User:KelseyH

Social Biography for Kelsey Elizabeth Hackem

On my father’s side of the family, our heritage goes back to my great-grandparents who lived in Syria. At that time Syria was still part of the Turkish Empire and the Turks were enlisting fifteen year old boys into their army, so my great-great grandmother sent my great-grandma and great-uncle to the United States. She thought that they could have a better life than being forced to serve in the Tjavascript:insertTags(,,'Link title'); Internal linkurkish Army. It took fifteen days for them to travel to Ellis Island on a ship. My great-grandmother was refused entry at Ellis Island because she had an eye infection. Because of that she had to go to Montreal Canada where she spent a few days at a hospital until the infection was cleared up. So in 1902, at ten years old, she was allowed entry into the United States. She stayed with her sister who had come to the United States previously. My great-grandfather came to the United States in 1905 and stayed with his brothers. Neither of them spoke any English, but they somehow made a living. Most people that came from Syria would go door to door selling needles, pins, towels, and other goods. They would have to make themselves understood enough to sell their products. This was always a challenge, but it was something that came with traveling to the United States as an immigrant. My great-grandmother would sell her products in the town and they, including my great-grandfather and his cousins, would travel from town to town. They traveled through Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and other New England States. With the help of farmers along the way, they were allowed to sleep in barns and would occasionally be invited in for breakfast. Eventually, my great-grandmother got a job working in a glass factory where she etched designs into bowls, vases, and tumblers. She said that it was interesting work for her. Eventually my great-grandmother and great-grandfather married. She was eighteen and he was twenty-three at the time. They became United States citizens and over the years they worked hard to make a better life for themselves and their family. My grandmother was born in 1916. The Ottoman Empire began as one of many small Turkish states that emerged as Asia Minor during the breakdown o the empire of the Seljuk Turks. The Ottomans began to absorb other states and they ended all other Turkish dynasties. They biggest Ottoman expansion was when they took over the Byzantine Empire, Bulgaria, and Serbia. Their success was due to the weakness and disunity of their opponents and also because of their excellent and vastly superior military organization. They took over Syria and pushed the Asia borders also. The breakup of the state coincided with the Russo-Turkish wars in the 18th century. Many treaties caused the Empire to lose economic independence. By that time, my great-grandmother had emigrated from Syria and was living in the United States. Under the Ottomans, atrocities and suppressions were common daily experiences for the people throughout the Ottoman rule. War expeditions of the Ottomans made for chaotic and calamitous times for the populations close to the army routes. They were usually forced to contribute goods, cash, work in supplementary labors, and sometimes watch their houses be destroyed by the attacks of army groups. Some people were forced to abandon their lands and occupations. I do not know how my family accumulated enough money to send two children to the United States. Also, our family is not Muslim  like many people in the Middle East, we are Eastern Orthodox. This is a problem when looking for information about how Middle Eastern Immigrants were treated in the United States because a lot of the treatment they incurred was because they were Muslim. I do know that it was very hard for my great-great grandmother because she spoke no English, so all of bargaining and selling had to be done through gestures. Also, most of the personal encounters through which immigrants defined U.S. culture transpired trough “Americanization”. These were campaigns sponsored by federal, local, and private organizations in the 1910s. A lot of these programs were racist, exclusionist sentiments that wanted racial assimilation of the non-white people. My family knows very little about my mother’s side of the family, but I do know that both of my mother’s grandparents hailed from the Netherlands, one side from Groningen and the other side from Saint Philips land. Both left the Netherlands for economic reasons; they were both very poor. They saw the United States as a promise of a prosperous and happy future. One characteristic of the Netherlands that my grandmother follows is Calvinism. My brother and I were not raised on any specific religion so we cannot specifically identify with Eastern Orthodox or Calvinism. During the reign of William III the Netherlands enjoyed a period of commercial expansion and internal development, but that was not enough to get my family out of poverty. Trade unions grew and a lot of social-welfare legislation was passes, which was beneficial to my family. After my family immigrated to the United States, they ended up living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which has a large percentage of Dutch people. I do not know if they lived anywhere else before that. I am proud to be both Lebanese and Dutch, but I do not think that my heritage shaped who I am today. I knew very little about what happened in Syria and the Netherlands before this paper, and now knowing more information I do not think it had that much of an impact on me. The only Lebanese culture that my family really has is the food and my grandmother, who we call Sittee (Arabic for grandmother), is fluent in Arabic and worked as a translator in Detroit. Other than that we do not have any family traditions, but I enjoyed learning about my past through this paper.