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My name is Bartley, Bartley Butler and I’m going to tell why I’m here.

Everything started when I was a teenager and my natal country suffered the Great Hunger. My family and I lost everything we had but there was one thing that made us stay alive, the music. So we had two reasons to leave, first, we had no money and no home, and secondly, we had the hope to start a new life while doing what we loved. I remember the day we left Ireland in “the Promise”. We were so excited by this experience but when we entered in the boat we realised it was awful. We were crammed, everyone was pushing each other and we couldn’t breathe. When we landed, many people had died from the hunger and were thrown to the sea, everybody exited the boat while a security guard hurried us as animals. We entered in a huge hall and we were separated by doctors that looked for some abnormalities. And after a long upkeep, we finally passed on. We were so tired but so glad to have achieved our dream of freedom. I’ll always thanks my parents to have emigrated in the town of thousand possibilities.

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It All started back in 1887. My parents were killed by a disease. When I was seventeen. We were living in Sicily at the time nothing fancy just a bunch of sheep’s. When they died I decided there was nothing left for me. I didn’t wanted to live like my parents always struggling to reach the end of month. So I decided to sell everything and start a new live in America. I heard that people go there and they became successful. So I take the first ship to New York. I travelled in steerage. The travel was horrible a nasty and tiny cellar where we should live during weeks . The food seemed like made by a British .The first time I tasted it I vomited.

Not just it was disgusting food but the rations where insufficient many passengers starve to death during the trip thought I was tough going to at some point .But we finally made it felt like heaven when first see New York and the Statue of Liberty that was thy happiest moment in my live  . We where lead by the crew to Ellis Island for the papers checking and the medical test.

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November 24th, 1846

Dear diary,

I never realised how truly disgusting Irish people were, that is, until spending fourteen days on a boat with them, packed like sardines in a can.   The entire ship smelled of vomit and perspiration. Everybody’s faces taken over by a green hue, not a person in sight could have escaped the grisly reality of sea sickness. Finding a place to write had been exceptionally difficult, everywhere I turned were the same dirty people with the same sick faces. However, after a couple of days enough people were shoved out of my way to give me a little elbow room. Eric and the kids understood that I’ve always needed my alone time. Honestly, at that point nothing could have bothered us anymore. Everything was better than the starvation we left back in Ireland.

Today is the last day of this dreadful voyage and I can’t contain my excitement. I want nothing more than to call America my home. One of the crew members announced that we had an hour left before arrival and I can practically feel the people around me counting the seconds in their heads. However I’m not one to judge, if I wasn’t writing I’d surely be doing it too. Living in America will be amazing, nothing but paychecks and fully stocked pantries. I can already see the children running around our spacious new home with the subtle thrum of New York in the background.

My goodness! The ship just jerked forward, we’ve finally arrived! I’ll talk to you soon diary...

I couldn’t have been more wrong, there is nothing joyful about this horrid country! We took our first steps off the ship only to be herded together and put in endless inspection lines, waiting for the haughty doctors to decide whether or not we were worthy of being Americans. I felt like a cow in line at the slaughterhouse. Disappointment has started to seep into me, weighing my body down like an anchor. I’m starting to believe that this wasn’t the best of decisions; I have already started to regret moving to America.

Sandra and Anna

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The beginning of the end of my old life.

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The beginning of the end of my old life.

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It was in the XIX century. Our whole country, Ireland, was affected by the potato disease. We didn’t have good potatoes to sell, so we didn’t have food to feed ourselves. That’s why my family and I decided it was best for us to emigrate to the USA.

Our journey conditions were atrocious. The reason was because we traveled in steerage but the fun part was that I met a lot of kids from different countries like England and Germany.

I was always starving, we only had one meal a day and it was always the same thing, a small piece of meat and bread. Also, I had to sleep with my mom, which was not amazing.

One night, while I was sleeping, my mom woke me up and told me we were arriving to Ellis Island.

I was feeling tremendously anxious; I didn’t know where to go or what to do. We were herded, and they shouted at us as if we were animals. Even if I was a young girl, I could feel that it was very embarrassing.

Inspections were the worst. We had to wait long lines and answer a lot of questions about ourselves and I didn’t understand why I was asked. My dad was so upset that he decided to not answer the questions. We were also inspected by two doctors, and my whole family passed without any problems.

I was relieved because I knew I was going to have a better life and a new future.

Lourdes Burgos et Natalia Verzier

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In 1880 I was sixteen. I left my country, Germany, looking for a better future. My father had died years before, due to a mortal disease which almost had taken my mother to, but luckily she escaped. After that, she needed money to be able to support us, because she didn’t have good wages. I didn’t go to school because I was looking after my little sister.

One day I woke up on the boat, early than normal, and I left the steerage stage trying to find some groceries because my sister was hungry and terrified due to our landing. I sneak in first class, when suddenly I saw the statue of liberty. It was impressive and, at the same time, the feeling of our new freedom. I ran back to the steerage stage, and at this moment, the inspectors began to register us.

Alan Rodriguez et Eva Arroniz.

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A special emigrant diary

Day 1: My name is Patrick and I’m Irish. We took a boat and travelled to the great New-York but during the voyage we had to stop in other countries to take more people like my family and I. We boarded from an Irish coast. We decided to left because there, we had no food, no work, no land… no future. In New-York, we are searching a new life with better conditions.

Day 10: When we were at the 10th day and I wanted it to end soon. We went through the Atlantic Ocean to travel to the US. There the conditions were terrible because we were in steerage, even the meals! To have better food, we were eating the remains that had been eaten by the first class. The circumstances were that horrible that one night I went to sleep to the hen house, it was more comfortable and warm than where the others slept.

Day 15: Dear diary, yesterday we finally landed to the precious New-York. After the arrival and been controlled by the officials to look at our health and papers we were finally free. Our first glimpse of our new home was magic. I hope, he, we will be here for the longest time.

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THE VOYAGE

In 1936 when the civil spanish war started, I was 30 years old an I was alone with my little 7 years old brother, Álvaro, because our parents died beacuse of an illness. When the war broke out, the conditions began to be  horrible and very hard. So I decided to emigrate, to south america with my brother.

When we boarded, we thought that everything was going to be fine but the conditions were awfull. We were all cramped because unfortunately we were travelling in streerage. There was a lot of people, in terrible conditions, without medical attention. It was a very perilous voyage.

Álvaro and I  started to remember the sound of the bombs, the instability of the country beacause of Franco, there had been a lot of murders.

After 21 day travel we finally arrived, everything looked huge and colorfull from the ship, also there was a magnificient double rainbow.

But when the ship docked, we had numbered identity tags to the clothes and we were yelled by the officials.

After that we went throw some medical inspections  which had been controled by doctors, where they were some doctors who inspected our mental and physical healthy in our case we were in perfect conditions so we could continue calmly.

After we were being inspected by the police to have legal papers.

All these long process lasted  5 long hours.

But finally we found a new and better life in a beautiful house.

Noemie Anton and Beatriz Anton

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Dad told me, right before we went into the boat; it was the beginning of a better life... He had been offered a new job in New York City, much better to the one he used to have in Dublin. The huge ship that was going to get us there was terribly crowded with people from all around the world. As we went on steerage, the fourteen-day journey was quite uncomfortable. My siblings and I shared a double deck bunk and my parents slept in the one next to ours. I spent most of my time on deck, because I felt sea sick or maybe just because of the horrible food we were given. One morning we were woken up by strange noises coming from the deck. We quickly put on our clothes, and went up there. There it was, right in front of us, the famous Statue of Liberty. Seeing it made me feel relieved and thankful as it meant the start of the better future my father had promised me. Right as we landed, we were passed on to an enormous inspection hall, where we stood in a line for hours. When it got to my turn, an unfriendly doctor who run tests on me and then passed me to a second doctor who, with a swift movement, grabbed my eyelid, pulled it up and looked beneath it. He seemed satisfied and let me go and join my family. There began our new life and I had never felt so happy.

Anna Julià et Beatriz Martínez.