As I walked off the boat full of dirty tired passengers, I realized I was just as dirty and tired of the rest of 'em. I followed my parents as they walked off the boat and onto the new world known as America.

America. What a word. It sounded so wild, so free. I couldn't imagine a more suitable home for a wild Irish girl like myself. Though, looking around the docks, I couldn't see how this was any different than the seaport I left on.

The poor were crowdin' around trying to get some coins. Families were looking for each other, hoping they weren't killed by the time and rot of the voyage. My own family didn't know anyone. My father's home was burnt in a terrible fire that happened the same year as a famine hit our home crops. Bad luck. As a believer in such things, he decided it was God's way of tellin' us to move on.

But now were we any better I wondered. Looking around again, I wondered how we would ever get on. I saw signs telling me to return to Ireland. Angry faces shoutin' as we made our way past the docks and into the city of Boston.

A stranger walked up to my father, and handed him a piece of paper with some pictures and wording on it. When I leaned in to get a better look, I saw that it had a notice on it for land out west.

Out west? There's nothing out there I thought! No poor, no dirt, and no people around for miles. Why, a girl could do anything she wanted there! I set my mind then and there to talk my father into not staying in this filthy city, but continuing our journey to the wilds of the American dream.