Cherokee County, Northwest Iowa | I have been doing a little reading of my family's history this winter. My grandmother and her sister immigrated to America from Ireland in 1913, and it looks like it cost them each $ 100 for passage (boat ride). They settled in Rhode Island with relatives for a while, then came to Iowa where their brother had settled 3 years earlier.
The brother in Iowa sent my great aunt the $100 for passage money, and she repaid him by "keeping house for him" for $3/week. No mention where my grandmother got her money.
I mentioned all this to a friend yesterday, who came from a German community 40 miles from here, he had heard the same figure of $100 for passage for the same era.
So I plugged $ 100 and 1913 into an inflation calculator, came up with $ 2,424 in 2016 dollars. I thought it would have been more.
My grandmother was 19 years old when she left Ireland, and did return to see her parents and her homeland 37 years later. quite a life. bruce. |
$ 100 passage Ireland to America in 1913
