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Location: where the moss is taking over the villages
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I think it would be fun if we posted the German surname of our ancestor/s who came here - if that's what a person can be comfortable with. In addition to a few details like when/where the immigration originated from & landed in.
For example, my Gehling (from Gossmannsdorf, Bavaria in 1854 to America) married a Schmidt (Protestant surname although the Gehlings are RC) & Schmidt was from Breitenburn or Breitenbush... That info is also stored somewhere.
Gehling came from Bavaria via St. Louis, settling briefly in Rock Island, WI then permanently settling in Falls City, NE.
My Bavarian cousin Artur Schmitt said my ancestor Schmidt was from a place referred to in jest as having people with yellow feet - very funny to him. Something was lost in translation... He also said the spelling indicated her family was Protestant.
I know of many names that are associated through family as well as business with my ancestors. If we saw those names reappear here, we could correlate stories that have been passed down to make a broader picture for each other.
My family has stories about Chief White Cloud, for example. Also stories about running their various businesses in Falls City, NE in the mid 1800's to the early 1900's.
I've found articles on a genealogy website, posted newspaper articles that basically gossip about my Gehling ancestors, esp. regarding the prohibition stance against the family brewery & the likelihood of the family women inheriting the business *public shock*. I guess that was the downfall of the business after that public outcry.
Since I gained contact with a distant cousin in Bavaria, he incorporated a family tree that we collaborated on at a website he built. This cousin is related via our common ancestor who is his great great grandfather. This cousin's mother still lives in the house built by our common ancestor! Here is the link: Goßmannsdorf am Main
Later, I'll see if I can compile some names I'd be interested in learning more about, in regard to townspeople who may have descendants with family stories to "share"...
Please feel to do the same And I hope this is the right place for this thread! If I've violated "something" -- please DM me. Meanwhile, until I find out it's forbidden: Please feel free to post your German family migration story here. It would be nice if you can include some surnames (if you're comfortable), dates are of interest, as well as locations.
Sincerely,
Kate
Last edited by sarahkate_m; 10-01-2009 at 07:18 PM..
Reason: format, as usual plus typos
Well, I won't give a surname, but my greatgrandmother came from Baden-Baden in 1892, worked to pay for my greatgrandfather's passage, and he came over two years later. My grandfather was born in 1898.
Half of my mother's ancestry was German Palatine. Early in the 18th century there was a large migration of Germans from the Rhine Palatine to England, and from there to various parts of the U.S.
The Moon (Mohn) family from the Dillenburg region their name first appears in what is now the U.S. in the Hunter Lists in 1710. They were intended to be part of a large enterprise of indentured Palatine Germans in the lower Hudson Valley for collecting pine sap to be rendered into waterproofing for the navy. The project was ill-conceived and fell apart after a year. (The problem was that no one had realized that the pine forests along the Hudson were not pitch pines, and thus were totally unsuitable for the purpose.)
The Moon family lived in various places of present-day Columbia Co., NY, until after the American Revolution. At that point several brothers in the same family decided to leave the area, upon the death of their father it looks like.
In the early 1800's Heinrich and Wilhelm Moon settled in Benton twp., Yates Co., NY. Wilhelm later moved to Defiance Co., OH, where he was an early settler.
A third brother, John B. Moon appears to have moved to Prince Edward Co., Ont., Canada....though there is no contemporary documentation for this. However, two of his two oldest sons, John and Peter, did move there by 1815 - probably before their parents, and they have a large number of descendents in that area (Prince Edward & Hastings counties.) These were part of the original settlement areas provided by the Crown for Loyalists who fled colonial revolution, and in the 1790's and early 1800's many New Yorkers crossed the border to settle there.
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Just curious: Why would anyone be reluctant to post the name of immigrant ancestors?
After musing over the above post, we were wondering if there are any people who now use the surname of "Hitler" - seems not so since it was really "Hiedler" to begin with...
I read somewhere that during the war with Germany that immigrated Germans had to "register" with the government here.
Kate
Last edited by sarahkate_m; 10-02-2009 at 05:10 PM..
My great-grandfather came over on a ship called the Moravia in 1891 with his brother. They were from Schleswig-Holstein and left from Hamburg, bound for New York.
After musing over the above post, we were wondering if there are any people who now use the surname of "Hitler" - seems not so since it was really "Hiedler" to begin with...
I read somewhere that during the war with Germany that immigrated Germans had to "register" with the government here.
Kate
If the war you mentioned is World War II you are correct. Believe it or not some Germans and German American were interned.
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And I hope this is the right place for this thread! If I've violated "something" -- please DM me. Meanwhile, until I find out it's forbidden: Please feel free to post your German family migration story here. It would be nice if you can include some surnames (if you're comfortable), dates are of interest, as well as locations.
