My life is a suburban one, a place filled with people like me, whose immigrant ancestors are long gone. This is the house I’ve lived in for almost thirty years; my wife and I bought it soon after marrying. It was built in 1880 and its style is called “gambrel roof colonial,” which I describe as barn-shaped. In a fluke of zoning, our house is tucked behind a bigger house and not on the main street. So, it’s not easy to get an unobstructed view of our place. I’d consider it a peaceful spot if it weren’t for the squads of lawn mowers, trimmers, and blowers attacking our neighborhood every day.
Our town—Winchester, Massachusetts—was founded in 1850. Before then, this land belonged to the Massachusetts tribe, and was later a part of neighboring towns. It is now an affluent place, the home of many professionals who work in and around Boston. I wouldn’t consider my own family affluent, however—unless compared to our immigrant ancestors. According to the Pew Research Center, we’re in the middle of the middle class for our area of the country.
Winchester, like a lot of Boston’s suburbs, is 82% white (numbers from 2018), but has a steady-growing population of Asian families (13%). Surprising to me, is that this prosperous town’s foreign-born population is 17.5%, leading me to believe that Winchester hosts a different kind of immigrant, one that didn’t start life in America at the bottom of the social ladder, like mine did generations ago.
Visiting the Relatives 