describes information about each of the family members you selected.

 Return to index

Student Section 1 Immigrants

Illustration courtesy of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

IMMIGRANTS

STUDENT SECTION ONE

"The disadvantage of people not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone people see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living." G. K. Chesterton

Part A

In this section you’ll encounter people who made a voyage from the Old World to the New in the year 1840. Please do not think of these people only as ancient history, but as people such as your family with the same kinds of wants and needs.

Stamp Design "Irish Immigration" Copyright 1999 U.S. Postal Service. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved

Please use the Excel spreadsheet file Immgrnt.xls (get the file from your teacher) and choose the sheet "The Alexina" or "The Oregon". Both are manifests (or lists) of all passengers who boarded the ships The Alexina and The Oregon at a foreign port in 1840. From looking at the manifests, what do you know about the people on the ships? Describe the people on one of these ships. What do you need to know? How can you use mathematics to find the answers? When you decide to do an analysis, make sure that you consider "Why is this particular analysis important?" and "Is this particular analysis reasonable?"

Describe your above findings in a product. The product could use graphs, charts, a PowerPoint presentation, a journal, a letter home from a person aboard the ship addressing these points, a skit, a series of paintings, a song, or other means approved by the instructor. Feel free to use the features of Excel such as the Sort Tool, AutoSum, Function Wizard and ChartWizard in order to help you do your analysis. Please open another Excel file to do your calculations on. You may copy and paste data from the immigrnt.xls file to your new Excel file.

Part B

Please choose one of the families from the ships’ manifests of The Alexina or the Oregon to "adopt" and to follow the fortunes and struggles for the next 10 years. Your family should include at least one child under the age of 12. Consider how many children are in the family, how old they are, how much money the family brought, and the skills they have to obtain employment. Bear in mind that "winning" is not the goal for this unit, and there is no penalty for selecting a family that will have some difficulty in the New World.

Draw a family relationship diagram (such as a family tree, for example) that describes information about each of the family members you selected.

 Return to index