My Journey by Adelbert Heinrich

My father, mother and me were living happily out there in Germany although the Revolution of 1848 was equivalent to violent events. Our entire family instead immigrated to the U.S. before the revolution started. My Dad supported the revolution and one of his ideas was to have civilian liberties and adopt some lifestyles of American culture. After the Revolution's failure, my father came up with the idea of immigrating toward U.S. The major reason was that the family would have civilian liberties and he wanted a safer place for me to grow.


May 1848; I was 10 when my father came up with the idea of immigrating. The very next day we had prepared everything  already. Dad had prepared us mentally for the long journey we had to walk before catching the train. He told my mom and me that we had to walk about 6 hours to get to the parade that was located 1 mile before the F&N Tunnel, where we were going to get on the train. Since there were many guards through the streets my dad was planing to leave at 11:30pm and get at the parade around 5:30am. There we would get aboard on the train at 6am.

10:30pm; Already different kinds of emotions were passing through our minds. Hapiness, sadness, some little enourmous feelings of nerves and desesperation. We spend the day drinking alot of water and eating lots of meat to be strong enough to support the long journey.

11:30pm-5:30am; Our long journey started. It was a very very long trip to get out there. My feet were alredy swollen and I felt a disastrous pain through my whole body. This was because of all the mountains we had to climb and descend through the forest this way the guards were not going to catch us. Only at the end of the mountain there were a group of guards but, we had so much luck since a series of fights were about to happen permitting us to escape from their view. The last 30 minutes of the long trip my dad grabbed me on his shoulders and kept walking with me on his back.

{Caption: The train with us in it passed through this tunnel best known as the F&N Tunnel. Everyone screamed so that people could get completely inside the train to prevent any tragedy.}  


5:30-6:00am; Finally we had arrived to our destination. I can still remember the words of my dad when we were at the parade: "The worse part has come to an end, Thank God!" At that moment we all fainted from exhaustion, especially my mom who suffered from heart disease but thank God nothing worse happened to her.


6:00am- and so on; As my father said the bad part was over, the rest of the journey was aboard the train. Hundreds of people as well as us were aboard the train. Even though we were going to the same place, people had different reasons for immigrating to America. Some of them immigrated to get better job, to join with their family, to start a new life, to live safier and of course an easier one. Our lifes weren't at rsik anymore but still 3 individuals died while on the train. I still picture in my mind that old lady that marked my heart. She was 85 and was immigrating  to die in America as she said. She wasn't proud of her homeland and her dream was to die in America. Poor lady who died from starvation 15 minutes before arriving to the steam boat that was going to take us to America. Soon we were on the boat and when I closed and opened my eyes the Dreamed land was in front of my eyes.


July 1848: Although before opening my eyes two months had passed. Two months full of agony. So many things happened I though would happened to me. We faced two storms one after another and over 50 people who died from illnes. These men were thrown to the ocean and who could see the sharks playing with them. We were lucky to have the special tickets since my father could afford it. We were treated good and had special food, but instead I felt sorry for those who sleep on the bottom level of the ship. I had some fun sometimes playing marbles and learning different languages. Then we arrived to the Ellis island where we had no problems to continue. I also felt sorry for all those who were retained and treated badly.


December 1848: Some months had passed and we were already stablelize. The first thing we did was looking for the rest of the family on the "Miniature" towns. My dad immediately looked for a job and started sucessfully as the owner of a Liquor store and I was in charge of it too.


July 1854: 6 years passed. I had turned already into an almost man. Our lifes changed drastically. We  lived a better life full of hapiness and civilian liberties. During those years my father was already the owner of a chain of Liquor stores throughout the area. Sacrificing our bodies was the best thing we coud have do.