Migration & Immigration

This educator's guide is for the Home and Homelands Virtual Exhibition. It has four classroom activities to help teachers and students explore the stories of the diverse women featured in the exhibition. Students work with a range of primary sources. They will think critically about what home means to different people at different eras of American history.

Fort Ontario is a historic military installation located in Oswego, New York. From 1944 to 1946, it served as the only shelter in the United States for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust.

In popular imagination, women homesteaders are either passively following their husband westward or are breaking boundaries and gaining independence. Clara Campbell does not fit neatly into these archetypes. As a divorced mother, Clara moved to Idaho to try her hand at homesteading in dry, difficult conditions. The image of Clara in her log cabin applying perfume from a glass bottle captures the complexity women faced when making homes in the West.

John Muir's daughter was in love with trains. Suffering from illness, she was largely confined to home. where she diligently tracked the trains that passed through her family’s fruit ranch, yearning to understand how they worked. Helen proudly embraced her train obsession and understood it was not “proper” for a girl her age. In trains, she found an expansive world that broke free from both the limitations of her health and society’s gender roles.

Anna Pike Rosler, a Tsimshian woman, and her German immigrant husband built a farmhouse on San Juan Island in the 1890s. The farmhouse, and a stunning elm tree that Rosler planted next to it, have stood for over five generations, a testament to the enduring legacy created by the combination of two cultures and the love between Anna and Christopher. Anna’s unbending will kept the home and encompassing lands in the family.

In the late 1800s, as a young, unmarried Black woman, Alice Ballard homesteaded in the isolated Santa Monica Mountains on a plot that adjoined her father’s. For over twelve years she improved the rugged terrain and raised crops in the face of racial animus. Archeological fragments from the site provide tangible evidence of the diversity of people who made the Santa Monica Mountains home long before it became a national park.

"Homesteading" conjures up images of solo families making do in difficult times, but it was also about building community. Elizabeth Quigley Shell Bacon certainly faced hardship before settling in California’s Bear Valley. Over decades, her family grew along with a thriving rural farm community. Known for her hospitality, she welcomed outdoor enthusiasts who came to visit the fantastical rock spires in what would become Pinnacles National Park

The immigration interview of Ou Shee Eng provides an intimate window into the exclusionary governmental practices that Asian immigrant women experienced. Despite being treated poorly at the border, Ou Shee created a welcoming home within a thriving Chinese immigrant community in Seattle’s East Kong Yick building. Today, this building houses the Wing Luke Museum.

In 1840, Celiast Smith, a Clatsop woman, returned to her homeland at the mouth of the Columbia River after two decades. It was a moment of immense joy, as people rushed into the river to bring her ashore. Today, Celiast’s long and eventful life can be traced through three different objects: a shellfish basket speaks to her youth and homeland; a thimble represents her defiance against colonial structures; and a family plate captures her ongoing legacy among her descendants.

Born Margareeta Johanna Konttra Niiranen in Tornio, Finland, in 1861, Maggie Walz came to the United States at the age of twenty. After arriving in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, she took a job as a domestic servant for the Jacob Ojanpera family in Oskar, near Houghton. Walz had other aspirations, however.