day spoke their native language in their home. Not until they were old enough to go to school did the children of these immigrants learn to speak English, mostly from my grandma.

Grandma was a good school teacher. She expected all her students, and subsequently her own children, to learn to speak proper English. I’m sure they all did before they “graduated” my grandma’s kindergarten class.

Today, immigration is a contemptuous subject. The first federal immigration law was passed in 1790. However, there was little regulation of immigration until 1875 when the United States forbid prostitutes and criminals from entering the country.

In 1882, a law excluded nearly all Asian immigrants, and those perceived as “lunatics” or “idiots.” By the early 1900’s, children arriving without adults, anarchists, and persons having physical and mental defects were denied immigration. The first quota on immigration passed Congress in 1921.

We’re a country built by American Indians and immigrants. They mined coal, as in southern Illinois, and built the first continental railroad spanning the American continent.

My grandma’s relatives immigrated from Germany, probably in the early to mid-1700’s. My mother traced her family roots to back to 1790 when one of my great-great grandparents was born. Unfortunately, written records of that era are few and incomplete, which prevents her from finding her relative who first immigrated to this country.

My mother and I plan to visit Pennsylvania this summer to review their written records. Pennsylvania kept very good records from that era. We found a man who may be related to us in the first U.S. Census in 1790, but we need to establish a link to our family through a birth, marriage, or death certificate, or a written will which names our known relative as an heir.

Perhaps our family came to the “new world” during Queen Elizabeth’s reign when she openly encouraged all Europeans to settle the new world in the name of England. We may never find out, but our “road trip” back east may help us find a new clue.

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