"Your Relative Immigrated to America for Religious Freedom"
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Carol Jo Menges said: I like that too!0
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A van Helsdingen said: How could FS know they immigrated for "religious freedom" and not for some other reason, e.g. seeking better economic conditions?
If the time, place and other details (e.g. Mayflower voyage) suggest religion may have been a factor, FS could suggest that the immigrant was perhaps seeking religious freedom, but otherwise this campaign is encouraging sloppy genealogy. You need a personal diary, obituary or history of the person's town of origin to be able to confidently say what their motives were. Otherwise it is just as assumption.0 -
Chris Marsh said: In the case of the ancestors mentioned, I am aware of enough of their stories to know that they did come for religious freedom.
My uncle wrote the history of my great-grandfather. He lived with him and his family,
and was told detailed stories of how they were persecuted by others while they worked to earn the funds to come to America. They had a comfortable life in Denmark until they chose to convert to a different religion.
The journals of a Welsh ancestor described the same type of experiences before they left Wales. They too had lived comfortably in Wales, but then began to experience serious persecution. I just had not before described it as seeking for religious freedom. But their lives have been documented well enough to indeed know that is why they came. I was grateful and touched to be reminded of that.0 -
Tom Huber said: Many immigrants immigrated to the Americas to escape persecution, which in most cases, was religious in nature. It impacted a large number of people, including my Swiss Mennonite ancestral lines. If you study history much, you'll find other groups that eventually arrived in America from other countries to which they had fled to escape religious persecution.
The FamilySearch Wiki is a good source for this information. Go to https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/... and open the pdf file that is stored there. It provides an outline for a class that deals with Religious migration and contains several links that can help determine if your ancestors were impacted by the religions of the time.0 -
ATP said: A Van Helsdingen, what you say is on target!
The best source for the motives and reasons for immigration to British Colonial American is the book, "Albion's Seed" by academic historian David Hackett Fischer detailing the 4 main waves of groups who colonized what became the United States.
The 4 waves were the Massachusetts Puritans in 1630s, the Virginia Cavaliers in 1640s, the Quakers in 1680s, and the Borderers, ie; Northern England and Southern Scotland from about 1720 up to the Revolution. This last group aka Scotch-Irish.
Only the Quakers allowed "religious freedom" for everyone. And, it was in the 1680s the later and very much smaller groups of non-Anglicans religious dissenters began to immigrate predominately to the Pennsylvania colony and the Delaware Valley and its sphere of influence.
From there various small religious dissenter groups began to branch out, mostly south from the back country of Pennsylvania into Virginia and the Carolinas and only under certain conditions mandated by the English leaders and churchmen, but mostly for those groups to act as a buffer between the Native Americans and the English seaboard population.
For any genealogist in the United States who has ancestors predating the American Revolution, it is a must reading in learning about the culture that influenced those various ancestors.0 -
TManning said: I had read today that BYU and FamilySearch were coordinating a project to tie a database of LDS people who sailed to America. They are busy trying the ship records to familysearch. Does this notification come from that project?0
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I'm noticing a problem with the algorithm that generates these notifications. I've received two of these, both for relatives born in the US in the 19th century who traveled to Europe and returned from Liverpool. It seems the algorithm is picking up any US-bound voyage rather than immigration records. Also of note is that both of them were Mormons returning from missionary work in Europe, one in 1851, one in 1906.
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Almost all of the records filed under "Immigration" (on all genealogy sites, not just FS) are actually more accurately categorized as records about "Travel". Given this fact, the campaign that started this thread and all projects like it need to be seriously re-thought, from the ground up. Or just not bothered with in the first place, as there are surely many much better uses of people's time and energy.
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yes - they are much more accurately described as travel. (which can include immigration),
BUT still - - I don think of as waste of time or energy - - though yes misleading at times as to what they are.
They are just one perspective in the view of an aspect of someone's life
they can be of value . . . just need to be seen in the context of what they really are - on a case by case basis - and cant just lazily be assumed to be "immigration" records - when they very well not be.
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