Mickey Mouse: A Tale of Migration

On November 18, 1928, Universal’s Colony Theatre at 1681 Broadway (near 53rd Street in Manhattan) showed a short animated film in which a mischievous rogue named Mickey Mouse takes Captain Pete’s steamboat on a joyride to impress Minnie – Steamboat Willie made cinema history and transformed Walt Disney’s fortunes.

Not only was it Mickey’s debut appearance, but this was also the first cartoon film to have a fully synchronized soundtrack.

At the beginning of 2024 copyright to these images has come to an end which means that members of the public can rework and use (or abuse) the earliest versions of Mickey and Minnie without permission or cost, although more modern versions of Mickey remain legally protected.

Another monumental event in Mickey’s history will be the forthcoming opening of the new Disney headquarters at 4 Hudson Square. West of Soho, this re-emerging neighborhood formerly supported New York City’s printing industry (between 1827 and 1829, it was home to the Freedom’s Journal, believed to be the first African-American newspaper in the United States).

The ten stories of the building will host offices, production studios, newsrooms, executive spaces, a screening room and outdoor terraces. In addition to the Disney Store at Time Square, Mickey Mouse will continue to be a major presence in Manhattan.

In light of these developments, it seems a timely moment to pause and direct attention to Mickey’s European ancestry and his long trek as a migrant.

Normandy & Lincolnshire

Isigny is a small seaside resort in Normandy close to the D-Day Landing Beaches of Utah to the west and Omaha to the east. The town has a long history and was once loyal to William I, Duke of Normandy.

Following the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066, William invaded England leading an army of Norman troops to victory over Anglo-Saxon forces at the Battle of Hastings. He became known as William the Conqueror.

The Conquest completed, William was crowned as the first Norman King of England and rallied around him his most trusted French and Flemish soldiers by awarding them estates for their efforts which, more often than not, were named after places in Normandy. Two warriors who benefitted from William’s generosity were Hugues Suhard and his son Robert who were given the title “Lords of Isigny.”

William created a Norman aristocracy, a feudal system in which land ownership was the path to power. He himself spent a good deal of his time in Normandy, delegating the rule of England to a governing elite.

Latin was the official language of law and religion, but French was the tongue of polite and commercial society. Only more than 300 years later with the accession of Henry IV in 1399, did the country have a Royal who spoke English as his first language.

The d’Isigny family (literally: from Isigny) settled on a grand estate in Lincolnshire. Over the years, the surname ‘d’Isigny’ was anglicized, becoming ‘D’Isney’ and then Disney. The village where they were Lords of the Manor was Norton Disney and named after them.

A charter of 1386 refers to the estate as Disnayland. The Disney dynasty remained in Lincolnshire up until the seventeenth century after which various members relocated, splitting the family into an English and an Irish branch.

Aware of his ancestry, Walt Disney first visited Normandy in 1918 after briefly serving in the Red Cross Ambulance Corps. Once the First World War was over he traveled to the coast, a trip that made a lasting impression.

The Isigny coat of arms inspired the creation of a family crest emblazoned above the gates to the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. Walt Disney inherited a sense of heroism, style and aristocracy from his Norman ancestors.

Ingatestone (Essex, England)

Ingatestone is an historical village on the former Essex Great Road (now A12) which has connected Colchester with London since Roman times. Today, in the gloomy aftermath of the Brexit debacle, it boasts the presence of a thriving Anglo European Secondary (High) School, proving that all is not lost since the insane self-harm of Brexit.

The Anglican St Edmund and St Mary Church is the community’s oldest building and dates back to Norman times.

It holds a memorial to Edgar Disney, the occupant of a large local manor house named The Hyde. How did the Disney name become associated with this estate?

Built in the early 1700s, the property was purchased in 1718 by Timothy Brand, a British political radical and dissenter. The Hyde was inherited by his son Thomas Brand-Hollis who re-designed and enlarged the house. He stored his vast collection of Antiquities there (now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).

Brand-Hollis was an intriguing character. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he sided with the revolutionary activity in Britain’s American colonies. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1782; he corresponded with Benjamin Franklin; and he had Thomas Jefferson’s “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom” which in 1786 disestablished the Church of England, reprinted in the local Chelmsford Gazette.

That same year he entertained his friend John Adams, the first American Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s who, according to his memoirs, stayed for several days at The Hyde.

Brand-Hollis died in 1804 and bequeathed The Hyde and its classical sculpture collections to the Reverend John Disney. A former Church of England cleric in Lincolnshire, the latter had resigned his position to become an assistant minister of the dissident Unitarian Essex Street Chapel in London of which Thomas Brand-Hollis was a key benefactor. The lasting friendship started there.

John Disney’s son, a barrister and antiquarian also named John, had studied law at Peterhouse, Cambridge, before being admitted to the Inner Temple.

After his father’s death, he settled at The Hyde, made a full catalogue of the art treasures at the estate, and published Thomas’s memoirs. John was also the founder of the Disney Chair of Archaeology at Cambridge University.

The Essex estate remained in the Disney family until after World War II. It then became a private school for boys and was burned down by arsonists in May 1965.

Disney Street (Southwark, England)

Shortly before his untimely death in 1966, Walt Disney and his wife paid a visit to London. A taxi driver surprised them with information about the existence of Disney Street (and Disney Place round the corner) in Southwark, a rather deprived borough in South-East London. The couple had their picture taken there.

Disney Street was once part of a district known as “The Mint,” named after the mint established there for Henry VIII. Prior to his reign, the area had been ruled by ecclesiastical powers, but after the break from Rome it gained the legal status of a “liberty” (a jurisdictional inter-zone where no laws could be enforced).

The Mint’s primary population was debtors who risked immediate arrest if they were found outside its boundaries. Debt collectors (known as “duns”) would stand along the main roads out of The Mint waiting for the opportunity to take prisoners.

Although there appears to be no record of its naming, Disney Street has been in existence since at least the 1860s. During that era, the street was associated with brutal incidents and vicious crimes.

It seems reasonable to assume that the Disney name refers to the Essex branch of the family and was probably an attempt to restore some dignity in the midst of destitution.

The original Mickey Mouse may have been characterized as a cheeky rogue, but there is no way that his personality can be linked to the horrors of Disney Street, although his defiant and rebellious character seemed to be in line with the English branch of Disney dissenters.

Kilkenny & Ontario

At some time in the seventeenth century, most likely after Oliver Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland in 1649, members of the Disney clan moved away from rural Lincolnshire and settled in Ireland.

Ending up in County Kilkenny, they led the comfortable life of country squires. Arundel Elias Disney was born in 1801 in Gowran, a historic village on the eastern side of the county, to parents Kepple Disney and his Irish wife Frances Best.

In September 1832 Arundel married Maria Swan who, in early November that year, she gave birth to their first child. Kepple Disney was named after his paternal grandfather. Two years later, fortune changed as the Irish Famine drove the family into debt.

That year Arundel, his wife and two-year old Kepple, along with his older brother Robert and his wife left their homes and made the long journey from Liverpool to North America aboard the New Jersey, landing in the city of New York on October 3, 1834.

The family made its way to Upper Canada (now Ontario), settling near Holmesville where Arundel bought a tract of land along the banks of the Maitland River and built one of the earliest local saw and grist mills.

In March 1858, Kepple Disney married Mary Richardson, herself the daughter of Irish immigrants. The couple moved to Bluevale, Ontario, where they made a living as farmers. In 1859, the couple welcomed their first child, naming him Elias Charles Disney.

In 1878, Kepple left for California in pursuit of gold, taking with him his oldest sons Elias and Robert. They stopped over in Ellis, Kansas, decided to stay and purchased 200 acres of land. Arundel then sent for the rest of the family to join them.

It was here that Elias met and married Flora Call who was of German-American descent. Having moved to Chicago, Flora gave birth at Tripp Avenue in the city’s Hermosa neighborhood to Walter Elias (Walt) Disney on December 5, 1901. The family would eventually settle in Kansas City.

In June 1947, Walt Disney made a trip to Canada to visit his ancestral home, recall his Irish roots, and value the tenacity and ingenuity of his ancestors to survive in an unforgiving environment.

It All Started With a Mouse

From a young age Walt Disney was interested in drawing. He took art classes while still at school and practiced tracing cartoons he found in newspapers. At the age of eighteen, he was employed as a commercial illustrator for catalogues and advertisements.

After he was fired from this job, he borrowed a book on animation, acquired a camera, and began a lifelong career in creative experimentation.

In 1923 the brothers Walt and Roy founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, pioneering American animation from the very beginning of their partnership. Lillian Bounds was one of their employees before marrying Walt in July 1925.

Mortimer Mouse was conceived in 1928 at Disney’s desk in the Laugh-O-Gram Studio (LOGF) at 1127 East 31st Street, Kansas City. Lillian thought the name too pompous and suggested Mickey instead.

When the Mouse presented himself to the public in New York City, Steamboat Willie was an instant hit, arriving at a time when technological advances in motion pictures and sound recording were transforming mass culture.

By the end of the 1930s, Mickey had become the face that launched a thousand merchandise products. The mouse turned into an icon.

Walt Disney descended from a family of Norman conquerors rewarded for bravery and loyalty with a manor house in Lincolnshire; his English predecessors were dissenters who mixed with subversive democratic-republicans in support of American independence; another family line consisted of resourceful Irish refugees who overcame Canadian hardship before making their mark in the United States.

As Disney’s alter ego, Mickey is a mighty American migrant.

Interested in family history? New York Almanack covers genealogy here.

Illustrations, from above: A still from Steamboat Willie, 1928 in which the prototypical Minnie Mouse is loaded onto the steamboat; The Hyde near Ingatestone, England; a memorial to Edgar Disney in the Anglican Church at Ingatestone, Essex; John Disney bust (The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge); Walt and Lillian Disney in Disney Street in 1965 (Disney World Magazine, 1966); Walt Disney’s business envelope featured a self-portrait, ca. 1921.