After Arrival

Immigrant stories have always been a source in interest to be because of this. Why did they come? What was it like to leave one country arrive in another never to return to their homeland? What happened to them after their arrival? Some of these answers I'll never know about my great-grandfather Peter. What I do know follows.

Peter (Pieter) Van Sabben arrived in America in 1911 at the age of 20. After arriving in American, Peter lived in Patterson, New Jersey. There he worked for the Rock Island Railroad. He was a machinist and worked very hard all his life. That's how he came to be in Northwood, Iowa; he followed the work with the Rail Road from New Jersey. They had a big facility in Manly. It had a turntable to turn the engines around. Peter was an immigrant who never became a naturalized citizen. He worked on the first steam engine. At the end of the depression he was offered the position but it was in Minneapolis. He'd go the Manly and catch a ride in the engine to Minneapolis where he stayed in a rooming house for a week and then come home for the weekend. Worked to get everything done around the farm and then head back. He brought home biked for my grandma and her siblings one time. My grandma remembered a time when Grandpa Peter came home and told the kids "If a cow get on the tracks, let it go." Evidentially, the train on his way home had almost hit a young girl when she tried to get the cow off the tracks.