Letter to the Editor,
I have been thinking about migrations recently. All living things migrate. Plants migrate during forest succession over decades, and flowers to trees migrate with hot and cold, wet and dry cycles over centuries. Insects, birds, and animals migrate for seasonal feeding and breeding grounds, as well as adapting to different latitudes when ice ages wax and wane. People migrate, sometimes to avoid war, famine, and stagnant economies; sometimes to find more political, economic, and religious freedom and opportunity.
While we often discuss migrations on large scale, group terms, we only experience movement from here to there on a personal level. Two recent editorials in the Moorefield Examiner (12/4/24 Thanksgiving, Pilgrims, Puritans, and the American Indians; and 11/27/24 Is War In Sight?), remind me of why I have migrated from where I grew up in Sunnyvale, CA to Baker, WV.
In the past decade, my parent’s generation has died. I have accumulated a variety of family documents and genealogies. In “Thanksgiving…”, the editor mentions the Massachusetts Bay colony. While I cannot claim to be eligible for the Mayflower Society, one genealogy lists an ancestor who sailed on the Anne in 1623, the third ship to land at Plymouth. Per the Wikipedia’s list of passengers on the Anne, he may have traveled with his wife and two children. However, they disappear, suggesting that they may have died, as did many in those first years of settlement. He has a different wife by 1627, who bore a daughter, who is on my family tree. While he was deeded farm property, in 1633, is noted to be a freeman. That implies that he purchased his freedom from England through 10 years of indentured servitude. Seven generations later, I had the freedom to uproot from California because he payed his way across the Atlantic with ten years of his life.
In “Is War in Sight”, the editor mentions the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. Parallel to that European border wrangling was the 1871 Schlewsig-Holstein war between Denmark and Germany. My ancestors, who were from Denmark lived on the wrong side of the border. Per our family history, my great-great-great grandmother escaped back to Denmark with her son (my great-great grandfather) after her husband and two brothers were conscripted in the army and assumed to have died on the field in that cold winter of fighting. They then took the trans-Atlantic sea passage to New Orleans as refugees. They participated in a land rush in Oklahoma, then became Okies migrating to the almond orchards of California’s Central Valley.
My grandmother became a teacher. My mother went to college and married my father. Her sister also graduated from college, as an occupational therapist. I graduated from college with a degree in occupational therapy. My wife and I purchased land in Hardy County, built a cabin and moved there over 20 years ago. Had my ancestors not been able to escape Europe (along with a few other family roots for other stories), I might not have had the freedom to pursue greener pastures. Social progress often take generations from tragic circumstances and survival to success.
My brother has migrated to Chicago. He lives in a Puerto Rican neighborhood that has absorbed thousands of Venezuelan’s who have fled an oppressive government, and been bussed thousands of miles from Texas to Chicago. He volunteers in the local school helping them learn English, so that they can succeed in school and the local neighborhood. I wonder how many generations they will need to look back at their ancestors and appreciate the freedom that they payed for with their migration.
Oscar Larson
304-897-5495
998 Cove Creek Road
Baker, WV 27801
- S. To the new editor, I am enjoying your recent editorials and style. BTW, three for three, my father played chess with Dave Brubeck, when they were both boys in central California. Excellent!
