“Why Am I Here” by Betsy Lambert

Editor’s Note: In this post our writer, Betsy Lambert, traces her family genealogy back through several streams of immigrants, reminding us that we all arise from immigrant stock (unless we are Native Americans). And she does not sugar coat it. In this time of deportations and disappearances for so many, it is vital that we know we are connected to all of those in danger. God’s love also encompasses them.

In addition, the Bible has a deep tradition of acknowledging genealogy. Luke lists the genealogy of Jesus going back forty generations. We are not alone. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We are part of a 5,000-year family tree.

Why Am I Here

By Betsy Lambert

I wrote this piece for the blog because I’ve been troubled by the way immigrants have been described and depersonalized by Trump and other national leaders today. That name calling denies the fact that all of us are here because we or our ancestors were immigrants, and that every immigrant has a personal story to tell. By sharing some of my family history, I am hoping to remind you of your own, and maybe you will share your story, too. 

Why am I here?

Not here at church, but why am I here in this country?

I am here because a Huguenot family, a school master and his wife and their teenage daughter, fled religious persecution in France. They settled briefly outside London, England, and then immigrated to the colony of New York City in 1681. They were part of a minority group of French Calvinist Protestants who lost all of their political rights under Catholic rule. Unless they denied their faith, they would lose their property, their right to practice their trade, and their children could be taken from them to be educated as Catholics. Though they left France in order to live in freedom, and were active in the first Independent French Church in New York, they enslaved an adult female, who was most probably brought to New York by the Dutch West India Company after being captured in Ghana. In 1712, the schoolmaster was murdered in the earliest uprising of enslaved people in Colonial America. The reprisal for those found guilty of participating in the revolt was brutal; twenty enslaved people were burnt alive or hung, and one was broken on the wheel.

I am here because a young man, discontent with England in 1774, left his family and immigrated alone to Pennsylvania. He joined the rebellion and was one of a few dozen soldiers captured at the Battle of Bound Brook, New Jersey in 1777. He was held by the British on Long Island until a prisoner exchange led to his release in 1780, whereby he returned to military service. He was discharged at the end of the war as a Major in the Continental Army.  He fought for freedom and attended the local Episcopal Church, yet he and his wife enslaved seven human beings: Thomas, Nan, Mary, Liz, Fran, and two more whose names were not recorded. Most enslaved people sold in Brooklyn slave markets at that time were captured in West or Central Africa and arrived after surviving the brutal middle passage. Presumably, the seven people they owned worked in their home and tended the fields at the family farm in Brooklyn. New York did not abolish slavery until 1827.

I am here because the son of wealthy Norwegian industrialists was sent to an abusive military school. The beatings at school were such that, in 1886, he immigrated to America. He crawled into the cook’s cabinet on a steamship bound for New York and crossed the Atlantic as a stowaway. When he arrived, he slept in Central Park and learned English while working for a place to sleep and food to eat. His first job was sweeping floors in exchange for sleeping in a storage room at night. He joined the US Navy. On one stormy trip, he fell to the deck from the crow’s nest and had nightmares about the experience well into his nineties. After working at a pharmacy in New York, he returned to Norway to ask his parents to pay for him to attend Columbia College of Pharmacy. His schooling prepared him for his lifelong work and is where he met his future wife; they were married in Mamaroneck Methodist Church. He was said to have instituted the practice of sterilizing medicine bottles while employed at Rexall Drugs and was known as “Daddy Puretest.”  He continued to love adventure and left the pharmacy in New York unattended in order to join his brothers in the South African gold rush, stumbling into the Boer War, and earning and losing a fortune more than once. He also did good; in 1907, he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica for Parke Davis Company and saved many lives by organizing aid and establishing orderly encampments in the aftermath of the terrible earthquake on January 14. My mother would say that he told wonderful stories, some of which were true. Much of this has been corroborated, and it’s the truth, as far as I know!

I am here because an Irish Catholic blacksmith and a dressmaker, both facing starvation and limited options in Ireland, left Queen’s County (now Laois) in 1890, and immigrated to America, settling in West Newton. They married in 1892 and lived for several years in very tight quarters with as many as eight other adults from two or three different families. When pregnant with their third child, the couple finally had the means to rent a place of their own. Unfortunately, in November of 1899, the blacksmith was found dead alongside the tracks of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad, directly below the Shawmut Avenue bridge in Boston. Injuries to his head and face were so severe that he could only be identified by the apprentice papers in his pocket. Family lore is that he was murdered for early union activity, but perhaps because he was an Irish Catholic immigrant, the police did not investigate and instead theorized that he fell out of the train and hit his head on the bridge support. His widow and children returned to crowded, multifamily living and a few months later their third child was born. When that little boy was old enough, he worked as a shoeshine boy to augment the family income instead of attending school and stopped school again to work with a plumber in his teens. Even though he was older and larger than his classmates, he eventually graduated from high school, and Father Feeney, a kind and generous Jesuit priest, saw his love of learning and arranged for him to go to Boston College. He proudly wore BC jackets year-round until his death in1980.

I am here because a Presbyterian potato farmer left the farm in Prince Edward Island to pursue a better life for himself and his family. He arrived in the late nineteenth century at about the same time as the Irish blacksmith and dressmaker.  At that time, Presbyterians were viewed more favorably and had far greater economic opportunities than Irish Catholics. He saved up, and in 1899, paid $250 to start his own furniture and piano-moving company: two bay mares (Kitty and Nell), a two-horse furniture wagon, canvas, ropes, and two harnesses. His business succeeded, and he and his wife were able to buy a home in a family neighborhood in Hyde Park, and their son graduated from Brown University.

I am here because my ancestors were people of courage and imagination; immigrants who were not afraid to live out their faith, value education, and build a better life for themselves and their children. They represent a broad mix of humanity – those who perpetrated violence and those who were victims of violence, those in favored religions and those who faced religious persecution, those who were adventure seekers and some who were just plain hungry. They were the “tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free” who have contributed in countless ways to the strength and beauty of the United States of America.

Why are you here?