Here is the Ellis Island record of my Great Grandmother, Marie Bertot Begus. She is record 19: 18 year old servant from ‘Sostany’ Slovenia which was part of Austria, entering the US on Nov 22, 1910 bound for Milwaukee. We can’t find any records of my Great Grandfather Martin Begus coming through Ellis Island. My mother says there are rumors that he came illegally through Canada. We know almost nothing about his background other than the fact that he left his family very young, maybe 11 or 12 years old. He became a successful business man and had a bar in Milwaukee. I’ve heard that he was a very hard man. I don’t think that he and Marie ever really got along. They married because a businessman needed a wife and her father wanted her to marry a Slovenian man. Not much of a start, but I’m thinking it wasn’t too uncommon for the time. When I wrote ‘Longing for Home’ I started with thinking what it might be like to marry a stranger. I don’t think my great-grandparents really ever loved each other and it makes me sad to think that they missed out on one of the great joys of life. I don’t know if people of their time expected love from marriage. Maybe it was an institution for stability, division of labor and children, but romance may have been a luxury. What do you think? Was love something sought after in marriages, or something we have added to the past?
I think that it probably depended on the individuals. People were still people, so I’m sure love happened. But marriage has only recently become about love more than convenience, and even so there are still arranged marriages around the world this day. I found your book to be a really good look at what it might be like to grow up in a culture where it is expected to serve the husband, and love is something that people hope will come with time rather than a pre-requisite.
My mother has more information and says that she thinks they did love each other, but that it was more about Great-grandma wanting to be taken care of than the romantic love we think of today. Perhaps because she left home so young to be a maid. Maybe my mother will say more about this story.
I was under the impression that the two married before leaving for the New World. If that is not true, do you know where, that is, in what city or town, they were married?
On the love question, I think there are many types and degrees of love. My own opinion is that, as Marie Bertot – my Grandmother – was very strong-willed as well, she would never have married anyone entirely because of circumstances or pressure.
Jim, Mom said that Marie Bertot and Martin Begus met when she was working at her father’s boarding house. She would clean his room last hoping to run into him and get to talk to him, so I guess there was some attraction there. Wasn’t her father’s boarding house in Cheyenne WY? Could they have been married there?
Lisa, this is the first I heard that she came over with family – her father, at least. I had assumed the two married in Slovenia and came over together.
Mom was born in Kemmerer, which is on the other end of WY, Cheyenne being on the eastern end. I have never heard of her (Gram) living in Cheyenne. Perhaps the boarding house was in Kemmerer and they married there.
This is interesting because Gram had boarders – roomers, we called them – when she lived alone on Layton Ave. in Milwaukee. In her case, I believe the roomer lived in the attic.
Southern Wyoming is beautiful country to me.
From what I know her father came first and made enough money for her passage. When he sent for Marie her mother had lost contact with her. Marie was working as a maid in Sarjavo. When Marie finally contacted her mother she decided to travel to America. She crossed by herself, then took the rail to WY to meet up with her father. Her father returned to Slovenia later because Marie had a brother with epilepsy who couldn’t immigrate and their mother wouldn’t leave him behind. Do you know the story about Aunt Catherine? I wish my mother would join this discussion as she knows more than me.
I hadn’t heard about the father. Fascinating!
By Sarjavo, do you mean Sarajevo (now the capital of Bosnia)? I knew she had gone to Zagreb…
I also knew Gram had been a maid, but I didn’t know the city. Do you know in what situation? In particular, was it in some official capacity, and by that I mean connected with the Hapsburgs as opposed to simply a wealthy household?
Who is Aunt Catherine? I’m wondering if it was the relative we used to call “Auntie.” I think the last name might have been Gradiznik (sounds Croatian). At any rate, I’d love to hear the story, so please oblige.
Oh, yes, tired eyes, it is Sarajevo. At least that is what I remember from mom. I”m hoping that she jumps in here, because she has more information than I do. I have no idea if she was connected with a particular family.
I also may have ‘Catherine’ wrong, but yes Auntie. So in Slovenia, and even here for a while, engaged couples would have sex to make sure that they would be able to have children as children were super important, probably for the work they could do. At any rate Marie’s father broke the rules a bit and got Auntie’s mom and Marie’s mom pregnant at the same time. He married Marie’s mom. So Auntie was related, but adults didn’t really talk to the children about how she was related.
Here’s the story as I know it:
Maria Bertot’s mother was pregnant by a man who had another girl-friend, also pregnant. Her mother refused to let her marry the man because she said he was a scoundrel, and mean as well. So she had her first daughter out of wedlock. I think that was Anna, but my sister Mary thinks it was Antonia, or the great-aunt we called “Antie.” I think Anna was older than Antonia, though, so that makes more sense. Later, Maria’s mother married another man, who always treated the first daughter as one of his own. He was the father of the rest of her children. That’s the story I got from my mother.
Because they were very poor, the girls left home early to work as maids in the homes of the wealthy. Maria went to Vienna to work when she was fourteen. She used to tell me about how beautiful Vienna was. At that time, Slovenia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so I assume it was usual for young people to find work in the large cities. I never heard that she worked in Sarajevo. She did tell me that she and a friend were planning to leave Vienna and go to Trieste to work, but then she got word that her father had booked her passage to America.
I never heard that she was estranged from her mother. She told me she said good-by to her mother and brother, and that the parish priest gave her a rosary when she left, and told her to pray her rosary every day.
Maria’s father came to America to work, making money to pay for passage for his daughters, including the first one. I have no idea where he worked or what he did. I think both Antonia and Anna were in America when Maria arrived. Because she spent the $20 she needed to enter, she had to be “quarantined” at Ellis Island while her father wired her more money. She said she didn’t understand that she would need the money to get off the island. She told me that the people in charge were kind to her, that she had a bed to sleep and meals to eat.
From New York, she went by rail to Wyoming, where her sister Antonia was. There she got a job working in a boarding house in Kemmerer. It’s quite probable that Antonia was working in the same place, or at least in the same city. I never heard that their father owned any property in the USA. I think it is unlikely that he did since he went back to Slovenia after his three daughters were established here. I do know there was a brother who could not come. Grandma (Maria) told me that because he had “fits,” he was not eligible for immigration, so her father went back and stayed there. What sort of “fits” was never explained.
I don’t know what sort of work Martin Begus was doing in Kemmerer, but he lived at the boarding house where Maria worked. She told me she used to clean his room last so that they would encounter each other when he came in to wash up for supper. They were both nice looking young people, from the same country, who spoke the same language, so I’m sure falling in love and deciding to marry was not difficult. When cleaning out my mother’s things, I did see the marriage certificate. Not sure where it is now.
I think the marriage was a successful one, certainly from the perspective of people in the early 20th century. Mary (as she called herself in America) was a hard-working partner in all of Martin’s business endeavors, as they traveled to Idaho, Nebraska and finally Wisconsin. Since Martin died when I was three, I have only a vague recollection of him. Of course, I would have no idea of their personal relationship since I was so young.
They both wanted very much to be “American,” so they decided to speak only English, even at home. My mother told me that they did speak Slovenian when they were discussing something they didn’t want her or her brother to know about. Consequently, neither of them learned Slovenian.
Sue, thanks for the gold mine of info about Gram.
I know Gram (and Mom) spent time in Kemmerer and Beatrice, but where were they in Idaho?
I think Mom had some proficiency in Slovenian. I distinctly remember her speaking Slovenian at times with Gram. I believe when Jenny came over as well.
Mom told me when Gram was in the hospital toward the end she (Gram) spoke exclusively Slovenian.
Also, do you know anything of the circumstances of Marie’s service in Vienna, which at the time was at the height of its glory as the Imperial capital and site of the Hapsburg Palace, of course (see my comments under the “Illegal alien?” heading on this blog)? Was she simply working in a home of the wealthy or was it some Hapsburg site?
That’s what you call covering your bets, I guess.
It also explains the strange chemistry between the two (Grandma Begus and Auntie) when they met.
Thanks, Lisa.
Thanks mom, that is the most I ever heard of great grandma, it is good to get the story straight.
Hi Lisa, Wow, this is wonderful that you have found her record of entry to Ellis Island. What an amazing piece of family history!!
Hi Emily, I know that your mother came from Mexico and that your dad is at least partly Choctaw, but is there anyone in your family who came through Ellis Island?