My Lebanese Father and Mother's Immigration

By Sophia Baldwin

In 1910, seventeen-year-old Elias immigrated to America to find a job and send aid to his Lebanese village. Elias left Tripoli, Syria (later named Lebanon) with nothing but the clothes on his back and a bandoleer containing a coat and blanket slung over his shoulder.
In New York City, Elias collapsed on a muddy street with influenza. A Presbyterian Mission doctor found his fevered body and used a chest tube to save his life.
Later, a Greek Orthodox priest placed an addressed placard on father’s shirt and mailed him on a Union Pacific train to a Lebanese philanthropist in Omaha, Nebraska.
In 1920, Elias sent for his sixteen-year-old cousin, Mary, and his twenty-year-old brother, George, to come to America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sophia Baldwin
• Release date: Aug 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310908613

Sophia Baldwin

Sophia and Lewis were married for 47 years before Lewis died of pancreatic cancer. They are the parents of two sons and one daughter. They are grandparents of four grandsons and two granddaughters.Sophia keeps busy with writing, gardening, bridge, golf, and good friends. She enjoys visiting her children and grandchildren in Silverton, Colorado, Lexington, Kentucky, and Columbus, Indiana.

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My Lebanese Father and Mother’s Immigration

Sophia Baldwin

Copyright 2014 by Sophia Baldwin

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

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Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges the designer, Gail Nelson, and the editor, Sandy Lardinois, for their excellent assistance.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One – The Stonemasons

Chapter Two – Departure to America

Chapter Three – Ellis Island and New York City

Chapter Four – Go West, Elias, Go West

Chapter Five – Abraham and Omaha, Nebraska

Chapter Six – Elias Finds a New Home

Chapter Seven – Washing Dishes and Sweeping Floors

Chapter Eight – Elias Attends English Class at YMCA

Chapter Nine – World War I

Chapter Ten – The Peddler

Chapter Eleven – Elias Builds a Home

Chapter Twelve – Mary’s Journey to America

Chapter Thirteen – Mary and Elias’ Marriage

Prologue

I am life’s grateful pupil.

Youth has flown, age has grounded me,

filled me with appreciation for what

was and will be.

Life is a series of beginnings and

endings of receiving and giving.

Now is the time to let go.

Father wasn’t a warm demonstrative person. He couldn’t tell me about his collapse on a New York street or the chest tube that saved his life. Father couldn’t talk to me about the train ride that took him to Omaha, Nebraska with an addressed placard pinned to his shirt. But father enjoyed talking about his early immigration days in Nebraska with my husband because he and my husband enjoyed a mutual affection.

Two years before his death, father asked my husband to meet him in central Nebraska for a visit. So my husband and I and our two small children drove from Denver to Nebraska where we stayed with friends.

The day after we arrived in Nebraska my husband and father drove off to see father’s old friends. Father introduced my husband to elderly Lebanese families who purchased items from his peddler’s wagon — retired businessmen, bootleggers, railroad workers — all settlers of Nebraska in the early nineteen hundreds and friends of father for many years.

My husband ate dessert, drank coffee, and cried with father and his elderly friends as they recalled their difficulties in America and the pain of old age. Between visits, father told my husband about his immigration and near death in New York. My husband shared