THE AMERICAN
STEAMSHIP COMPANY |
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Iron shipbuilding was
developing by colossal proportions upon the Delaware River
in the early 1870's. At the same time immigrants were needed
by the factories and coal mines of the new, post-Civil War
United States. Tying these two elements together was the
Pennsylvania Railroad, which saw opportunities to attract
transatlantic emigrant trade and once in Philadelphia to
transfer great numbers of immigrants by rail to the Midwest.
To move ahead with its plans, the Pennsylvania Railroad
created the American Steamship Company. William Cramp
& Sons
Ship and Engine Building Company of Philadelphia was
commissioned to build four ocean steamers for the newly
formed steamship line: the
Pennsylvania,
Ohio,
Indiana,
and
Illinois
-
named for the states through
which the Pennsylvania Railroad ran to Chicago.
In 1873, the American Line, as the American
Steamship Company was called, began service between
Liverpool and Philadelphia, employing both steam and sail.s
Almost immediately the advantages of the port of
Philadelphia and the American Line were praised in the
Hebrew press of Eastern Europe. The Pennsylvania Railroad
was touted - in
Hamagid
(The Preacher), a learned Hebrew journal
printed in Lyck, Eastern Prussia, but distributed throughout
the Pale of Settlement (the area in western Russian where
Jews lived) - as "the best and most reliable for emigrants
who are going to the American West."6
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Poster, American
Line in Liverpool, circa 1875.
Courtesy of the National Museums
&
Galleries on
Merseyside, Liverpool, England
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On any given day
the port of Philadelphia hummed with
trade, and the
spars and rigging of moored sailing vessels could be seen up and
down the Delaware River. For example, on Saturday, December 9,
1876, a total of 149 vessels were loading, unloading or in
ballast. In port that day were fourteen steamships, forty-four
barks, ten brigs, seventy-six schooners, and five other ships. The
Christian Street pier, where the ocean-going steamers of the
American Steamship Company were docked, and the emigrant wharf of
the Pennsylvania Railroad were contiguous, and cars of the
railroad could be backed down onto the wharf itself.
When the Russian pogroms erupted, the steamship service of the
American Line was well established with sailings twice a week
between Liverpool and Philadelphia. The first ship to arrive at
the port of Philadelphia carrying refugees from the pogroms was
the
Illinois.
Approximately two
weeks before its arrival, an Associated Press report was received,
stating that the steamer
Illinois,
with
three hundred Russian
refugees, had left Liverpool bound
for Philadelphia. German Jewry in Philadelphia secured an old
depot of the Pennsylvania Railroad at 32nd
&
Market Streets
to temporarily house the arriving strangers. It made arrangements
to clothe the immigrants, find them employment, and care for the
sick. The mayor of Philadelphia, Samuel G. King, was engaged in
the effort and he sought to tap the philanthropic and benevolent
nature of the citizenry. The Pennsylvania Railroad promised to
have a number of cars and a locomotive standing at the wharf
prepared to transport the immigrants to the depot. All was ready.
On Thursday afternoon, February 23, 1882, the steamer
Illinois
came to her moorings at the Christian Street pier, bringing 329
Jewish refugees from Odessa, Kiev, and Warsaw, the first refugees
to arrive at the port of Philadelphia after the pogroms. Making
their way from the steamer to the wharf, the immigrants were met
by Dr. 1. J. Ellinger of the Committee of Physicians. "During the
examination of their few effects the Jews formed in an irregular
line several ranks deep along the pier, and waited with exemplary
patience, though they felt the cold severely, throughout an
interval, the tediousness of which, especially the weary women,
many of them with babes in their arms, and the little children,
was greatly increased by an unexpected delay in the arrival of the
train that was to transport the party to West Philadelphia.'"
Eventually the immigrants were landed and cared for by the
Alliance.s
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