Ella Young - Immigration To The United States

Immigration To The United States

Young first came to the United States in the 1920s to visit friends, traveling to Connecticut to meet Mary Colum (Molly) and her husband, Irish poet Padraic Colum. In 1922, Celtic studies scholar William Whittingham Lyman Jr. left the University of California, Berkeley. Young was hired to fill the post in 1924 and she immigrated to the United States in 1925. According to Kevin Starr Young "had been briefly detained at Ellis Island as a probable mental case when the authorities learned that she believed in the existence of fairies, elves, and pixies." At the time, people suspected to have a mental illness were denied admission to the U.S.

While based in California, Young began speaking at various universities in 1925, first lecturing at Columbia University and then Smith College, Vassar College and Mills College. According to Norm Hammond,

Wherever she went, she was received enthusiastically, especially by the young people of America. They loved this white-haired lady with the eyes of a seer that appeared to be lighted from within. She spoke with a melodious voice; when she spoke everyone listened. She had a thin, wispy quality that made her appear as the apparition of the very spirits she described. Indeed, her skin had an almost translucent quality.

Young lived in Sausalito in the mid-1920s. She was the James D. Phelan Lecturer in Irish Myth and Lore at the University of California, Berkeley for approximately a decade.

As of 1931 she had not received legal immigration status, and Charles Erskine Scott Wood advised her to go to Victoria, British Columbia and restart the process toward American citizenship. Her application for re-entry to the U.S. was declined for months on the grounds that she might become a "public charge."