August 8, 2018
We’ve covered various aspects of the Slovene diaspora on this site in the nine months since we launched, such as how ”Brazilian fever” led so many to South America in the late 19th century, how old traditions live on in new settings, as seen with Slovenska Pristava in Ohio, and how some with Slovene heritage return to their ancestral homes to find their roots and sometimes even settle here.
In this post we highlight a recent story from the Minnesota-based Star Tribune titled “How one woman journeyed from Slovenia to Iron Range — twice”. It tells of Margaretha Sevshek, a 25-year old Slovenian woman who, in 1915, set sail from the Netherlands and arrived in New York after an 11-day crossing, returning for the second time to the area known as Iron Range (Wikipedia), and specifically the community of Eveleth, to join her husband, who worked there as a miner.
Margaretha Sevshek wasn’t alone on that trip across the Atlantic, but travelled with a toddler son and one-year old daughter, a story that was eventually picked up by, as Curt Brown of the Star Tribune, notes “JoMarie Alexander, the Andover granddaughter of that year-old girl who crossed the ocean, and her uncle Bill Meglen, [who] spent 30 years researching family history to add flesh and soul to the tale.”
It’s an account of hardship and perseverance, one similar to countless others lived by those who made the crossing to start new lives in America, and you can read the whole thing here.
