The Secrets They Kept: The True Story of a Mercy Killing that Shocked a Town and Shamed a Family by Suzanne Handler

Author:Suzanne Handler [Handler, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780988563919
Publisher: iLane Press
Published: 2013-01-13T22:00:00+00:00

The members of the first group (of immigrants who arrived in Galveston in July, 1907) were distributed among cities and communities throughout the western states and as far north as Fargo, North Dakota. The main territory to which the bureau directed immigrants was between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. . . . Recruiters stipulated that immigrants should be able-bodied laborers and skilled workers under the age of forty. . . . In 1909 a total of 773 immigrants arrived in Galveston, and the following year 2,500 had sailed to the port. In 1911 (the year my grandfather emigrated) some 1,400 arrived, only 2 percent of the total Jewish immigration to the United States in that year. . . . Between 1907 and 1914, when it ceased operation, the Jewish Immigrants’ Information Bureau brought 10,000 immigrants through Galveston, approximately one-third of those who migrated to the Holy Land during the same period.

It is unknown how or why my grandfather chose to begin his new life in Omaha, Nebraska. Perhaps it chose him. Considering Sam Levin was most likely penniless and alone in the world, he probably arrived by train under the guidance of one of the Jewish agencies responsible for immigrant placement. Omaha would have made sense under the terms of The Galveston Movement, since its goal was to place newly arrived young men in the interior of the county. The following year, 1912, my grandmother came to America with her young daughter in tow and family life began in earnest. Two more children were subsequently born in Omaha, my mother and an older brother. With three children and a wife to care for, my grandfather worked for two years at Swift and Company as a meat packer and then for two more years with the Union Pacific Railroad. In 1915, learning free land was available in Wyoming via The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1907, the Levin family packed up and headed west. For the second time in his life, Sam Levin went in search of something better and never looked back.

Signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the original Homestead Act allowed individuals the opportunity to work, and eventually own, 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River. The requirements for ownership were few: the applicant had to be 21 or older, live on the homestead for five years, and demonstrate evidence of having made improvements to the land.

By the time my grandfather arrived in Granite Canon (Canyon), Wyoming to begin his new life as a homesteader, most of the prime farming land in the western states had already been claimed. To encourage people like my grandfather to take up homesteading on what was essentially dry land, suitable only for ranching, the U.S. government increased the available acreage to 640 per individual. For Sam Levin, a Jewish man denied the right to own land in his native country of Russia, the opportunity to own land in America must have been exhilarating.

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