Immigrants: Who Founded and Fostered an Early Nation

By Ghazi Rayan MD

A unique and entertaining collection of biographies of the many first-generation immigrant Americans who made major contributions that were crucial for building America, its military, judicial and financial systems, and sustaining our country's economy and prosperity. Readers are introduced to over 200 renowned immigrants, of whom more than half

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Oct 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781685150280

Ghazi Rayan MD

Ghazi Rayan is a first-generation immigrant American, a clinical professor of orthopedic surgery, and practiced as an orthopedic upper extremity hand surgeon in Oklahoma City. He established the first hand surgery fellowship in Oklahoma. Ghazi devoted most of his professional career serving his community, providing remedial care to his patients along with offering scientific knowledge in the form of research and teaching to medical students, residents and fellows. He is past president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand and the recipient of several honors and awards. Ghazi gave over 300, regional, national and inter-national scientific presentations. He is the author of nine academic books, and written over 40 book chapters and more than 200 scientific articles and editorials in peer-reviewed journals. He coauthored nonfiction titled Trilogy of Perseverance and Friendship in the Golden Years and his last nonfiction was Immigrants who Founded and Fostered an Early Nation (2021). Ghazi and his wife live in Oklahoma City and relish the company of their three grandchildren. He continues serving his community and devoted to biking, reading and writing. More about Ghazi's background and journey through medicine are chronicled in the last chapter of this book.

Book preview

Preface

Since the dawn of human history, primordial communities have moved and settled from one location to another in search of more habitable or fertile lands. Paleolithic East Asians embarked upon lengthy voyages across the frozen Arctic, eventually spreading south across North America's plains and woodlands to reach and populate South America. Explorers risked and lost their lives sailing uncharted seas in search of new passageways to continents unknown.

And so it was that Europeans too landed on American shores some five hundred years ago and settled in this New World, cultivating the land and subsequently transforming those pastoral terrains into villages, towns, and some of the most sprawling cities known to human history. And since the first moment, these colonies were named the United States, they would earn a unique reputation which brought immigrants flocking from every corner of the globe to this new land of opportunity.

From the 1860s, networks of factories and railroads began to crisscross between cities across the country, while the Erie Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. The demand for labor during the Industrial Revolution generated new prospects for unschooled immigrant workers who would then toil in its sweatshops and on its railroads, its highways, and canals. The technological revolution would later beckon to the highly skilled: engineers, inventors, intellectuals, physicians, scientists, and thinkers. America thus became a great melting pot, a heterogeneous mosaic of ethnicities and a country whose immigrants immeasurably enriched this new society; a nation that would leave an indelible mark on so many areas of human civilization, culture, and thought.

On a summer day in 1958, I glimpsed the distant American aircraft carrier, USS Essex, as it was docking just offshore from the city of Beirut, Lebanon; a country at that time plagued by warfare that rocked the nation and shocked the entire Middle East. I wondered how far this ship had traveled. I thought of that America where my eldest brother had enrolled in college. Raised in a war-torn country, I was a child with uncertain future prospects. After high school and a college education, I would eventually leave my family for Alexandria in Egypt and enroll in medical school. In search of a better quality of medical training, and with a heartfelt desire to fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a surgeon, I decided to pursue a surgical residency abroad.

The year 1975 marked the beginning of the Civil War in Lebanon, a country that offered no meaningful educational opportunities in advanced surgery or formal residencies. So, with the help of my brother, I applied for a permanent visa to the United States, rather than a temporary stay which might risk my training being interrupted. After passing two examinations, an English language exam and another for foreign medical graduates, I received an interview in late June of that year with an official at the US Embassy in Beirut. I handed over a large thick sealed manila envelope with all my immigration documents. The man opposite me gave me a warm handshake, before announcing: Doctor, congratulations! We are happy to have you as a future citizen of the United States of America. I left the embassy bursting with joy, pride, a sense of belonging, and auspicious hopes for the future. I arrived at JFK airport on the 4th of July in 1975 and, contrary to what I had been told, found New Yorkers to be very friendly. That day they had parades in the streets that I somehow thought might be a celebration and welcome for my arrival to the United States!

Volunteering for various surgical organizations for the last 25 years would consume most of my time as I went on to build my medical career. When I finally concluded my commitment as the president of my surgical subspecialty in 2017, I was finally left with time for my own personal edification, beyond patient care, teaching, and research.

As an immigrant American, I often mused upon the same questions: How many American immigrants like myself have made critical contributions to this nation's institutions and constitution? What notions and initiatives have they provided that favorably changed the course of this country's history? What would America be today without its immigrants?

During this transition in my professional career, I came to believe it was time for me to seek out some answers to these nagging questions. At first, it was merely a point of curiosity; I had no intention of writing an article, let alone a full book on the subject. My intuition was that there must be dozens of books already written on this topic. But I was wrong.

Andrew Carnage, Albert Einstein, Joseph Pulitzer, Nicola Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, Isaac Asimov, Khalil Gibran, John James Audubon, John Muir, I. M. Pei, Henri Duchamp, Levi Strauss, James Kraft, Karl Pfizer, Albert Sabin, William Mayo. These are only a small handful of the individuals who have helped shape the course of US and world history. Who else lies beyond?

I began searching, researching; and it gradually became clear that the sheer number of those who arrived on these shores only to enact transformative and permanent change is simply staggering. The more I probed, the more I encountered a deluge of material; I unearthed the names of men and women who gifted a plethora of ideas and innovations. Their endeavors span the full spectrum of disciplines: architecture, business, economy, education, environment, journalism, literature, medicine, visual arts, and many more. The list kept mounting with every inquiry, to the point where I had literally amassed several hundred names and entries. At this point, I decided it was important to share this information with my readers. However, it became obvious that my project falls squarely into the category of a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal); compiling the entirety of this material into one publication would be akin to authoring an encyclopedia. Therefore, I narrowed my efforts in this book to those early immigrants who featured prominently in the creation and development of America in its formative years.

I excavated data from a number of sources, though the two most valuable preliminary search tools for my inquiry were perhaps unsurprisingly Google and Wikipedia. And incidentally, let us not forget that Google's co-founder, Sergey Brin, was a Russian-American immigrant, while Wikipedia's co-founder, Jimmy Wales, was a British-American immigrant. Yahoo was another useful source on occasion, whose co-founder, Jerry Yang, was a Taiwanese-American immigrant. The Library of Congress and National Archives represented the second and ultimately most important phase for my study. Here I delved into the archives and articles, books, and websites of myriad organizations, governmental agencies, and university libraries. Since many of these individuals were posthumously researched, it was necessary to exhume information from memorials; the magnificent Find a Grave website was certainly not spared from my literary autopsy. All this to ensure an approximate degree of accuracy in the material gleaned for the purpose of this document. Lest we forget, History is nevertheless written by the victors, and significantly more information has been lost to the past than retained.

It might be very true, indeed, to say that the History we know today is but a fragment of the many myriad stories set to paper about our past. During the siege of Alexandria by Cleopatra's brother, Julius Caesar set fire to the harbor's ships and brought about a fire that engulfed the Great Library of Alexandria. About 40,000 papyrus scrolls were burned and an unquantifiable body of knowledge simply evaporated. The Germanic barbarians crossed the frozen Rhine river to ransack and burn the libraries of Rome, while Irish monks attempted to preserve some of the classic literature by secretly inscribing books into handwritten manuscripts. The European settlers of the American colonies attempted to eliminate all non-Christian beliefs and destroyed countless pre-Columbian written records. But even with those archives which have survived until our times, it is difficult to predict where adulteration has taken place. Historians are not immune from bias themselves, and as such, the historical accounts of the immigrants discussed in the chapters to follow are only as accurate as one may expect given the material left by those who wrote them before me.

This book largely deals with individuals who came from Europe to escape economic hardship, ethnic prosecution, political unrest, religious intolerance, famines, or even genocides. Many came during the American Revolution to fight for the new republic's independence; others arrived to save the Union during the Civil war. Some entrepreneurs came to create venture enterprises and search for better lives. Others came in pursuit of a new taste of freedom, the promise of liberty, to dwell in the City on the Hill. However, many non-Europeans are also included in this book who made their way, from Asia and Africa, to the United States to live the American dream, despite the exclusions and repressions they faced. Although you will find here the names of dozens of celebrated citizens, there are millions more who reached America and integrated into the fabric of its society, but were forgotten or lost to history.

The outcome of my investigation ultimately culminated in a cornucopia of biographies, telling inspiring stories of many very different Americans. These tales portray those immigrants’ early lives, emigrations from their countries, the struggles they endured, the resilience they displayed, the sacrifices they offered, and the successes they achieved. In the process, immigrants brought with them new cultures and cuisines, new information and ideas, new talents and technologies. They planted seeds of change that served the country and the common good. Their accomplishments not only helped their adoptive nation but benefited humanity and nations around the globe. Some passages about certain immigrants’ life stories are succinct due to the paucity of recorded information about them. This book, however, portrays the character of many immigrants, their ideals and their profiles. Most importantly, it exhibits another secret of their success, and that is the welcoming arms of America that would open the doors of opportunity to them.

Immigrants have an innate proclivity to work assiduously, accomplish, and excel. Great sovereigns have reigned countries that were not their native motherland. Napoleon Bonaparte was Italian and ruled France; Catherine the Great was German and governed Russia. Christopher Columbus was an Italian, who moved to Spain and made it his home before he made his voyages of discovery to the New World. Karl Marx was German but lived his life as a stateless immigrant in several countries, spending his final years in England.

The book you are about to read goes into extraordinary depth regarding the structure and restructuring of the financial, legal, military, and political fabric of the early republic. It explores the circumstances and times the immigrants experienced, influenced, and lived. It reveals the plight and brutality suffered by the Natives, it delves into the cruelty of enslavement endured by African immigrants, it notes the significance of women's suffrage, and it portrays the wrath of wars that early Americans faced with courage, fortitude, and forgiveness.

Examining the lives, the stories, and the times of prominent immigrants helps us understand our history; it helps us appreciate the true values of democracy, freedom, liberty and the promise of human rights that we enjoy and so often take for granted; it helps us embrace diversity; it helps us know what it means to be Americans.

CHAPTER 1

The Earliest Arrivals

In 1492, an Italian sailor in a Spanish caravel laid anchor on the island of Guanahani, in modern-day Bahamas; Christopher Columbus had discovered America… Only he was 13,000 years too late. We still know relatively little of the Eurasian wanderers who it appears were most likely first to cross the perilous Bering strait 40,000 years ago in the midst of the last ice age, chasing woolly mammoths and seeking a warmer climate. We have limited knowledge of these Natives who inhabited North America prior to Columbus’ arrival. But more records are available of the intrepid explorers who went on to discover the new plains, prairies, mountains, rivers, and waterways; and there is an enormous wealth of information recorded about the colonists who sailed those death-defying, trans-Atlantic voyages.

The following pages, however, aim to give a brief overview of the first evolutionary hubs of mankind, the mysteries and theories regarding early migrations across the arctic, and the arrival of those pre-Columbian cultures which will be detailed further in the next chapter. The original peoples of the Americas were the foremost owners of the land, they developed civilization upon civilization, whose foundations Europeans would later build upon (or destroy) by standing on the shoulders of their forebears. I tell their story as a reminder that this land is not and has never been the exclusive domain of the Anglo-Saxon.

First evolutionary hubs of mankind

Although primates existed in Africa 50 to 80 million years ago, ancient human history began probably around 7 million years back when human linage diverged from the last common chimpanzee ancestors, a population of apelike creatures that existed as long as 25 million years ago. Java Man fossil was discovered in Java Island in Indonesia and offers the earliest remnant of Homo erectus, which is believed to have existed 700,000 to one million years ago. Peking Man was discovered near Peking, today's Beijing, and provides us with another representation of Homo erectus, who probably existed around the same time as or shortly after Java Man.

Figure 1: Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. From the Osteology Museum Oklahoma City.

Approximately 500,000 years ago, two other upright biological species, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens (Fig 1), more advanced than the Java and Peking men, appeared outside the American continents. Acquiring an upright stance allowed walking on two feet and freed the hands to develop their dexterity, which paved the way for our brains to enlarge. The hand is an extension of the brain and the more intricate the evolution of our hand muscles, the more our neurons began to form, and the more complex the human brain became. Indeed, these two new species of human would prove to possess an intellect without parallel.

Neanderthals, names in reference to the Neander valley in Germany, lived in Eurasia from roughly 400,000 until about 40,000 years ago. Cro-Magnon people, a prehistoric race in Europe, lived 35,000 to 45,000 years ago and coexisted with Neanderthals for about 10,000 years. Bone remnants of this race were first discovered in a rock shelter in France on land owned by Magnon; ‘Cro’ itself means ‘hole,’ in reference to the shelter. This new species would prove more adept and better developed physically than their Neanderthal cousins. Using their talent and tools, they learned to solve problems and survive harsh conditions that would eventually extinguish their Neanderthal rivals. Sequencing the Neanderthal genome has shown that inbreeding happened between Neanderthals and modern humans. Inbreeding is also likely to have occurred between Neanderthal and Cro Magnon. In fact, the modern human genome still contains 1-3% Neanderthal DNA.

Another human species which would later become extinct was the Denisova hominins, named in reference to the Siberian Denisova Cave where the first specimen was found. This group was identified by mitochondrial DNA and confirmed by environmental DNA to probably have existed from 100,000 to 60,000 years ago. This group possibly made their exit between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago. There is evidence that they mated with Neanderthals and interbred with modern humans, as shown by the genome of certain populations in Australia and New Guinea who share 3-8% of their DNA with Denisovans. Yet, of all fifteen human species that have been so far identified, the last and most advanced are Homo sapiens.

Homo sapiens, Latin for wise man, evolved in Africa approximately 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, thriving and ultimately outliving all other human species. The closest living relatives to humans today are gorillas and chimpanzees. Homo sapiens initially lived mainly in natural shelters, such as snow or rock caves, and transitioned to making hideaways from tree branches. Later, they constructed huts from wood, or from mammoth bone and animal hide. They lived in groups and expanded by forming settlements. Around 55,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began to adventure beyond the African continent; arriving about 40,000 years ago in Asia and Europe. They finally made the journey to North America during the Pleistocene Epoch ice age by crossing the glacial Bering Bridge that existed during low tides and connected the Siberian reaches of Asia with the Alaskan region of North America. During the Holocene period of glacial retreat, the sea ice melted, the land bridge was submerged by the rising sea level, and oceans formed, separating the continents forever and leaving the new Asian migrants entrapped in North America.

Mysteries and theories about migrations across the arctic

A Swiss-born American geologist, Jean Agassiz (Fig 2), stunned the scientific community in 1837 when he announced the existence of Ice Ages. He also discovered that glaciers were moving rivers of ice, which he recognized when a hut that was built on a glacier had moved from its original place. It took another 140 years before his Ice Age theory was proven and more accurately substantiated by examining drilled ice cores which showed that the last 420,000 years saw four great cycles of climate change with cold and warm peaks. It was during this last cold peak that the Eurasians ventured to the North American continent.

Figure 2: Louis Agassiz was a Swiss-American pioneer in paleontology and glaciology.

There is a lack of consensus among archaeologists and anthropologists regarding the exact chronological arrival of those humans who first set foot in the Americas, but the most historically recognized is probably the Clovis theory. The Clovis theory suggests that roughly 14,000 years ago, just before the end of the ice age, a group of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers crossed from Asia to North America via the 1000 miles-wide Arctic land-bridge. These were believed to be the earliest immigrants to the American continents who spread throughout North and South America and became known as Paleo-Indians.

This was the most widely accepted theory until more recent discoveries refuted this account and suggested that the first Beringian land-bridge crossings took place much earlier than those of the Clovis Indians and possibly occurred in two waves: the first about 40,000 years ago, followed by a second wave about 19,000 years ago. Although it is plausible that the earliest travelers arrived more than 14,000 years ago, the precise timing of their arrival remains conjectural, but it is supported by DNA-dating methods. Using DNA sequencing became possible after the completion of The Human Genome Project in 2001 and allowed more accurate dating of archeological specimens than Radiocarbon dating. For example, DNA extracted from the skeleton of a teenage girl Naia which was found in 2007 in an underwater cave in Mexico dated back 13,000 years ago.

Those pre-Clovis pioneers were most likely pursuing big game when they happened upon the continent, following large migrating animals south of Beringia before finally settling in North America. Upon their arrival, they probably encountered and hunted wooly mammoth, mastodon, and caribou, along with other big game that roamed North America. These early arrivals had already survived the previous ice age in Asia before their arrival to the Americas, mainly due to their physical strength and stamina, but also thanks to the dexterity of their hands, and the growth of their brains.

This cognitive evolution, coupled with the survival skills that the Asian migrants brought with them to the Americas—their ability to use sticks, stones, and clubs—were quintessential to their survival and sustenance. Cooperative game-hunting campaigns provided them with food, as they developed the means for cutting meat. They used animal hide to make primitive clothing and bones to chip at flints or fashion primitive needles. The discovery of fire was a life-changing experience, a turning point for their welfare, and a source of power over animals. Fire was also necessary for warming caves and cooking. The breakthrough of producing fire was probably initiated by witnessing volcanic eruptions or lightning strikes which resulted in forest fires. Later, humans learned that fire could be produced by striking stones together. It is unclear when and how the earliest Americans made and used fire, but excavations of Monte Verde revealed the existence of fireplaces and fire ashes earlier than the Clovis people. It is possible that after the Beringian ice melted, some travelers ventured to America at different times through the North Pacific by different means, such as primitive boats, sleds, or by foot over partially melted ice. These would be the Eskimos whose ancestors were the last to arrive, but who chose not to move south; instead, they stayed near the North Pole and Alaska.

Those seminal Americans emigrated from Asia and wandered from Alaska southward across North American landscapes and woodlands all the way to the tip of South America, spreading their cultures and societies wide across their new world. There is uncertainty among scientists as to the patterns of their migrations in the Americas. When Clovis people first came into existence in North America, the earlier immigrants were already occupying South America. These were the very first American immigrants who changed the land and shaped history.

CHAPTER 2

Original Native American Inhabitants

How much do we truly know of the first settlers in the Americas? Thanks to archeological sites, we know something of their distribution across the continent. The artifacts they left behind also show us what kind of existence they led and the kind of sustenance they depended upon. The dwellings and structures they erected reveal their ingenuity and perseverance and some still remain standing today. Sadly, however, the Native American population declined severely following the arrival of the colonists, their culture was imperiled and later their populations were displaced by design and by cruelty.

Pre-Columbian Native Americans

Pre-Columbian Native Americans probably enjoyed around 30,000 years of cultural development in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans to the New World. Convincing archeological evidence suggests the existence of Pre-Clovis Indian occupants nearly 20,000 years ago in North and South America. There are hundreds of such archeological sites in North America, including sites in each State which offer clues regarding their livelihoods. In the early and mid-1970s, excavations commenced on the Meadowcroft Rock shelter, an archeological site in Washington County, Pennsylvania. The shelter is a 12-foot natural underground dwelling beneath the overhang of a sandstone cliff. Radiocarbon dating, using the Carbon-14 method, show it was probably inhabited around 16,000 years ago, though possibly as early as 19,000 years ago. This site is the earliest known inhabited area in the Americas and the longest continuous human occupation in North America. Excavations unearthed fire pits, human bone fragments, and tools, such as pottery, fluted points, biface axes, projectile points, and chipping debris.

Further evidence of the existence of pre-Clovis communities was found at the Monte Verde site in South-Central Chile. Radiocarbon dating of artifacts from these excavations revealed that they date back at least 13,000 years ago. Artifacts include stone tools, animal bones, wood boards, a human footprint, and remnants of several edible plants. Scientists now agree that Monte Verde pre-dates the Clovis sites by more than 1,000 years and is the oldest known area of human habitation in South America. Results from the Buttermilk Creek Complex, a site in east-central Texas, also pre-date the Clovis civilization by about 2,500 years.

Clovis and Folsom people

So who exactly were the Clovis people? And what was their relationship with the Folsom communities? We know that a well-organized Clovis culture existed 12,000 to 13,000 years ago and this is the earliest archeological documentation of any social gatherings in North America. Although the Clovis people may not be the first human inhabitants of the area, they are thought to be the ancestors of the majority of Native Americans and indigenous cultures of the Americas today. The city of Clovis borders Texas and is located 220 miles east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the 87-mile intermittent river, Blackwater Draw, is located 11 miles southwest of the Clovis.

The Blackwater Draw settlement is typical of the Clovis culture. This archeological site was first discovered in 1929 by Ridgley Whiteman of Clovis and excavations subsequently revealed bones and lithic materials such as spearheads, which became known as Clovis points. The Clovis people lived in camping areas and used these points for hunting. Several Clovis sites were also found across North America, Mexico, and Central America. Besides North America, Clovis points were also unearthed in the Northern part of the South American Continent. In 2008, a major Clovis reserve, called the Mahaffey Cache, was discovered in Boulder, Colorado, containing more than 80 Clovis stone tools.

A typical Clovis point is a distinctively ridged stone projectile that is symmetrically shaped with parallel or convex margins which often flake along the blade edge and whose base is usually concave. It was probably used as a hand ax to fit on a wooden baton or on the head of a spear to be thrown by hand. The Clovis tools have long been considered the Americas’ oldest technology. The tool-making capabilities of the Clovis Indians and the Clovis point technology were significant advances over the earlier immigrants to arrive in the Americas.

The Folsom site is another archeological location in North America, which hosted the Folsom complex and its culture and dates back to around 10,000 years ago. The site is located about eight miles west of Folsom village in northwestern New Mexico, which according to the 2010 census has a population of only 56 people. The Folsom site was excavated in 1926 and was discovered to have been a kill site for 23 bison that had been slaughtered using tools known as Folsom points. Folsom points are similar to Clovis points but shorter with different fluting and flaking patterns. The Folsom culture was quite possibly a derivative of the Clovis culture.