Hotel Texas
30 May 1912: 2426-2428 Mechanic (Avenue C): Long before Ellis Island in New York Harbor became the east coast’s primary port of entry in 1892, Galveston was an important port for immigrants entering the United States. By that time several hundred hundred thousand immigrants, many from Germany, had entered Galveston bound for farms across Texas and the Midwest where land was cheap and religious freedom was cherished. At first immigrants came across without regulation, but after the Civil War, concerns over importing illness with the ships resulted in passage of the Page Act in 1875. In addition to specifically banning all Chinese women from immigration over fears of importing cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women into west coast states, the act specified health restrictions upon entry. In Galveston incoming ships were inspected by physicians who quarantined all those with evidence of disease. On the canopy a small family of three is caught by the camera overseeing the events below. They might have been the resident proprietor of the hotel, Joseph Krizan (1868-1931), his wife Milady (1877-1920), and their son Victor (1903-1953), who would have been about 9 years old in 1912.
Sharing this address in 1910 was Frank Maseo whose Sicilian family would later construct an empire of gambling, smuggling and prostitution in the iconic Balinese Room nightclub, drawing to the island celebrities like Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, and many ordinary Americans who wanted to rub shoulders with the famous. |
The ethnicity of the arrivals here is difficult to gauge, but the 50,000 immigrants who came to Galveston between 1906 and 1914 included many Bohemians, Moravians, Galicians, Australians, Romanians, Swiss, English, Poles, Italians, Dutch, and some 10,000 Jews. This latter group was a part of the Galveston Movement locally guided by Rabbi Dr. Henry Cohen of the B’nai Israel Synagogue. Refugees from deadly pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe were desperate to flee the carnage, and the The Galveston Movement directed many away from the overcrowded eastern US cities beginning to protest the influx. Those who passed the tests were officially processed and their baggage inspected before they were free to enter the county. Hotel Texas pictured here seems to be a gathering spot for a photo-op before dispersing. The crowd seems to number less than 100 men, women, and children, and they paused here before their first steps into America. Carriages were ready to take some of the families out of the port, but some may have used their first dollars to stay at Hotel Texas, with perhaps some of the men pausing to celebrate at its saloon.
24 March 2019: Current tenants in the well-preserved building include Island Silver, a jewelry store, and Refresh Medi-Spa directed by Dr. Tara Wegryn. Still extant behind the old hotel to the right is the 5-story Clarke & Courts Building, once a printing and lithographic company, now converted in Strand Lofts. Designed by Nicolas J. Clayton, famed Galveston architect, in 1890 for business partners, Robert Post Clarke (1859-1945) and George N. Courts (1853-1917), the building was the tallest in town until 1900. |
|
Postmarked: 30 May 1912; Galveston, Texas Flag Cancel
Stamp: 1c Green Ben Franklin #374 To: David Lamley Blissfield, Mich Messsage: This is a pretty tough place. Will |
“Will” - William David Lamley - was writing his father back home in Blissfield, MI, expressing some reservations about the port city. He was at the time a 29 year old bachelor dentist living with his parents, perhaps traveling to Galveston on a leisure trip. His father David was an immigrant who had come to America as a 13-year old, and he might well have appreciated this postcard featuring immigration through Galveston. David’s parents, Gottlieb Laemmle and Dorothee Jane Ricker came to America on the ship Old England entering New York, NY on 8 August 1853 with son David, his brother Caleb Gottlieb (9), and sister Mary (4) from Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Very soon afterward they came to Blissfield, Lebanese County, MI where Gottlieb farmed for a living.
Will’s father had been in America for only 9 years when he volunteered as a 22 year old for a 3 year tour of service in Company B of the 18th Michigan Volunteers. The Civil War was a struggle over the issue of slavery which might not trouble recent German immigrants, yet he put himself forward into the conflict. The 18th served first in Kentucky, then south to Nashville, TN and on into Decatur in northern Alabama, and it was there on 24 June 1864 he was so badly wounded that his right hand had to be amputated. The unit was mustered out in Detroit, MI on 4 April 1865 and David returned to Blissfield and a farming life made more difficult by his disability. In 1873 he married Kathleen Schneider and began his family of 7 children: Charles George (1874), Elizabeth B. (1875-1877), Jennie Isabella (1879), William David (1883), Arthur Edward (1885), Hubert Alfred (1890). David provided for his family well, turning from farming to saloon-keeping by 1880, and by the end of the following 20 years he fashioned himself a “capitalist.” Three of his sons became medical practitioners: George and Arthur became doctors and Will became a dentist, his youngest son Hubert Alfred became one of Michigan’s best known landscape architects. His eldest son Charles labored for the railroad in Detroit, dying prematurely in 1911 at age 36, and his surviving daughter Jennie married Frank Lennox, a grocer in Blissfield. William remained single throughout his life, practicing his profession in Detroit (1918, 1920) and Blissfield (1930). He lived with his sister Jennie in 1930 and died there in Blissfield in 1935. He is buried in Pleasant View Cemetery near many members of his family: brother Charles G. Lamley (1874-1911), mother Katherine Schneider Lamley (1849-1914), sister Elizabeth Lamley (1875-1877), brother Dr. George H. Lamley (1877-1939), sister Jennie Isabella Lamley Lennox (1879-1974), brother Dr. Arthur Edward Lamley (1885-1948), brother Hubert Alfred Lamley (1890-1962). Other family members are buried in nearby Crane Cemetery: grandfather Gottlieb Lamley (1815-1903), grandmother Dorothy Jane Ricker Lamley (1817-1899), father David Lamley (1840-1921), |
