Creating Fiction from History: December 1, 2021

Understandably, Charlotte was proud to wear her new dress for the nice man holding the camera. It was her birthday trip after all!

She and her parents, Russian immigrants Andrei and Alina Semenov, moved to Chicago from Kazan, Russia. They had begun homesteading a small parcel of land just west of the big city about three years previous. Charlotte was used to hardship, so when she stepped onto the boat headed east, down the Volga to the North Sea, she was prepared for the long, arduous journey, even though she was not quite 10 years old.

When they finally landed, several months later, on the shores of the Promised Land (Liberty Island) after due process and several more months in The Big Apple, she and her parents were headed West on the Northern Pacific. Passing through the burgeoning metropolis that would be Chicagoland, the Semenovs settled a small tract of land near the city of Galena.

After several tries, Andrei found steady employment at the Vinegar Hill Mine, all the while, homesteading just outside the city. Alina and Charlotte did what they could, but the majority of the strong-back labor had to be left for Andrei. Time went by, as it tends to do, and the Semenovs found themselves living in a rather fine two-story on the outskirts of Galena. Charlotte, as an only child, found herself the focus of her parent's attention, so it was no real surprise when she was gifted with a steamboat ride aboard The Highland Mary.

To top it all off, she was allowed to wear her mother's wedding dress for the photograph you see here.