This collection includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines. In selected cases, users will be able to hear the actual audio voices of the immigrants. The collection will be particularly useful to researchers, because much of the original material is difficult to find, poorly indexed, and unpublished; most bibliographies of the immigrant focus on secondary research; and few oral histories have been published.
Read through hundreds of transcribed interviews with immigrants who passed through Ellis Island in the early 20 th century. These first-hand accounts describe what life was like for these immigrants in their country of origin, family history, reasons for emigration, their journey to New York, processing at Ellis Island, and adjustment to life in the United States.
Read letters and diary entries of Chilean immigrants working as gold miners in California in the late 1840s.
In September and early October of 1889, Honoria Prendiville and Alicia Joseph Nolan made their way across the Atlantic on board the steamship Floridian. Nora and Alice's diaries record their adventures on an ocean path that took them on an unusual voyage through the West Indies and ending in New Orleans where they became Dominican Sisters.
