Up a Tree

 The recent discussions of current immigration policies and difficulties often prompted some people to trot out the now familiar phrase that titles this blog. This statement sometimes prompts the counter claim that we need to exclude indigenous Americans, who occupied the land when the first European settlers began arriving on our shores, dating all the way back to the Vikings. But if you go far enough back in human history, the likelihood is that none of the indigenous peoples of America, including those in the separated states of Alaska and Hawaii and those in American territories are actually from here. They just occupied the land for a lot longer than Europeans.  My paternal grandmother, Amalie, came here from Germany in 1912 and is the only one of my immediate ancestors with the documentation to show that.  What were the immigration laws of the time? What hoops did she have to jump through? Immigration in America is more of a journey than an event, though we can poin...

 I have no ties at all, that I know of , to the famous town of the Bard, but as I mentioned in my last post my maternal grandfather was probably born in Stratford, Ontario.  The town was founded in 1831 by William Sergeant and was originally called Little Thames. Some years  later the name changed to Stratford, and it was incorporated as a village in 1854. The river that flowed through it was called the Thames, but at some point the parts of the river flowing through the town was changed to the Avon.  I remember having a nurse from Canada and told her where my grandfather was born, noting that my mother had a habit of calling the town Stratford on Avon. She gave me a funny look, and I hastened to explain that, of course, I knew that would be the down in England. I guess she didn't know anymore than I did at the time about the town's having messed with the name of the river.  As would befit the town name, a Shakespeare festival began in 1953, with Sir Alec Guinne...