Anton Otremba's immigration card

Look what Larry found!  It's full of clerical mistakes, but it's the record of one part of our family arriving in the US.

Anton Otremba, 40, was accompanied by "Cathe-46, Marie 15" (actually, Catherine Schalwig Otremba was 36, and Mary was 12 in 1868).
The other kids--Anna, Frank, Joseph and Martha-- were listed on the back, evidently.  One more daughter, Margaret, was born the next year in Pierz.

The "last permanent address" would have been Pommern, not Tommern...and they arrived in Baltimore 149 years ago, yesterday.

Wow, huh?

Later:  HERE'S the ships list of the Berlin.  Otrembas start at 701.  Look at the professions on that ship, and the full load of passengers.  It was late in the season, but people came anyway.

Ellis Island and Us

Sometimes you hear a story explaining how something was named, for instance, and you think, "Wow, that sounds way too pat--not sure I believe it..."

OR, on the other hand, you hear an explanation that sounds logical or typical, so you never question it, but just accept it, as is?

  

Well, here's a "fact" I never used to question, but should have--the idea that immigrants' names were arbitrarily changed by callous officials at Ellis Island.  

It's easy to believe, isn't it, especially with families from Eastern Europe, with all those diacritical marks and czezc's--I mean, who can pronounce names like that? And we all know those immigration officials were crazy with power, obviously.  "Czeczchski?  No one will say that right.  From now on, you will be Ignatz JONES."  By the time poor Iggy realized what happened, he was truly stuck with an awful, banal name forevermore.  [Head shake] Sooo sad. 

But think about it.  Our people came from Austria, Poland, Luxemburgh and Germany...five or six kids with parents, on the way to America.  (Oh, and we were all here well before Ellis opened, in 1892).  'We' were Roman Catholics, with home churches and parish priests back in Guschwitz, Oberschlagles, Schoenfeld and Horrenberg.  Baptisms, marriages, confirmations and first communions were all recorded by that priest, in the parish books.  That's what proved who you were.

Probably no church member--Catholic or otherwise--left Europe without documentation from their parish if they could help it.  Remember, the sacraments were building blocks, so receiving first communion depended on having been baptized, and confirmation depended on those other two, and marriage, etc.   After all, God knew you by name (and, by your sins ☺)...but YOU had to prove you and your family were Catholics in good standing to your NEW parish.

Those documents had your family name written many times.  You showed them to buy tickets for the ocean voyage, and to the purser on board who copied it into the ships list.  You showed them to buy train tickets too, I suppose, and for validation when needed.
However, if an immigrant wanted to change his name and didn't care to be affiliated with a church, I imagine he could simply give any name he wanted.  I bet it didn't happen often, tho.

(Cute illustrations needed to be used somewhere ☺)

Why they left Bohemia in 1869...

...and not before.

Once again, we have Larry to thank for finding a book on  archive.org  called Bohemia and the Czechs; the history, people, institutions, and the geography of the Kingdom together with accounts of Moravia and Silesia, published in 1910 in Boston.  It finally explains the conditions our family lived with for centuries, and why they must have felt almost compelled to leave when they could.


Chapter 17 is "Agriculture in Bohemia", and remember, this was written only 40 years after Johann & Marya left for America. 

Bohemia is the richest agricultural kingdom in the Hapsburg empire. Its soil is fertile, the climate is favorable, and the country is well watered.  More than half the area is devoted to agriculture; [of the rest,] 5% is given to pasture lands; 10% to grass meadows; less than 2% to vegetable gardening, and 29% to forests. It will thus be seen that less than 1% of the total area of the kingdom is unproductive.

Unfortunately, more than a third of the agricultural lands belong to the nobility. The emperor and the Roman Catholic church are also large land holders. Five families...own nearly 8% of the area of the kingdom, and seven hundred and seventy six landlords...own more than 36% of the area of the country....

The big estates, it is charged, impoverish the people, since each of the feudal families has an enormous staff of overseers, labourers and hangers-on, none of whom are nearly as productive as they would be on small holdings..

This last part was particularly galling to our ancestors because a decree from the Emperor in 1849 had "freed the peasants from all obligations to their feudal lords", but it took 20 more years before they could actually determine their own futures.

I think Johann and Marya began the process of leaving immediately (1867), but it took them two years to accomplish.
: : : : : : :

Larry found Prague police records online from that time period, with many HESCHs listed. They're written in police shorthand, but I believe they were records of immigrants who lived in local tenement buildings while they earned ship fare. Below is a Franz Hesch who had been a Major in the army (K.K.) and who unfortunately died 10 November 1880, before he made it out of the country.

I believe Johann, Marya and their sons went thru this process too, but survived....and finally arrived in New York in March, 1869.

Reading the map

Imagine you'd lived all your life in a tiny village, far from world affairs, just trying to keep your head above water and feed your family. Then, what if there was a revolution in your country that failed, whether or not you were involved, and things got even worse??

You know friends and neighbors are leaving in droves for "Amerika", and you decide to go, too.
It can't be any worse than this...

You'd need a map like the one Larry found this morning:

(BTW, it says, in the Ocean there, that the distances are far greater than they look.)

I translated what it says in the lower left corner. It's more or less:

"Emigrant's map and guide to North America, for the European traveller, the routes of ships on the sea, the States in North America, the country(land) and water routes of the rivers to the inside of America, the principal places in America where Germans have settled, and the prices of transportation given in Rhenish guilder and in Thaler prices easily understood by Emmigrant craftsmen and farmers".

________________

"This (1853) map by Gotthelf Zimmermann reflects the importance of German immigration to North America in the mid-19th century. When the Revolution of 1848 failed to produce desired reforms within the German confederation, droves of disillusioned Germans turned their sights abroad. Maps such as this helped show them the way. At the time, land in the United States was cheap, fertile, and plentiful, making it an ideal choice for immigrants eager to establish new settlements and to begin new lives. German communities in the United States became so prevalent that on the eve of World War I, some six percent of American children spoke only German in primary school..." From this page: WORLD DIGITAL LIBRARY