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Berbati Emigrants to the U.S.

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From Berbati to the U.S. in the early 20th century

EMIGRATION

The Berbati Emigrants

Over 180 immigration records for arrivals of Berbatiotes to the United States between 1902 and 1949 have been located in the archives of Ellis Island, the immigration station of the port of New York.

The overwhelming majority of Berbatiotes who emigrated to the U.S. in the early 20th century, were young men and boys who planned to return to their homeland with enough money to pay off family debts and provide marriage dowries for their daughters and sisters. Their savings were in most cases invested in Berbati where their families remained. During the early stages, the movement was not considered permanent.

Greek emigration was a male phenomenon and immigration records of only five women originating from Berbati have been located and verified so far. Three of them travelled to the U.S. with their newlywed husbands, fellow villagers, who had already established themselves in the U.S. and who had come back temporally to the village to take a bride. The fourth emigrated accompanied by her brother to be married in the U.S. to a fellow Berbatiotis. And the fifth emigrated to the U.S. in 1949 at the age of 61, decades after her husband and two of her three children had immigrated to the U.S.

The first recorded group of 15 Berbatiotes arrived on Ellis Island in March 1902, setting off a chain migration from Berbati. They had sailed from the French port of Boulogne-Sur-Mer on board the SS Maasdam and the SS Rotterdam of the Holland-America Line and arrived ten days apart in New York. The next group of 10 Berbatiotes boarded the SS Georgia of the Hamburg America Line in the port of Patras in October of that same year.

With few exceptions, the Berbatiotes travelled in groups. The biggest group of 20 Berbatiotes was recorded on board the SS Ryndam of the Holland-America line which sailed from Boulogne-Sur-Mer and arrived in New York on March 17, 1903. Another group of 16 Berbatiotes sailed into New York Bay in August 1910 on board SS La Bretagne of the French Line.

SS Maasdam was the first ocean liner to arrive with Berbatiotes emigrants on March 17, 1902
*Detroit Publishing Company photograph collection (Library of Congress)*

Statistics

Berbati Emigrants in numbers

23

Average Age

14%

Under 18 years old

2%

Females

5%

Deported at Ellis Island

EMIGRATION

Ports of Embarkation

Only one in two Berbati emigrants sailed to the U.S. from the Greek ports of Patras and Piraeus. The other half first traveled to a European port before crossing the Atlantic, with the French ports of Le Havre and Boulogne-Sur Mer being the most important embarkation ports followed by Naples, Italy, and Cherbourg, France.

In the first decade of the 20^th century (1902-1907), the Greek ports of Patras and Piraeus were only served by ocean liners of the Hamburg-America Line, who sailed the route between Odesa and New York via Constantinople, Smyrna, Piraeus and Patras.

However, transporting emigrants to America was big business and all the major European Steamship companies had extensive networks of ticket agencies in the eastern European countries and Greece, who worked diligently to attract business. Moreover, relatives already in America also purchased pre-paid tickets for their relatives or friends.

There is no documentation on how exactly the Berbatiotes traveled from Greece to the major French ports that serviced the migrant trade, but it can be safely assumed that their journey to these French ports went first by steamship, to transit stations of France or Italy, and then by railway and was long, arduous, uncomfortable and uncertain.

It was only after vessels of the Austrian “Austro-Americana” Line started to serve directly the port of Patras and Greek Steamship companies were founded in 1908, launching the first Greek ocean liners like the SS Moraitis (later SS Themistocles), SS Athinai and SS Patris, that the Berbatiotes opted for the direct sailing route between Piraeus and New York via the ports of Kalamata and Patras.

French Ocean Liner in the port of Le Havre

EMIGRATION

Final Destination Chicago

The final destination of the first Berbati emigrants within the United States was Chicago, Illinois. Chicago stood at the centre of American rail, lake and river traffic. By the early 1900s, Industrialization had turned Chicago into a manufacturing metropolis of heavy industries, including iron and steel, garment manufacturing, agricultural and electrical machinery manufacturing, commercial printing, railroading, and meat packing. The promise of employment in these industries drew immigrants en masse.

Since the 1890’s, Chicago had become the terminus for the majority of Greek immigrants to the United States and housed the largest Greek settlement in the nation until WWII. As relatives and fellow villagers sponsored others to come over to the US, an astonishingly large percentage of Greeks in Chicago hailed from the same villages in the Peloponnesus.

The Greeks clustered together in boarding houses in the delta formed by Harrison, Halsted and Blue Island Streets. Halsted Street was considered the “backbone of Chicago”, a “cosmopolitan highway” of the greatest manufacturing and industrial district in the world, where “worthy immigrants were transformed into good American Business Men”(Chicago Tribune, April 9, 1911).

As can be see from many ship manifests, many Greeks and Berbatiotes resided around the neighborhood of 335 South Halsted Street where Chicago’s first social settlement, Hull House, was founded in 1889 by Jane Adams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of Chicago, Hull House, named after the house’s first owner, opened to serve recently arrived European immigrants.

The Hull House neighborhood was a mix of various ethnic groups that had immigrated to Chicago. Hull House’s main purpose was to provide social and educational opportunities for working class people, many of them immigrants, in order to face the challenges of urbanization and industrialized societies. The educated women of Hull House designed and implemented innovative programs that aimed to improve opportunities for the largely immigrant population, inspired and stimulated many social reforms that aimed at improving the conditions of immigrants and the impoverished and became an incubator of ideas where feminist pragmatism was jump started.

In the shadow of Hull House, the Greeks developed a seemingly self-contained ethnic enclave, with its web of church and school, fraternal lodges, shops and other businesses, along with restaurants and coffeehouses.

For 60% of the Berbati emigrants, the Near West Side of Chicago was the destination address where their relative or friend they were supposed to join, resided.

Hull House at the crossroads of South Halsted and West Polk Street, around 1900
*Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois*

EMIGRATION

Berbati emigrants in the Pacific Northwest

The metropolitan area of Chicago would remain the primary destination hub for Berbati emigrants throughout the emigration wave of the early 20^th century. However, as from 1906 many newcomers would also head for destinations in the Pacific Northwest especially Portland and Spokane, indicating a shift in the location of some of the already immigrated relatives and friends who had moved away from Chicago.

In 1905, Portland, a city of around 120.000 people, had successfully staged the “Lewis and Clark Centennial and American Pacific Exposition and Oriental Fair”, with the purpose to boost the regional economy and attract investment and immigration and to demonstrate that it could mount a major civic enterprise. Following the fair, many people moved to Portland.

Berbati_Emigration_Portland_1900_1200x900 — Portland around 1900

Railroad companies had also largely contributed to the boost of the Pacific Northwest, by building or expanding towns, where it best profited them and by becoming the largest landowners in the region and wielding enormous influence on the distribution and utilization of land. They distributed millions of flyers and pamphlets to advertise the area, not only in the eastern states but in Europe as well, encouraging emigration to the Northwest.

Railroads had also contributed to the growth of the lumber industry in many ways. They were enormous consumers of wood products themselves for railroad ties, bridges, stations fences and fuel. Railways had enabled loggers to penetrate deeper into the forests by providing access to many more trees and at the same time they lowered the cost of transporting logs out of the forests to mills, and from mills to the eastern states. Moreover, they imported more machinery and more people than ever before, and put them to work in the timber industry.

In turn, the new settlers stimulated a building boom that depended on more lumber. A 1910 study by the U.S. Bureau of Corporations found that 63 percent of the state of Washington’s wageworkers depended directly or indirectly on the timber industry for jobs.

Many Berbatiotes already living in the U.S. moved from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, as many of them were railroad workers or sought new opportunities. Their relatives and friends from Berbati followed them. They worked in lumber mills, dug trenches for water lines, and laid railroad tracks. Later they focused on becoming entrepreneurs, mainly fruit and vegetable peddlers and shoe shiners, and they also entered the candy, and restaurant business.

Final Destinations at a glance

Final Destinations of the Berbatiotes who emigrated to the U.S.

65%

Illinois

20%

Pacific Northwest

9%

Los Angeles, CA

6%

Others/Unknown

Emigration to the U.S. in the Early 20th Century

Tales of Emigration

The first documented group from Berbati to arrive in New York was on March 17, 1902 aboard the SS Maasdam. The ship was part of the Holland-America Line and had departed on March 3, 1902, from Boulogne-sur-Mer which is located on the French coast on the English Channel between Calais and Normandy.

DISCOVER. EMIGRATION.

Berbati Emigrants to the U.S.

From Berbati to the U.S. in the early 20th century

The Berbati Emigrants

Ports of Embarkation

Final Destination Chicago

Berbatiotes in the Pacific Northwest

The Berbati Emigrants

Statistics

23

14%

2%

5%

Ports of Embarkation

Final Destination Chicago

Berbati emigrants in the Pacific Northwest

Final Destinations at a glance

65%

20%

9%

6%

Emigration to the U.S. in the Early 20th Century

Tales of Emigration