Avi

word craft

blog

Immigrants or descendants of immigrants

Nev­er mind the intense debates about immi­gra­tion to the USA, unless you are a dece­dent of North America’s indige­nous peo­ples, we are ALL immi­grants or descen­dants of immi­grants. Even my wife — one among the mil­lions who can trace her fam­i­ly his­to­ry back to the Mayflower — fits with­in that cat­e­go­ry. But com­ing to the Amer­i­c­as has a very long history.

It was in the year 985 AD that Vikings came to North Amer­i­ca and estab­lished the first Euro­pean set­tle­ment in New­found­land. It does not appear to have been per­ma­nent and is known pri­mar­i­ly by some arche­o­log­i­cal evidence.

Five hun­dred years lat­er, in 1497, John Cabot, whose Venet­ian birth name was Gio­van­ni Caboto, sail­ing with a com­mis­sion by the Eng­lish King Hen­ry VII, set down two claimant flags, an Eng­lish flag, and a Venet­ian flag, also in New­found­land. But again no per­ma­nent set­tle­ment was created.

It’s gen­er­al­ly accept­ed that only in 1565, with the cre­ation of St. Augus­tine [Flori­da] the old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly occu­pied set­tle­ment of Euro­pean and African Amer­i­can ori­gin in the Unit­ed States came into being. That’s forty years or so before the Jamestown and Mass­a­chu­setts Eng­lish set­tle­ments were created.

That said, from the 16th cen­tu­ry on, immi­grants have been com­ing to what is now the USA. Mil­lions came, each with their own sto­ry. Most came vol­un­tar­i­ly, but there were many who came in chains — slaves and felons. It was in 1619 that the first slaves came to Vir­ginia, some twelve and a half mil­lion. A hun­dred years lat­er, in 1719, the Eng­lish gov­ern­ment began to use trans­porta­tion to the colonies as a legal pun­ish­ment for felons. It is esti­mat­ed that 50,000 of them were brought to the colonies of Vir­ginia and Maryland.

[My 2019 nov­el, The End of the World and Beyond, is about this aspect of Amer­i­can history]

It is said that in 1785 George Wash­ing­ton referred to New York City as “The seat of the Empire,” mean­ing the Amer­i­can Empire. He also spoke of the city as the “path­way to Empire.” Hence the city’s nick­name “Empire City.”

All of this sits as back­ground for my forth­com­ing mid­dle-grade nov­el, Lost in the Empire City. It’s an ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry sto­ry about an Ital­ian boy who immi­grates to Amer­i­ca only to be sep­a­rat­ed from his fam­i­ly upon arrival at Ellis Island. How he strug­gles to sur­vive and find that fam­i­ly in New York City is the essence of this adven­ture tale. It will be pub­lished on the 2024 Fall list by HarperCollins.

The cov­er art is by David Dean. You’re the first to see it. It’s not even up on the book­store sites yet.

Lost in the Empire City

1 thought on “Immigrants or descendants of immigrants”

  1. Thanks for the com­men­tary that is so spot on and so often ‘for­got­ten’ about our col­lec­tives his­to­ries in this nation, this land. I appre­ci­ate the les­son on where the word Empire came from when refer­ring to NYC . And best of all, thank you for anoth­er book to enlight­en your avid Avireaders!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Recent Posts