Immigrants Are Human; I Am Too

My Great Great Grandmother’s Immigration Story

If, like me, you have European ancestry and live in the United States, then you have immigration stories in your family history. Discovering some of those stories has brought me closer to my family, and also given me a path to empathy with people who are experiencing their own immigration stories right now.

Here is the story of Maria Johanette Dielmann:

Once upon a time (in the early 1880s), there was a family composed of a couple with seven children ranging in age from an infant…