Vincent Sievert, with his wife and son, sailed from Hamburg to New York City aboard the Bark Johanna Elise in 1850. From there, they traveled to Joliet, Illinois. Two years later, his two sister and one brother came with their families and settled nearby.
I became curious about how my ancestors moved from one place to another. There are many things to take into consideration when trying discover how they traveled.
What was the distance between the two places?
Where there any barriers between the places, such as mountains, rivers, or even the ocean?
What technological advances have been made for transportation? What kind of ships? Where there railroads? Was canal or river travel the common method?
Knowing about the history and geography of the area is important. I like to locate maps to show the topography and gazetteers to discover the infrastructure of the area. Where there train stations? Were there stagecoach line between local cities? However, I have not located a local gazetteer for that time period.
Locating a contemporary map is usually not too hard. Even if the map is off a few years, I can still get the idea of the topography of mountains and rivers, what roads were in place, and whether there were railroad lines built. Schneidemühl, a settlement with many German-speaking residents, was located in Posen, which is now in present-day Poland. I found a map on the JewishGen site that I could view the town and see also the port of Hamburg, where my Sievert family departed from in 1852. I used a distance calculator to see how far the two cities were apart.
Then I wondered about the status of railroad service in this part of Europe. An 1849 Eisenbahnkarte (railroad map) was found on the Wikipedia site, "History of Rail Transport in Germany." This showed railroad lines that extended from Berlin out to many cities, including the nearby city of Posen. So it is likely that the family traveled to Hamburg by train.
More details about this family and their journey will hopefully be published in an upcoming issue of the Sacramento German Genealogy Society's publication, Der Blumenbaum.
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| Immigrants Traveling in a Horse-drawn cart, G.W. Peters, 1903 Wallach Division Picture Collection New York Public Library Digital Collection |
#52Ancestors-Week 4: Curious
This is my fifth year working on this year-long prompt,
hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/)
at Generations Cafe. I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or
at My Trails
into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors
in new and exciting ways.
I have faith you will find this out!!!
ReplyDeleteLike you, I've been curious about how immigrant ancestors got to a port to board their ships. In one case, the story is the family paid someone to take them, by horse cart, to a railway station where they then boarded the train to the port. Not as fancy, even, as in your illustration, I bet. No other stories, and not sure whether this one is true!
ReplyDeleteAt least you have a story! All we can do is research the various ways and then speculate.
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