52 Ancestors Week 38: Symbols

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 38

The theme for Week 38 is "Symbol." Has a symbol given you a clue about an ancestor? Maybe it was on a tombstone or in a letter. How about a math teacher in the family tree; they use lots of symbols!

Lady Liberty, symbol of America in the Starbolts webcomic!

    Symbols are all around us whether we realize it or not and they all have a special meaning for everyone who sees them. They could be something as innocuous as the "S" logo on Superman's chest. Could that "S" stand for "Superman" or is it the Kryptonian symbol of hope? It's hard to say because many writers have interpreted and reinterpreted the Man of Steel's logo for almost a century. On the genealogy front, we've seen symbols in places like cemeteries or on buildings. Symbols are everywhere. But, by far the most important symbol everyone should keep in mind is a large copper statue standing in New York Harbor. I am of course talking about the Statue of Liberty.

"She's tough. She's
a harbor chick!"

    In the early 20th century, the statue was the first thing many immigrants saw when they arrived in New York from all corners of the globe. She is and remains to this day a symbol of hope, freedom and democracy. The statue assured all immigrants that they'd be safe in the new land they eventually called home.

    She was designed by French sculptor and painter Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi and gifted to the United States during the 1880s to serve as a memorial for their independence. After all, the French did play a huge role in the American Revolution just a century earlier. The quest to give the Americans the gift initially started in the 1860s and really got off the ground once the nation abolished slavery.

    Lady Liberty's design itself was based on similar statues like the Statue of Freedom, which sits atop of the Capitol rotunda in Washington D.C. Bartholdi wanted to simplify the design a bit and he even gave her the face of his mother, Augusta Charlotte Beysser Bartholdi. Huh. I always wondered where that face came from!

     In the following years, the statue's purpose grew much larger than Bartholdi and many of his contemporaries could have ever imagined.

    It goes without saying that since her introduction millions upon millions of immigrants saw the statue on their way to Ellis Island. We've seen representations of that moment where immigrants have seen the statue in countless movies, television shows and more. While the imagery is powerful. Can you imagine what the real immigrants must have felt when they saw that symbol of liberty for the first time?

Giuseppe and Clementina

    My great-grandparents, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione first saw Lady Liberty herself when they arrived in New York with their daughter Jenny in the 1910s. Jenny passed away when I was very young. I never got the chance to ask her what it was like to sail into the harbor and see the statue for the very first time.

    However, I did hear from second-hand sources about the event itself from a very, very reliable source---My grandma Ollie.  She told me that her parents left their home in Gesualdo due to the poor living conditions there. They wanted to make a better life for themselves and their new family. When they saw the statue for the first time, it was a new beginning for them. It was then that they decided they wouldn't be going back to Italy because America was their home.

    Looking back, that's a statement many immigrants make and in the Carrabs' case, they had no reason to go back to Italy since Giuseppe's brothers and sisters settled in Melrose and Everett and Clementina's brother followed her to Haverhill. Of course, I've also been told that Clementina just didn't want to travel again. I can't say that I blame her. The accommodations on those ships were not the best.

    Now we know that the statue of liberty was a symbol of a new beginning and hope in America and is a vision shared by many immigrants. What does it mean to immigrants who went back and forth from their homeland many times?

La famiglia di Ferraiolo

    My great-grandfather Vincenzo famously traveled to and from America several times over the course of his life. When he first saw the statue in the early 1910s, I'm sure he saw it as a symbol of hope and freedom like my other Italian great-grandparents did. The only difference was he decided to go back to his hometown several times and on one of those journeys he married Maria Tedesco, my great-grandmother.

    When Maria saw the statue for herself in 1929, she must have felt she had come home. Granted, she was wrestling with two small children at the time and no husband in sight, But, she still must have had a real sense of coming home and a bright future coming for her family on the horizon.

    In Vincenzo and Maria's case, I think America ended up being like a second home to them. Granted they had family in America like the Carrabs. They still had family all around the world. For them, the symbol of liberty was likely just as strong. However, they still had strong ties to their homeland.

    
    Despite having different stories, both sets of Italian great-grandparents clearly saw the statue as a symbol of hope, opportunity and prosperity for themselves and their young families. It is sentiment that's still shared by immigrants today. Granted, no one sails to Ellis Island like my ancestors did these days. Still, the statue has became larger than life and has been seen around the world as a symbol of hope and freedom for everyone and not just Americans.

    Somehow I doubt Bartholdi ever saw that coming for his statue. The world changed so much since his time and now his statue still stands in New York Harbor welcoming the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The statue is a symbol of the melting pot America became and is a symbol of hope for everyone around the world.

See you next time.

Lady Liberty is property of Starbolt Productions. Art by the talented Faeore Grasha.

Statute of Liberty picture: By AskALotl - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149005856