ENGLAND
Sally Winston
Born July 18, 1918
Emigrated 1922, Age 3
Passage on the S.S. Cedric
She is the younger sister of Vera, and picks up the story of what became of them once they arrived in America through the eyes of a child. Sally, like Vera, never had children.
I only have one memory of the boat ride. Only one. I remember water, sitting on somebody's lap, and then the bare, bright lights of a lightbulb dangling near the bunk beds. I remember that bulb.
At Ellis Island, I remember this great big hall and people, and I remember somebody holding me and it just seemed like so many people. And I remember being frightened, like I wanted to get away someplace. That was the feeling I always remembered.
Then we got to the house. My mother's brother's house in South Orange, New Jersey. I don't remember how we got there. I just remember our sister Katherine coming to see us. And eating mashed potatoes. I loved mashed potatoes. Katherine would make a hole and put butter in it for me. I remember the sewing machine because to me it was such a big thing the way it was crated, but I don't know whatever happened to it.
The next thing I remember I was at St. Joseph’s Orphanage in Jersey City. I was first put in at St. Joseph’s with my sisters Mary and Margaret. [Margaret was there only temporarily, before becoming a domestic like her mother.] I remember it being a big dormitory, many beds. And I remember being taken care of by a nun named sister Ambrose. She was nice to me, but she was also wicked. I don’t imagine she was bad. She was just tough. She treated everybody tough, that I remember. To me she was like a force of vengeance. I stayed out of her way. I never got in her way because if you were wrong, that was it. I was also one of the youngest children ever there. I was kept away from the older children because I was young. I was about four years old. I remember this damn parrot that used to call me. It had my name down because I guess I used to play with it a lot. I remember being sick in the infirmary by myself. They used to being the parrot to keep me company.
We were taught to read. We were taught arithmetic. We were taught penmanship so we could have good handwriting. We were taught the regular schoolwork and given religious training. I made my first communion at St. Joseph’s. We didn’t wear a uniform, we wore a dress. Nothing fancy. Our hair was short to prevent lice. But if you had it, they put kerosene on your head to kill the damn things. I must have been seven at the time.
I did not see my sisters very much. We were kept separate. I used to run and try to sneak to Margaret, but I used to get pulled back and not allowed to go. My mother worked at the orphanage initially. She worked in the kitchen. I used to sneak in to see her. My mother would have to turn me around and send me back, because I wasn’t allowed to do that. It was very regimented. We got punished when there was something wrong, but I wasn’t beaten.
I was at St. Joseph’s until I was seven, and then I was taken out of there to live with my older sister, Kathleen. She lived on Thirteenth Street and Ninth Avenue in New York City. She was married and had a little girl, my niece, Frances. She had a house full of boarders, and she was the superintendent, her and her husband, Jim. The boarders were mostly her husband’s brothers from Ireland.
I remember vividly my mother’s sister, my aunt Maggie. I never liked her because she wasn’t nice to me. She tried to rule the roost, everything her way. She was kind of rough, but she would visit me when she had the day off. She’d take me on the Fifth Avenue double-decker bus. We’d go up to Grant’s Tomb and back. Every time she came we took the same ride, so I used to hide down in the cellar. My sister’s husband, Jim, used to follow me down to the cellar. He was kind to me. One time, I hid in the coal bin. He wanted to know why I was there. I says, “I don’t want to go on that bus ride again.”
I didn’t realize that I wasn’t born here until I was about twelve years old. And I got mad at the person that told me I wasn’t. He says, “You were born in Liverpool, England.” I said, “I was not! I’m an American.” He says, “You were born in Liverpool, England, Sally.” I said, “No, it can’t be.” So what do you do with a twelve-year-old kid when you tell her she wasn’t born in this country? I thought he was being mean. I had no memory of Liverpool. To me this was my country. This was my home. So I had no conception at that age. But finally I had to accept it, and realized that I wasn’t born here.
My older sisters had their lives. Vera and Margaret had to go their own way because of circumstances. They were eight to ten years older than me. It was circumstances that brought all this about. My mother wasn’t around that much. But to me, she was always a tall woman. She had white hair. Her hair was white as far back as I can remember. But she wasn’t communicative. She was stern in her own way. In later years she became a little more mellow, but I felt sorry for her. As I grew older I felt she was a very unhappy woman, because somewhere along the line her boat didn’t come in. She was not a happy woman.