This family history story is an excerpt from Hahns Move to America submitted by Steve Terry. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/LL3B-TM5
We are not native Americans; our ancestors came to America from some other place. They immigrated. They are first-generation heroes! Nowadays it is much harder to immigrate. We are blessed our ancestors came earlier.
Who came first?
On the Terry side, most families were here in the 1600s. Notable exceptions are: Isaac and Ann Newling Hunt, who came to America in 1853 to settle in Utah. Their budding romance was the subject of a Family History Story last year, Ann and Isaac’s Love Story, June 28, 2020. Isaac’s parents followed him but died in Kansas on their way to Utah in 1855. Thomas Moore, who came from Wales in 1831 or so. He is our Mormon Battalion and Hawaiian missionary ancestor.
On the Jeppson side, the earliest American immigrants were Jeppe and Ane Jensdatter Christensen and Sidsel Marie Jensdatter, all from Denmark about 1874, and Ernst Gottlob and Johanna Keil Hahn from Germany in 1890. The Hahns are our most recent immigrant ancestors.
What was it like?
Have you ever thought about what immigration must have been like? Think of what it would be like if you were to decide to move to China. You leave much of what you know about your native culture, language, and your profession or vocation. You leave your accomplishments and reputation. Your knowledge of making a house and home, putting food on the table, supplying clothes for your family, and getting along in everyday activities may not be useful in your new land. Most of the equipment used to make a living stay in the old country. You leave most of your dishes, houseful furniture and items, and clothes. You leave most of your extended family, particularly your parents and older family members. You must have money to travel. Maybe you saved it up. Maybe you sold your home, farm, or business. Sometimes money for passage was supplied by individual family members who went first and sent money back for you.
You need to figure out how to secure passage on a ship. Most immigrants had to supply their own food for the trip across the ocean – and deal with departure delays after foodstuffs were stowed. You have to acclimate to life aboard a ship, including how to survive seasickness and cramped quarters. Once landed, you need to pass customs inspections and perhaps a medical evaluation. If you have the wrong answers, you may get sent back to where you came from.
Once admitted to the country you figure out how to get to where you are going. You need to get on the right wagon, coach, barge, boat, or train and make the right connections between several of these means of travel and deal with last minute changes. If you are fortunate, you have the name and address of someone to seek out and a place to go. Sickness and accidents are ever present potential companions along the way.
Non-English speakers had a harder time than those who came from English speaking backgrounds. Even after learning English your accent will identify your former nation and you as a newcomer. You get to take your knowledge, interests, and skills and you will do the best you can. After a while you might get a letter informing you after the fact of a dear loved one’s sickness or death in the old country. There is not much to do about it given the available means of communication. You invested the entirety of your former prospects to leave there and come here. You bet it all!
Contrary to common myths, officials at the immigrant processing centers did not change the names. Immigrants would change their names themselves when they had arrived in the United States, and for a number of reasons. Someone might change their name in order to make it sound more American, to fit in with the local community, or simply because it was good for business. They changed names to make it more American sounding or more ethnically neutral sounding. Sometimes it was to simplify the spelling or follow the literal translation. Sometimes it was simply whimsical. Less often name changes were mistakes. If a name changed, most often it was the person who made the change. Researchers looked at the pay of this group of immigrants before and after the name change. What they found was that an immigrant could more than double their earnings potential by adopting a more local-sounding name. In usage, immigrants would often use their original foreign name within the family and their Americanized name for outsiders, public events, or on official documents. Immigrants face constant pressure to compromise their identities in the United States because they are often targeted and discriminated against due to their language, culture, race, and national origin. Many choose to adopt American names to fit in, but immigrants often feel further pressure to change their entire lifestyles: what they eat, how they dress, and how they speak as well. I believe these influences are still at work for modern immigrants.
Unfortunately, the Hahn surname died out after Gottlieb Christof’s only son, Austin Lavar Hahn, died of broncho pneumonia at age 6 months in 1920. This is the child mentioned in his mother’s letter to her brother and family, Anne Cecil Jeppson Hahn to Jeppe LeRoy Jeppson, May 21, 1920. Unbeknownst to anyone in the Jeppson family, my dad, William Adair Terry was born January 1, 1920 – during Austin’s short life.
– Steve Terry, consultant, Granite FamilySearch Center