Thank God for Immigrants

I have always wanted to go to Staten Island and stand in that place where so many immigrants waited to be allowed to enter the United States.  My late mother-in-law's parents both spent time there as they arrived from Switzerland in the late 1890's  seeking fertile farm land in Kentucky.  Why Kentucky?  Well, it all started with an unscrupulous real estate agent, (sorry hubby).

Not all of Kentucky is rolling fields of bluegrass horse farms.  If you travel just east and a little south of Lexington's famous acres you come to the foothills of the Appalachian mountains where the hillsides don't roll they leap up and down.  The ground is often so close to the famous limestone rock that you can see it jutting through the soil.  My father always said it was "sour" meaning in farmer talk that it was poor soil, covered with cedar trees.  In short it is rough farm land that most people weren't too interested in paying much for. 

Enter the enterprising real estate man.  He came up with the idea of advertising the land overseas.  In the small countries of Europe land had become a scarce commodity.  Most farm land had been held in families for generations with the oldest son inheriting it all.  That left the younger sons without anything to farm so they were ripe for the lure of "rich, fertile farmland in the rolling foothills of the Appalachian mountains".  To the Swiss who saw the brochures it sounded just like their home with the exception that there was lots of farmland for sale.  Several families, mostly those of second, third or fourth sons, decided to move to this beautiful land of Kentucky.,

I can't imagine the idea of packing up everything you hold dear, gathering your children and traveling to a land that you've never seen, and you don't speak the language.  What courage they had and how very frightened and hopeful they must have been.  After days, maybe even weeks, of traveling they arrived at their new home only to be faced not with thriving, fertile farms but rough, unimproved knob land.  These stalwart people didn't cry foul and run to the courts to get their money back, they settled in and began to build fences, improve the soil, buy dairy cows and build a community.  Thus, the little community of Ottenheim in Lincoln County was established. 

The hardy Swiss people then set about becoming American with the same enthusiasm and dedication they had turned on farming.  They learned to speak English instead of speaking the German they grew up with.  They demanded that their children speak only English, thus losing the native German in a single generation.  They proved to be good neighbors, always ready with a helping hand and soon were accepted as friends and coworkers.  Today the county's only remembrance of these brave people who came to America so they could have the freedom to farm  their own land, are the mailboxes scattered throughout the county with names like, VonGruenigen, Camenisch, Gander, Schnitzler, Gehlhausen, and Schoendorf.

What would America be without the brave and determined immigrants who gave up everything for the opportunity to live in our great, free country?  We founded our country as a haven for those seeking freedom and we have been repaid a thousandfold.