-
Period: to
Immigration Westward Expansion Timeline
-
The Move to the US
My name is Gunilla Axelsson. In 1861, my brothers wrote a letter to us in Sweden from America saying how great it was. They explained that they had gotten land and were about to start working. This caused my family to rethink about coming to America. We thought that this would be our only chance and we might as well take it. It would be an adventure, and we didnt have very much land at home anyway. -
Inspection at Ellis Island
We had made it to America! Now all we had to do was to wait in a line on Ellis Island. After almost seven hours my husband got called up. They asked him a huge amount of questions about where he was from, and what he was doing in America. My kids were called up and since they didn’t know any English, they didn’t know how to answer the questions. They were put in a separate room and we didn’t get to see them until one and a half weeks later.Oh how happy I was to see them! -
Transcontinental Railroad
Once we were out of Ellis Island, we hurried to Alabama, where my brothers had told us to go. Without hearing from my brothers for three years, we didn't know if we should continue to travel or not. Finally in November, a letter lay on our porch- it was Tim and Bjorn. It talked about the Transcontinental Railroad that was done and how they encouraged us to travel west. We didnt like the east coast becuase of how many people there were anyway. -
A New Home
Three years later we would finally reunite with my brothers. It had taken forever to find them in this big Country. We were all very happy to see them. They told their story about coming to America, and we told ours. They had found a place to work, Bjorn said, working for a company giving out land to immigrants. He told us he could get us land if we wanted some; put us first on the list. Thankfully we accepted the offer and we went on to pick out our land. -
Printing Business
We had finished building our home on a stretch of land by the water. We knew we had to get an income somehow so we all started thinking about what kind of business we could start. We finally figured out what to do- we were going to be printers. We quickly saved up money for a printing press that we put in our own home. Newspaper after newspaper, we printed - in both English and Swedish. -
A Bigger Business
After my husband had died in February, my son took over the printing business- I think it was time anyway. He had saved up money so he could eventually get us a new location and hire more workers for the business, so now seemed like a good time. We hired six men and got a house with four acres of land. We called it the Axel Printing Factory. Eventually we raised enough money to buy more printers, which sped up the process drastically.
