A Look at Le Havre, a Less-Known Port for German Emigrants

Port of Le Havre in 1856
Gustave Le Gray photo in Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of the basic questions for most people who are attempting to tell the story of their ancestors centers on the port of departure for the emigrant family. Early in my family research, I thought that all Germans left their country from either the port at Hamburg (for which there are passenger lists which give the town where the emigrant lived) or Bremen (where passenger lists were destroyed by fire). I became convinced that all of my ancestors sailed from Bremen, since the Hamburg passenger lists did not log any of my ancestors at all.

If I couldn't find the departure point, I decided to take second-best. I began to search the New York Passenger Lists of arrivals. Perhaps I would be lucky and find a ship captain who gave the city or village of birth for one of my ancestors. Since I undertook this project in the days before the internet existed, my search meant hours scanning unindexed passenger lists for the New York port on microfilm. My Meier ancestors, according to their citizenship application, arrived in the US in May of 1861, I started my search with May 1, looking at each name for each passenger list for every ship. It was not a small undertaking! I did find my ancestors arrival from Prussia (no city or county given) on May 9, 1861. I was no closer to finding their village of birth than before I started. But I had learned an important fact. German immigrants left their native land from a number of ports other than Hamburg and Bremen: Antwerp, Belgium and Le Havre France being two of the most important. I later learned that not only the Meiers but also my Probst ancestors from Bavaria had chosen Le Havre as their port of embarkation to Amerika. I started collecting information about Le Havre but, as usual, not much was written about what most US family historians seem to consider a very secondary port.

My sister, with her fluent French, was able to lend a helping hand for the Le Havre information through a a search of the French national library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, on line. I owe most of the information which follows to her efforts.

Le Havre of the 19th Century

The end of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars allowed a revival of commerce and economic and population growth. The city became crowded within its walls and new neighborhoods appeared. But many of the poor were clustered in the unhealthy neighborhood of Saint Francis where the epidemics of cholera, typhoid and other diseases caused hundreds of deaths from the years 1830 to 1850. Rich traders were very much in the minority but increasing in numbers little by little. They built beautiful homes outside of the ramparts, on the “coast”. The settlement of a large Breton community (10% of the population of Le Havre at the end of the 19th century) changed the cultural life of the city. The economic success of the city attracted Angle-Saxon and Nordic entrepreneurs. Italians, Polish and then North Africans worked on the docks and in the factories.

Construction of a commercial center began in the 1840s and there was some gas lighting as early as 1836. In the middle of the century, the old city ramparts became a thing of the past as adjacent communes were annexed. As a result, the population of the city of Le Havre increased dramatically. The period 1850-1914 became a golden age for Le Havre. Business exploded and the city became more and more impressive with large boulevards, a city hall, court house, and a new financial exchange.

The effects of the industrial revolution were everywhere. By 1841, there were 32 steamships in the harbor, and the shipyards develop. The railroad which was built in 1847 allowed the opening up of Le Havre. The docks were constructed in the same time period, as well as general stores.

The harbor remained the port of the Americas: it received tropical products (coffee, cotton). European coastal shipping carried wood, coal and wheat from northern Europe; wine and oil from the Mediterranean. The abolition of the African slave trade brought with it, little by little, a change in that traffic. During the first part of the 19th century, the port maintained the Atlantic slave trade (this pertains to an illegal period because in 1815, during the congress of Vienna, the importing of slaves was forbidden).

During the 1830s, Le Havre also became a resort frequented by Parisians. The creation of seaside baths increased in this time.

"Sadly sitting on their sorry baggage, waiting the time of departure, they have descended into a kind of stupor, overwhelmed by the vague intuition of the immensity of what they were undertaking and by the memory of that which they left behind them. " Theophile Gautier about the painting The Emigrants of Alsace by Theophile Schuler

Le Havre remained a place of passage for those who sought emigration to the United States. The transatlantic trips became important in the second half of the 19th century.  It was the beginning of the era of the ocean liners that turned their seaport into the pride of the people of Le Havre.

A memento of the importance of the port of Le Havre for German emigration to the United States is John Shea's Englisch-Amerikanisches Handbuch für Auswanderer und Reisende, which was published in Le Havre in 1854. It claimed to be "the first book of the kind ever attempted in Havre for the instruction of the English language to emigrants", with a phrase book and a pronunciation guide. Besides reprinting the regulations for steerage passengers to New York and New Orleans in both English and German, it also provided a list of emigration agents, noting "By their endeavors, Havre has become the thoroughfare of emigration from Switzerland and the South of Germany to the United States..." This now obscure work was an attempt to cash in at the high point of the first boom period for emigration via Le Havre, which would taper off at the end of the decade.

To some extent, Le Havre owed its existence to America, since its harbor was constructed by Francois the First in 1519 for colonial expeditions to the new world. Its function as an emigration port took on a new quality after the end of the Napoleonic wars, when mass movement once again became possible. Secondly the developing cotton industry in Alsace required raw material from the United States. German disunity, and the resulting multiple tariffs imposed on Rhine river traffic made it cheaper to do this overland, across France. As elsewhere, the shipment of persons was a by-product of commercial shipments: the docks at Le Havre were enlarged and steamboat traffic on the Seine increased. Emigrants could obtain transport on freight wagons returning from the east. They were at first mainly Swiss and Alsatians. At any rate, according to a letter from Le Havre sent to the prefect of the department of the Moselle on May 20, 1841, "Here, no distinction is made between German and Alsatian emigrants, they are all just called Swiss." (quoted in Camille Maire, L'émigration des Lorrains en Amérique 1815-1870, Metz 1980). Due to the timber trade, a certain number of Norwegians sailed to Le Havre and then boarded ships to America.

As a result, traffic between New Orleans and Le Havre was particularly important, although New York was also involved in the trade in cotton and was of course a magnet for immigrants. The majority of immigrants did not remain in Louisiana, but proceeded up the Mississippi to St. Louis and Cincinatti, at least before the expansion of the U.S. railway system. In 1818, passage from Le Havre to America was 350-400 francs; in the early 1830s it was 120-150 francs. Leaving aside the difficult question of how much this was "worth" in purchasing power, the fact remains that the increase in shipping (including regular packet service) had led to a dramatic decrease in prices for transport. The majority of these ships were American. Since the only emigration lists that have survived are for French ships, this leaves an enormous gap in the records.

The Emigrant Travels to Le Havre

The Meier ancestors booked their passage on a relatively small (197 passengers) American sailing ship called Rattler.  Every passenger is listed as "Farmer" (many were probably landless day laborers) and the majority came from Prussia, although there were also travelers from Baden, Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Hesse and Switzerland with five or less each from France, Italy, England and the United States.

At first, it was necessary for emgirants to make arrangements for passage directly with the captains of the vessels. During the sailing season there were thus always several thousand persons waiting to leave. They could be obliged to wait for weeks, partly in lodging houses, partly outdoors. A German colony of innkeepers, shopkeepers and brokers materialized to service them. Agents began meeting the emigrants on the road to Le Havre to sign them up. After the French government required in 1837 that Germans present a valid ticket at the French border, local offices began to be opened in Switzerland and the German states. Again, as elsewhere, French authorities did not want large numbers of indigent would-be emigrants stranded in the port. Previously, the only document required to cross the border had been a passport.

There is some difference of opinion as to why the number of emigrants who went through Le Havre began to decline. In 1854, it is true, the Prussian government forbade its subjects to emigrate via France, but this ban was lifted in May 1855. Despite growing competition, mainly from Bremen, Le Havre could still have held its own. An economic slump in the USA slowed immigration in 1858, but this applied equally to all European ports. The development of the French railway system also made passage across France easier (one day's travel from the border to Paris). Yet, although the state railway system offered reduced fares and even special trains in the spring, it seems that in general the French railroads were more expensive than German ones. A ticket from Mayence (Mainz) to Le Havre in the 1850s cost 40.65 francs, to Antwerp only 12 and to Bremen 15.50 (Camille Maire, En route pour l'Amérique, Nancy 1993). Jean Braunstein suggests that there were stricter border controls in 1858, due to an attempted political assassination, which was then exaggerated by the German press.

During most of this period, emigrants were required to bring their own provisions. It is sometimes thought that this was disadvantage compared to German ports, where early on, emigrants were provided with meals on board. In reality, many southern Germans were decidedly unimpressed by North German cuisine and such unfamiliar foods as herring, and preferred to bring their own. On the other hand, Bremen and Hamburg did take more steps to protect emigrants from unscrupulous agents and salesmen who sold them overly expensive and sometimes unncessary goods.

Waiting for and Boarding Ships in Le Havre

"The accommodation of emigrants awaiting departure is a serious problem.  The less fortunate sleep in the street, on the floor, or up makeshift tents on the banks of the streets and sidewalks of St. Francis and Notre Dame. Others took refuge in shacks close to the fortifications or in the plain with their baggage.  In 1840, the "Revue du Havre" wrote that "the city is crowded with the poorest Bavarian immigrants...  The floating population began to camp out on the ramparts of the east. They takes shelter under the elms; excavations in the thickness of slope ditches serve as their home ... Those who have two francs a day, can find accommodation among innkeepers of St. Francis and Our Lady, who specialize in taking care of immigrants. There are a dozen in 1850. As the Commissioner of the emigration noted, the high price of rents in the city of Le Havre force the landlords to establish themselves in the narrow streets in areas that are dirty and wet ... " Andre Corvisier

Among the hotels for travelers but with a cost much too expensive for the average German emigrant were Hotel Richelieu: Richelieu Place, No. 2; Hotel de Normandie: Rue de Paris, No. 106; Hotel Helvetia: Quai de l'Ile, No. 3; Hotel de la Marinae: Quai Notre-Dame, No. 7

Known hostels/Inns were the Hotel Suisse (François Merki): Quai barracks, No. 2;  Golden Lion (George Rau): Quai Casimir Delavigne, No. 27;  the Polar Bear (Philippe Gaspard): Rue Dauphine, 46.

There were two distinct categories of travelers - the passengers and the immigrants.  The passengers in cabin class could take advantage to the comfort of ships that became ever faster and more luxurious.  The immigrants were housed in steerage, just like the inanimate cargo they were replacing.  It was usually miserable and overcrowded.  The Meier ancestors sailed on a ship with only one class - steerage.  Obviously the Rattler was strictly a cargo ship, whether that cargo was meant for French and German factories or for emigrants on their way to a new life.

Note: If, after September 18, 1856, your ancestor sailed from Le Havre or from any other port on a ship that was bound for the port of New York AND if you have the name of the ship and the New York port arrival date, you can find the day of departure as explained in my January, 2014 blog post.

Sources:
Wikipedia Le Havre, 19th Century
"Prosperite du Havre au 19eme siecle" Wikipedia
"Le Havre, port des émigrants" (p. 205-215). Je vous donne quelques extraits des pages 206-207: Legoy, Jean Hier, Le Havre. Tome IIHistoire du Havre et de l'estuaire de la Seine / sous la dir. de André Corvisier. - [Éd. mise à jour]. - Toulouse : Privat, 1987. - 335 p. - (Pays et villes de France).
Dax, Albert de, Guide de l'émigrant partant du port du Havre pour le Rio de la Plata, Montevideo et Buenos-Ayres. - Havre : impr. de H. Brindeau, 1856. - 48 p. (A book that provides practical information for potential migrants to Latin America. It includes, p. 9 and 10, a list of hotels and inns that can accommodate them before they leave.)
Photo by Gustave Le Gray, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2005.100.273

About Blog Post Comments

Family History Jigsaw Puzzle

I’ve written over 100 blog posts since I began “Village Life in Nineteenth Century Kreis Saarburg,” and I really enjoy it when someone leaves a comment. I am especially happy when someone says the equivalent of "good work" about a post. What a pleasure to find a "thank you" as was the case with this one:

"Thank you, Kathy, for sharing all this information. I am reading your blog posts and also starting to read your book which I recently purchased. You have done a great service to those learning about their German ancestry. Danke, danke, danke. Curtis"

In addition to compliments, people write a comment because they are happy to find the answer to a question they have never been able to find before. Others want to tell me their ancestors and mine may have been relatives or neighbors or want to know about a picture I used with the blog. Occasionally I get a comment that tells me I made a mistake and being human, I don’t like hearing that. Still I’m glad to know about it so I can correct my post. Most surprising is that some curious readers also check the entire list of comments from others and generously answer a question which I couldn't.

However, it has always bothered me that when I or some reader leave a reply to a comment, I don’t know if the commenter ever finds it, especially if it is posted months or even years after it was made. Most commenters do not leave their e-mail address and so there is no way to notify them.

That is a long explanation of my reason for writing this post; to try to prevent good information from getting lost. The following is an example of a recent comment that solved a problem mentioned by a much earlier commenter/questioner:

From A LOOK AT LE HAVRE, A LESS-KNOWN PORT FOR GERMAN EMIGRANTS

“Wow, this is great. I am working on some of our genealogy and am really running into a lot of stumbling blocks. One relative, now deceased, thinks that our Miller family came to the US (New Orleans) from Le Havre but I am having a hard time confirming it. All indications are that they were from "Kirberg Bavaria Germany" but I can't find a Kirberg in Bavaria, but only in Hesse.”

Sometimes I will be able to help with a problem like this, but in this case I evidently didn’t find Kirberg Bavaria either. The original comment was probably asked a short time after I wrote the post.  In January of this year, 2018, I received a surprising comment on that Le Havre/Kirberg question  from Klaus in Germany:

“Hallo, just found this utmost informative page in search for passenger-lists from LeHavre to USA. I think I can help to the Kirberg-Issue:  There is a Homburg-Kirberg, part of the City of Homburg, Saarland (see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirrberg_%28Homburg%29)https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirrberg_%28Homburg%29). It belongs to the Saar-Pfalz-Kreis (Saar-Palatinate). Palatinate was bavarian from 1816 til 1920. (see: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saarpfalz-Kreis)


Thank you Klaus! I am sorry to say that well-known genealogical speakers, never give more than lip service to the port of Le Havre. My post on Le Havre is one of the few places to get information about the circumstances which caused ancestors from certain parts of Germany, Switzerland and Austria  to choose the Port of Le Havre in France when sailing to America. (My Bavarian ancestors left from Le Havre too).  Since the Le Havre passenger lists can't be found, web searches continue to find my articles on Le Havre.  Klaus didn't find it until seven years after I wrote it.  Unfortunately, the links he gives are in German.  But if you want to know how Kirberg became Bavarian around the time these ancestors came to America, this website in English gives an explanation: Kirberg in the Palatinate

Any of the comments about the 100 plus posts I've written, especially those that answer questions or give additional information, can be valuable but do they ever find the family history searchers who need them?  I think the chances are slim, but they may be a little more findable if I highlight them.

That is why I’ve decided to post such comments as a separate entity; i.e. a separate post with the picture above, whenever I receivethem.  It may make for a very short post, but at the very least, the regular readers of my blog will see them. There is also a good chance that Google and other search engines may turn them up as separate subject entities. That will be one more way to help searchers find another piece of the family history puzzle.

So thank you for reading comments and helping whenever you can.

From Moselle to the Port of Le Havre

Covered wagon similar to those used to travel from Moselle to Le Havre
(Roscheiderhof Open Air Museum)

Department of the Moselle

Some time ago, I wrote, with a great deal of help from my sister Marilyn, a blog post about the port of Le Havre. She has an excellent command of the French language and was willing to do some research for me using French sources. That post has proved to be one of the most popular posts I have ever written. For those of us focused on finding out about the lives of our Rhineland, Bavarian, or Swiss emigrant ancestors, Le Havre is obviously a much more important emigration port than the usual genealogy texts or expert speakers at German genealogical conferences recognize. 

My sister, to help me with research for my novel, compiled and translated some other information on Le Havre-related subjects. These articles are in my files but also translated in full on her own blog, "Californie en français." Since you may not have found them there, let me give you a summary of one of them. I think that after I whet your appetite for further details, you will want to read the full article (right column, bottom of column) written by two descendants of an emigrant family from the French Department of Moselle in the Lorraine (Lothringen) region of France. It is called "Leaving for America" by Philippe and Giles Houdry. 

Thanks to Europedia, I learned that the Moselle is a department of the Lorraine region, and owes its name to the river of the same name. Moselle has a population of 1,024,000 inhabitants, and is divided into nine administrative districts (Arrondissements in French) for a total of 51 Cantons and 730 municipalities. It borders (clockwise from the North) the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, the German states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland, as well as the French departments of the Bas-Rhin, and Meurthe-et-Moselle. This area, with its combination of residents with French or German ancestry - sometimes both - still today speak a language that is a close cousin of Luxembourgish, especially in the northern part of the Moselle.

The Houdrys write that Pierre BREM and his family emigrated to New York, in the United States of America. These were ancestors of the Houdrys. Pierre and his wife Elisabeth (Boutter) Brem and their children, came from their village of Hargarten-aux-Mines. This zone in the north of Lorraine was German-speaking. The notaries of the region would record their documents in French which was the official language, and they were also required to indicate that said documents had been read in German by both the participants and witnesses.

The Houdry article goes on to spell out the many reasons why so many people, including those from the Moselle, emigrated to America. It is an excellent list. What the Germans called America letters; that is, the letters from friends and relatives already in America, exerted influence in the Moselle as well. America was considered as a country of liberty and of democracy, where the recognition of the individual was based on his competence and not his birth, things which many in the Moselle felt was not true of their homeland.

Pierre BREM left in 1844 to scout the United States, leaving his family in safety at Hargarten-aux-Mines. In 1846, Elisabeth and her two children, Anne Marie and Michel, left from Le Havre to join him. On that occasion that Elisabeth received power of attorney from her husband, sent from New York, to sell their possessions and thereby pay the voyage for the three of them. The sale occurred in Hargarten-aux-Mines, in the family house itself, the 13 March 1846. Piere Brem must have had great confidence in his wife who had a difficult road ahead of her, both in their selling the possessions which were still in the village of Hargarten-aux-Mines and in making the trip to Le Havre with two young children. Not only did she have to sell all of their land and personal property, converting everything into the money to take with her; she also had to obtain two passports; one for permission to leave France for America and another to allow her to move freely from her own Canton to any others she might cross in and out of on her trip to Le Havre. Making arrangements for the trip with some kind of travel company or service also was required.

The majority of immigrants made the voyage in wagons up to the port of embarkation at Le Havre. The Houdry's conjecture is that Pierre in 1844 and Elisabeth and the two children in 1846, would certainly have traveled to the coast by wagon so as not to waste the precious savings scraped together in Lorraine. It is also likely, as is often the case, that they would have joined a convoy of other Lorraine emigrants, which made the trip much safer, especially for a woman with two children and no husband. In addition to the safety factor, it also maintained a familiar environment in foreign surroundings. On bad roads, the convoys moved slowly. For a trip of approximately three weeks, most travelers would have placed canvas or sail-cloth over the arches of the wagons to protect the passengers from bad weather and to more comfortably spend the night. What did the wagon look like? The wagon picture above, taken at the German open-air museum in Roscheid, would be very similar. With more than one such wagon, the travelers would have resembled Hollywood movies about wagon trains headed west.

The wagon trip from Moselle to Le Havre took about 3 weeks. The railroad line Metz-Nancy did not open until 1850, that of Nancy-Paris not until 1852. The line Paris-Le Havre itself was only slightly older; it opened in 1847.

Many of the emigrants, when they reached the port, especially before 1850, were not able to embark right away. In bad weather, the ships were clustered close alongside and prevented from departing because of the direction of the winds. Sometimes it was necessary to wait for the arrival of the ship. The travelers often had to stay one or more weeks in one of the auberges of the city.  The money that Elizabeth carried with her could have easily been depleted by the need to eat, to buy provisions for the long ocean voyage, and to pay for shelter in an auberge/Gasthaus until the day of departure.

The auberges, especially those which were cheapest, gave a foretaste of the steerage section where the emigrants were going to huddle during the roughly one-and-a-half-month length of the crossing.

Travel Tuesday - The Date an Ancestor Left for America

Sailing the English Channel near Le Havre

This blog post is different from most.  Rather than writing about the  social customs of the people of the Saarburg Kreis, I switched gears for this one time.

My average blog post has about 25 hits shortly after it is posted.  These probably come from followers who are interested in all aspects of German culture. Then, depending on the subject of the piece, numbers increase as a subject is searched and one of my posts is thought to have potential to give the information needed.

Until last year, my posts about the customs of Christmas in the Rhineland area, especially about Knecht Ruprecht, the not-so-kind companion of St. Nikolaus, were the most popular. As you can tell from that last sentence, I do check my statistics which are calculated for me each day by Blogger.

Last year a new blog post began to receive a surprising number of hits. I had written a piece about the Port of Le Havre, describing the struggle to reach the port and then find a place to wait for the ship as it arrived, usually with merchandise from the last country visited.  Often the hold of the ship was refitted for a new cargo - the emigrants. Almost every day, that particular post about Le Havre had more views than any other post and so it continues. In addition, the comments were more numerous than any other post I had ever written.  Do not let any genealogical expert tell you that Hamburg and Bremen are the only important ports for German immigrants.  Le Havre saw an enormous amount of Bavarian, Swiss, Austrian and Rhineland immigration.

One of those comments left on the Le Havre blog post asked if I had any information about the amount of time it took for a ship to reach New York after it left Le Havre. It was the same question that had bothered me many years ago - before the days of the Internet search and all the data sources on Ancestry, Roots Web, etc. I set out for the Wisconsin Historical Society Library to try to find additional information on the ocean voyages that brought some of my ancestors to the port of New York. I knew the names of two of the ships - the Rattler and the Albion - their dates of arrival, and their ports of departure. What I didn’t know was the length of the voyage and the registry of the ship. That information was not required on the form for ship arrivals which each ship captain submitted.  Thus, it is also not on the microfilms of “Registers of Vessels Arriving at the Port of New York from Foreign Ports.”

My German Bohemian ancestors’ ship, the Albion arrived in New York in August 1856 (with Elizabeth and Anton Luniak and their children).  On May 9, 1861 (with Magdalena and Johann Meier and their children aboard) the ship Rattler reached New York's port. The Luniaks were arriving from Liverpool and the Meiers from Le Havre. There was no clue to tell me when either of those ships had set sail.

I tried another route but none of the published books about sailing ships, some with pictures and good descriptions of immigrant ships, listed the ships on which my ancestors sailed.  If a wonderful library like the Wisconsin Historical Society's library, holding records and books from every state east of the Mississippi, could not help me; there was nowhere else to turn without a trip to Europe, or so I had begun to think.

Then I took the step I should have begun with.  I asked the reference librarian if he could point me in the right direction. "Did they arrive after September 18, 1851?" he asked. When I said yes, he told me to look at the front page of the New York Times newspaper.  I know I gave him a confused stare! To my surprise, I learned that ships arriving at the port of New York were always reported there, giving details such as country of registry, the owning company or individual, the port of departure, the length of the journey and the type of cargo. In addition, the listing sometimes gave other details about the voyage. Here are the entries I found for my two ships:

May 9, 1861 - “Ship Rattler, Almy (the ship’s captain), Havre, 32 ds. (length of trip) with mdse. and 197 passengers to Wm. Whitlock Jr. (the ship’s owner)” This means that they left on the 8th of April in 1861. (Easter was on March 31 so they celebrated the important Catholic Feast Day just one week before they started out for Le Havre).

August 9, 1856 - “Ship Albion, Williams (the ship’s captain), Liverpool, July 11, (date of departure) with mdse., and 621 passengers to Tapscott and Co (the ship’s owner).  July 14 (three days out of port) James H. Simpson, of Newport R.I., fell from the mizzen topgallantyard and was drowned.”  I assume he was a crew member but the newspaper doesn't say so.

By looking at information on other ships arriving from European ports the same day, I learned more about the crossing. I could surmise that the Rattler probably was rocked by storms like other ships in that day’s list since several ships were "in ballast" when they arrived.  This meant that heavy material had to be placed in the ship’s hold to enhance stability. An entry for another ship arriving from LeHavre the same day noted that it was in ballast and that the ship “has had heavy westerly gales for the last 10 ds.” My heart ached for my great great grandmother who was in the early months of her pregnancy.

So if you’ve found your ancestor’s ship in the New York passenger lists, or in Germans to America, and the date is after 18 September 1851, I recommend checking the New York Times Newspaper on microfilm or online to get “the rest of the story.”  The online heading you are looking for is under the "ARCHIVES" tab of the newspaper and the subject you want is "marine intelligence (month, day, year)

Once I had information on the owners, I wanted more information about the shipping companies.  I did a web search.  I learned that the owner of the Albion was the Tapscott Company.  They were described as “systematic villains,” a fact so well know that this was immortalized in a sea shanty, a song sung when the ship was being “warped” out of harbor at the beginning of a voyage. (To find out more about the shipping lines, such as Tapscott, there is good information at "The Ship's List."  Even if your first search is not successful, new information and lists are being added to "The Ship's List" regularly as I found just now when I went back to check for this post.  The passenger list of the ship Rattler, which carried my ancestors, has now been transcribed.  If your ancestor arrived at the Port of New York before September 1851, this site may help you.

A word of warning.  If you are an e-mail subscriber to the free New York Times Newspaper headlines, be aware that your 10 full articles per month are counted whether you click on their e-mail headlines of the current day in 2014 or find a New York Times article in 1861 while doing an on-line search.  I just lost all my free articles for the month of January by checking accuracy of New York Times articles used in this article in the NY Times Archive on line.  Evidently even a headline from May of 1861 meets their restriction criteria.

According to the last comment received on this post, Newspapers.com, a for-profit website, has records for the New York Times going back at least as far as 1832.  That is where a reader of this post found the arrival of her ancestors' ship.  I thank her very much for taking the time to share the information.

  

Sail Away from Le Havre

At the Port of Le Havre

Our ancestors' trip to America. I imagined it many times and read good articles to help get a picture of what these very brave people had to deal with as they left their homes, made their way to the Port of Le Havre, and sailed away.  I often tried to imagine what they were thinking as the ship left the harbor with the ocean in front of them.

To help me along my sister translated an 1844 article about leaving the Port of Le Havre on a trip to Caen in 1844.  The author, J. Morlent, was not traveling very far.  Once the boat left harbor, he would be sailing along the coast of France. The length of the journey makes no difference.  The experience of our ancestors would have been just as Morlent described it.  What he described was each thrilling movement of the ship as it left the harbor.

The captain did not just put the ship into reverse, swing around and sail away.  Pulling away from the place where the ship was moored was complicated and could be dangerous.  Obviously I am a landlubber and clueless about the very beginning of a sea journey; most likely so were many of the 1844 passengers.  Therefore I give you the rather flowery words of Monsieur Morlent and, in boldface, my less flowery interpretation of what he is describing.

Monsieur Morlent: "A few minutes ago, it lay stranded lifelessly on its bed of mud, our lovely steamer, awaiting the tide that would softly lift its graceful bow, and the tide come to reclaim it where it had left it and deliver it to its frolic without danger.  See the meekness with which it acquiesces to the movement that the tide dictates, as it awakes and takes life, as life returns to it; a slight shifting of balance, already it no longer clings to the ground : one could say that it is in a hurry to distance itself from the damp walls that mask its flanks and hide its slender shape and its stylish carriage."   
Interpretation: When the tide is right for departure, the ship is already moving slightly on the waves - the first time people who had always  lived on land became aware of the need to develop sea legs.  It is coming out of the walled dock that has held it steady up to now.)

Monsieur Morlent: "Already the three strokes of the bell have sounded. The steam escapes with a sharp whistle from the long, metal tube that surrounds it and, noisily, the steam spreads in a white-ish cloud and redescends in a pinkish color on the forward and back parts of the boat, according to the direction of the wind which should shorten or lengthen our water excursion. The dockside is filled with a triple row of the curious who come to cheer our departure: there, is said a last goodbye; there, the hands of friends grip each other … but the speedy propulsion blades of Le Calvados are in motion. They have moved our sailing ship and the words “good trip,” “write to me,” intersect and lose themselves in the air in the middle of the commotion. Already the absence has begun. Words are powerless to make understood the last declarations of friendship, of affection or of politeness. It is the gesture that replaces the word while, quickly disappearing, the merciless engine takes the ship which turns and swims in the foam, leaving behind on the waters its plumes of mist."
Interpretation: The many people on the shore shout their farewells and good wishes, which at first can reach all ears on the ship but which become more faint until the sound is gone.)

Monsieur Morlent: The steamer moves proudly in front of a flotilla of little unmoored boats, vigilant sentinels of the waterway, who never fail at their assignment; it is in these small boats, of such miserable appearance, that our intrepid pilots hurry to rush into the middle of tempests, to take it can be said, by the hand, the big ship in peril, and to guide it to harbor, across the dangers that bristle at the entrance; how many pay with their life for this generous recklessness.  At the foot of these walls, beaten by the surf, lies a bank of pebbles called the southern shingle-bank. It is a deadly danger to ships who miss the entry to the harbor and then are broken by the tempest in several hours and scattered on this beach, famous, each year, for more than one shipwreck. It is the despair of the sailor who, escaping the dangers of a long sea voyage, is cruelly run aground only several feet from the object of his efforts.
Interpretation: Leaving the safe harbor, the ship encounters the sailors who mann the small, battered boats at the risk of the dangerous waves, trying to prevent the impressive large sailing ship from running aground and breaking into pieces because the ship's pilot misjudged the entry to the harbor.

We skirt the northern pier, the favorite strolling area of foreigners, maintained with a care that resembles flirtation, and visited every day by a large portion of the population of Le Havre, of which it is the meeting place at the time of high tide. A belt of granite surrounds it, a small beacon ends it, and its straight platform often has difficulty containing the crowd that jostles together to participate in the impressive spectacle of the entrance or the exit of ships, whether the sky is clear and the breeze light or whether the wind blows violently and the gray and tempestuous waves darken the strange panorama.
Interpretation: Every day, especially at high tide, crowds of people who are from both Le Havre or foreign places stroll in a special area and watch with fascination as arriving or departing ships move toward or away from the granite wall of the harbor regardless of the weather.  The strolling area is protected by a "belt" of granite with a beacon at its end.

Monsieur Morlent: "But this lovely and strong belt of granite is often powerless to protect it from the shock of ships that are abruptly pushed by the swell. One of the first days of February, last year, the American ship The Emperor, upon entering into the harbor, hit it so violently that it overturned three foundation sections of the wall cap and shook the others at a height of over eighteen feet. The stem of the ship was almost crushed. When one has seen the piers of Le Havre, built in blocks of the granite of Cherbourg, linked together by iron bolts and encased in cement, which has the hardness of rock, one is struck with amazement that the motion of the sea can succeed in overturning these constructions that appear to be resistant over centuries."
Interpretation: Granite walls as high as 18 feet are no match for the power of the water that smashes into the Le Havre harbor.

Monsieur Morlent: We have passed the pier and already the city escapes us. On a long line, that appears winding from the south to the north, are displayed in the foreground the floating warships that protect the shoreline, the ovens that forge cannon balls, a gunpowder factory, and the shipbuilding yards, above which are displayed the frames of these beautiful ships of commerce.

Interpretation: Morlent paints an excellent word picture of harbor as a ship moves away and passengers can see the last views of the city of Le Havre.  For some, that view can be their last look at the European continent.

What courage our ancestors had. I wonder how many of them, looking at the scenes Morlent describes above, wondered if they had been a little mad when they signed the contract that took them away from solid, steady earth and positioned their feet on these precarious, unmanageable waves.

Sources:

Illustration from L'histoire des Antilles et de l'Afrique

Seconde édition.- Le Havre : J. Morlent, 1844. 76 pages. 2 f. de pl. ; 16 cm. (Translation to English by Marilyn Gosz, 2012) http://www.californieenfrancais.blogspot.com/p/marithe-comme-cest-terrible-pour-tous.html)

Railroad Travel Then and Now

This year I was granted my wish to spend Christmas together with my sister and cousin.  Our Christmas day was spent in an exciting location, Rouen, France.  The three of us had booked a Christmas cruise on the Seine River from Paris to Rouen.  During our trip, we also allowed time for a special day in Germany.  We took a train to the German Christmas market in Saarbrucken, Germany.

Saarbrucken is about 300 miles from Paris.  By taking the fast (200 mph) French TVG train, we could go one way in less than two hours.  It was our first experience with Europe's high speed rail service, and we came away impressed by this experience.  Nothing like it is readily available in the United States.  We had comfort, convenience and amazing speed, all available at a reasonable price.

A Train Trip in 2014
Why am I writing a post about my Christmas vacation and trains?  Because the railroads played such a major part in the emigration of all of my ancestors - and probably yours.  I was traveling back along part of a train route which my great-great grandparents also traveled as they left Europe for a new life in Wisconsin.  I was returning to their former homeland area - and in great comfort.  I had no luggage to carry and barely felt the motion from the train wheels which seemed to almost ride above the rails.  It was as easy to walk down an aisle of the train as it had been to walk down the aisle flying to Paris in perfect weather. The return trip to Paris again took less than two hours.  We sat relaxed in well-padded, adjustable seats and also had a table to hold our snacks and drinks.  Some other passengers used their tables for laptops or to play cards. In what seemed like no time at all we were back in the Paris train station.

An early passenger train

A Train Trip in the 19th Century
This was not the way my 2nd great grandparents, Johann and Magdalena Meier, made the trip by train.  Almost certainly they had brought a large trunk with them, and I'm guessing that they carried sacks or baskets filled with necessities such as food to be eaten during the trip.  They had to keep track of four children ages 10 years to 18 months.  The train was coal fed, and I have read that the locomotives belched coal smoke back into the passenger cars.  The seats were of wood and every movement of the train on the track could be felt, rocking their bodies and even landing them on the floor if the train had to come to an unanticipated stop.  Still, the train that carried them was as impressive to them as was the one on which the three of us traveled last month.

Some train history:  By March 1861, my ancestors' emigration month, the railroads already were crisscrossing Germany. In 1852, the completion of a rail line from Forbach (very near Saarbrucken) to Paris made it much easier for emigrants from parts of Bavaria, southern Germany, and Switzerland to reach the French port of Le Havre by rail.

On May 25, 1860, the railroad line connecting Trier with Saarbrucken was officially opened, reaching as far as Forbach. The emigrants from the Trier/Saarburg area could, for the first time, get to the port of Le Havre in France entirely by rail. Prior to that time, the usual route was by land and barge to Antwerp.  The difficulty of traveling to America obviously started long before the emigrants set sail on the ocean.  By the time they reached their port of emigration in Le Havre, Johann and Magdalena Meier and their four young children had ridden on three different but intersecting rail lines: Saarburg to Forbach line, Forbach to Paris line, and Paris to Le Havre line.

Gare de l'Est, 20 December 2015

Gare Saint Lazare by Monet, 1877

The transfer between the train from Forbach to Paris and then from Paris to Le Havre was the most intimidating.  The emigrants had to navigate the city streets of Paris.  Travelers from Forbach arrived at the Gare de l'Est station.  However that was only one of several railroad stations in the city.  To this day Paris has no central rail station.  Even in our age of high speed rail travel, passengers who arrive at Gare de l'Est (the station for trains to and from the east) trundle their luggage from the Gare de l'Est to Gare Saint Lazare in order to get to the train that will take them to their vacation spot on the Normandy coast.

Johann and Magdalena and emigrants like them had to have some means to get their trunks and other possessions (including children) through the Paris streets to that second railroad station.  I have not found any information on how that process was actually handled.  The most likely scenario I can imagine would be that the emigrants had to pay to hire a wagon to take their trunks for them.  Did they know about this difficulty when they bought their train tickets?  I have not found such information.

Most of the emigrants arriving in Paris had never been in such a huge city. They must have gazed in awe at the Paris of 1861, which was still being reconstructed into the Paris of today using the dramatic plan of Georges-Eugène Haussmann who was tearing down much of old Paris with the permission of Emperor Napoleon III.  Some emigrants probably traveled through a construction zone of some kind.  Upon finding the Gare Saint Lazare, another trip of approximately five hours awaited them before Le Havre harbor was reached.

It took my sister, cousin, and me one hour and 50 minutes to travel from Paris to Saarbrucken. A very rough estimate of the time it took my ancestors to complete that same part of that trip is about 10 hours of actual time when the train was moving and not stopped in a station.  How many stops were involved could change that calculation considerably.  A second estimate of their total time from Saarburg to Le Havre, using my less-than-ideal manner of calculating, would be at least 18 hours and does not take into consideration any time spent waiting for the next train connection or crossing a part of the city of Paris.

The French website developed by the Historical Association of Triel has a chart that shows a train schedule from Paris to Le Havre in 1849 and a multitude of stops.  Another quote from the website: "The advent of the railway in the early nineteenth century has revolutionized communications between people by reducing an unimaginable journey time. For example, to get from Paris to Le Havre, it took more than 30 hours in 1814 and only 5 hours by train forty years later."

It just goes to show that the term "high speed" is in the mind of the one who experiences it, whether traveling in 1849 or in 2014.

Sources:
Mergen, Josef, DIE AUSWANDERUNGEN AUS DEN EHEMALS PREUSSISCHEN TEILEN DES SAARLANDES IM 19. JAHRHUNDERT.
Hammaecher, Klaus, SERRIG: LANDSCHAFT, GESCHICHTE & GESCHICHTEN, Saarburger Satz & Druck GmbH, Saarburg, 2002)
HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION OF TRIEL Website

Walking with the Immigrant Ancestors

The New York Times, 1861

The most popular posts I have written have been about the German emigrants’ travel from their home city or village to the Atlantic Port of Le Havre or their letters about the trip to people back in Europe. I may have said before that the Le Havre passenger list roll is one of the most sought after documents for the descendants of French, German, and Swiss immigrants. It is almost totally accepted that the Le Havre passenger lists have been destroyed but somehow the word hasn't gotten out to a lot of genealogical seekers.

Many of the comments or e-mails I’ve received from genealogical searchers who were looking for the actual Le Havre lists do thank me for painting a word picture of the struggles that confronted an emigrant family on their way to the port of Le Havre. It made them so much more aware that their immigrant ancestors were real people facing great difficulties even after they made their decision to leave their homes for an unknown land.

But what about the journey once the immigrant families' feet touched the earth of what was to be their new country.

I was looking through my genealogical files a few days ago when I found some notes that I made not too long after I started writing the Meier-Rauls family history. On the front page of the New York Times I had found what month and day their ship, the Rattler, had arrived in the Port of New York. The group of people from Irsch, including my ancestors, took their first steps on American soil at the Castle Garden receiving station, the place where the City of New York made a concerted effort to help immigrants feel welcome in their new country. To me, that date was a major event - 9 May 1861.   That arrival determined I would be born an American citizen instead of a dweller in one of the villages on the Sigfreid Line during World War II.

I wanted to see what other newsworthy events had happened on May 9, 1861 in addition to the arrival of the ancestors.  My 2nd great grandparents and the other passengers, most of them Germans, disembarked from a ship that had been sailing for 32 days right at the beginning of the Civil War in America.  On May 9, some southern states were still deciding whether to secede from the Union. Did my Ancestors know of that when they came ashore? Whether or not they did, they could not have missed seeing a great many soldiers on the streets of New York.  There were signs posted at Castle Garden, written in German, that offered money to young German men who were willing to enlist in the Union Army.

I read the pages of the New York Times for May 9 and 10, 1861. Here are a few things that the New York Times believed were worthy of a story, happenings which may or may not have attracted the attention of my ancestors and the other immigrants from Irsch as they walked out of Castle Garden and on to the sidewalks of New York. I can imagine them seeing sights that made them wonder if there were more difficulties ahead than they had anticipated, difficulties that would keep them from their final destinations in Ohio, Pennsylvania,Wisconsin or any other states, especially southern states like Texas.

Men and women were standing on street corners, collecting money for the men who were about to be placed in harm's way by the Civil War. The New York Times warned in that morning's edition of the newspaper that the majority of these people were swindlers. However, maybe the new arrivals  thought that their new country had many beggars, contrary to what they had been told about the wealth in America.

Volunteers for the Union Army, perhaps in uniform or perhaps in their ordinary clothes, marched along the sidewalk. Those men could have been the Wisconsin volunteers who, the Time says, arrived in New York that very day. Wisconsin was the state all of the Irsch immigrants had as their destination. Did the two groups, one at their destination as soldiers, the other on their way to be farmers in the state the soldiers had just left, meet along those very streets?  Did they talk to these former countrymen?

There were boxes containing 3,600 military garments that had been made by the famous Brooks Brothers New York store on the corner of Grand and Broadway. They consisted of coats, jackets, and pantaloons.*  These had been carefully folded, packed for delivery and were being loaded onto wagons and sent off that morning. The Times does not say where they were being taken. Did the immigrant group from Trier peer at the wagons, wagons that were probably very different than those they used in their former villages. Did they wonder what was in all of those boxes?

On May 10, the New York Times editorial called for three-year volunteers to be trained, especially new arrivals from a number of specific places; men who were "thoroughly drilled who have seen action in Schleswig Holstein, in Baden, in Italy, in Hungary and in the Crimea. The laws of their country required the most constant drill. They are hardy and vigorous men." There were immigrants from Baden on the Ship Rattler.

Prussia also had universal conscription. From what I've found in my research, many men from Prussia were probably not as desirable as U.S. soldiers.   Since the Prussians considered many of them too short to wear the uniform of the Prussian emperor, Prussian peasant farmers were freed from military service if they were shorter than 5' 2".

To have your ancestors come alive. check the day they arrived in the United States in 1846 or 1873 or some other year.  If you can find a local newspaper from the day of their arrival; or a story on the web from a major newspaper on the day those ancestors made their way along the streets of New York or New Orleans, or Montreal Canada.  Walk with them for awhile. You will learn a lot.

*Historical men's close-fitting breeches fastened below the calf or at the foot.

Sources:
New York Times, May 9 and 10
Engels, Friedrich, The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party,