My Family Object Page

    My family object was a scarf. My grandmother came to America in the early 1900's by herself as a young girl. She foresaw the Communists taking over her homeland of Hungry and opted to leave for the United States. She told us that all the young girls worked and they all wore scarves on their heads to keep their hair out of the way and semi-clean. She told us that as women got older and no longer needed to work that they wore their scarves as shawls. The way you could tell if a girl or a woman was still working or if she had achieved a higher status was where she wore her scarf.

My grandmother had achieved many things in her life from first landing at Ellis Island and becoming domestic labor to owning several homes, rental properties, owning her own business and accumulating wealth through prudent savings techniques. She always had on a scarf to remind herself of where she came from and the hard work that she did to get to where she was.

Return to Diane Harnage's Home Page

Return to Migration Home Page