Emigration
Is there a person alive who has not, at some point, wondered how their life might be different if some event had not occurred, or if some decision had been made differently? The circumstances of our lives are the results of many such decisions made by us, and by our ancestors. Certainly the death of Friedrich Landwehr in Oberjoellenbeck in 1858, and his widow's subsequent decision to emigrate with her five children to America, must rank at the top of any list of events and decisions which had a profound effect on the course of our family's history.
As we focus our attention on that important period in the history of our Landwehr family, it is an opportune time to introduce a document of great interest. To understand the nature of this document, we must jump ninety years ahead in time. After emigrating to America in 1859, Anna Landwehr would continue to live among her children for another forty years. Many of her later years would be spent living with the family of her son Philip. It was during these later years of Anna's life that she would spend time with Katie Landwehr, Philip's youngest daughter, and would tell Katie of some of the events that shaped Anna's life.
Katie was about sixteen years old when her grandmother Anna Landwehr died, but she remembered many of the stories that she had heard. Then, in 1949, fifty years after her grandmother's death, Katie (Landwehr) Wolff recorded her recollections of the events that her grandmother Landwehr and her parents had earlier recounted to her. While it was only a few pages in length, Katie's hand-written account of her own personal family history provides us with information about the history of our Landwehr family that would have otherwise been lost forever. Throughout this chapter, and several of the remaining chapters of this book, we will quote sections of this 'Katie Wolff History'. Katie began her account with the following statement:
"My father's mother (Anna Landwehr) was a widow with five children, and she had a pretty hard road while the children were small yet, when her husband passed on.
"When the children grew up and time drew near that the two oldest sons had to go to military training, for every young man had to go there in Germany, she made up her mind to go to America. She heard quite a bit about that land and supposed she thought that milk and honey flowed therein. Her sister lived in this country so she wrote to her and plans were made to go..."
Emigration! To cross the Atlantic in search of a better life. To say 'goodbye' to family, and friends of a lifetime, realizing that you will never see them again. To leave behind forever the land of your birth, the graves of your parents, the only language and customs that you have ever known. To leave everything that you have ever known, and to start a new life in totally new surroundings.
In most cases, the decision to emigrate was not the decision of someone who was happy with their circumstances. It was the decision of someone who was dissatisfied with their lot in life, someone who had little to lose, and much to gain, from starting over. It was the decision of someone who had ambitions, but no means to achieve those ambitions, in their current circumstances. Katie Wolff's opening comments support the hypothesis that Anna Landwehr, after her husband's death, "had a pretty hard road", and had little to lose by taking her family on a quest for a new beginning in a new land.
Katie Wolff's history suggests that Anna's decision to emigrate to America may have been influenced by her sister's experiences. Anna's sister Hannah, six years younger than Anna, had married Hermann Doermann fourteen years earlier, in 1845. About five or six years after their marriage, Hermann and Hannah Doermann emigrated to the United States, and established their home four miles west and one mile south of the current location of New Haven, in Franklin County, Missouri. By the time Anna and her children embarked on their journey to the United States, her sister had been living in Franklin County for at least eight years. For further information about Hannah (Bonsen) Doermann and her family, see :hdref refid=bonsen..
As difficult as the decision to emigrate may have been, Anna Landwehr was not alone in her deliberations. During the 1700s, the total emigration to the American colonies has been put at only 450,000. In 1780, more than three of every four Americans were descendants of English and Irish settlers. The others came from Germany, The Netherlands, France, and Switzerland. Fewer than a million immigrants entered the country between 1790 and 1840. Then, a mass movement began which persisted until it was checked by the restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s. In a period of less than a century a total of thirty-five million people entered the United States. This massive emigration--the largest human migration in recorded history--included our immigrant Landwehr family.
Between 1841 and 1860, the United States welcomed 4,311,465 newcomers. Almost all came from Ireland, Germany, Great Britain, and France. Many emigrants left Europe because of poor harvests, famines, political conflicts, or revolutions. Immigrants praised the United States as the 'new land of opportunity' and the 'land of second chance'. Agents of steamship lines and railroad companies attracted thousands of immigrants with tales of the wonders of the United States. Employers who wanted laborers for their factories, and landowners who sought tenants for western lands, sent agents to Europe to "sell" America to emigrants. By the time our Landwehr family arrived, about thirteen of every one hundred persons in the United States had only recently come from other lands.
Focusing our attention on Germany, emigration slowly gathered momentum in the 1830s, and in the decade after 1846 more than a million people left for the United States. The German emigration which reached its peak in the 1850's was a rural and village movement. It was the cumulative result of long-term social and economic changes--the growth of population and the subdivision of land holdings to the point where they could no longer support those who depended upon them. In these cimcumstances, periodic pressures were more likely to drive the peasant off the land. Then the only alternatives were to become a propertyless laborer, as was Friedrich Landwehr before his death, or to emigrate. The emigrants consisted largely of small farmers, many of whom did not wait to be dispossessed, but got out while they could.
The avoidance of conscription was often said to have been an important cause of emigration. Whether it was so in reality is less clear, though military service was unpopular, and undoubtedly there were times when it induced young men to leave who might not otherwise have done so. Katie Wolff's history mentioned Anna Landwehr's desire to avoid compulsory conscription of her sons as a factor in her decision to come to America, and that reason is normally mentioned by any of Anna's great-grandchildren who recall hearing any stories about the Landwehr family's emigration.
But once Anna made her decision to emigrate, preparations did not go smoothly. Katie Wolff relates:
"She lived at Joellenbeck, Besickmean, Prussia, she had a hard time to get her relief papers. They did not want to leave the two oldest sons go for another year. They had to enlist, but finally they did leave them go with their mother. So finally they did get started and at last they got to Bramahafen where the big sail ship lay at anchor..."
One of the decisions that Anna had to make before booking passage to America was the route to be taken. Emigrants sailing from Germany to the western United States had four choices for their route. They could land at New York, at Montreal, at Philadelphia, or at New Orleans. New Orleans was said by some to harbor the "worst people in the United States". Nevertheless, New Orleans was considered to be the best choice for emigrants to Missouri, Iowa, and southern Illinois, since the expense was much less and there were fewer difficulties to contend with than by any other route. And New Orleans was the route that Anna chose.
The village of Joellenbeck is located seventy miles south of the German city of Bremen, and one hundred miles south of the port of Bremerhaven. While we don't know how Anna and the children traveled to Bremerhaven to begin their sea voyage, they could have traveled by boat. The Weser River, which flows through Bremen and empties into the North Sea at Bremerhaven, passes Joellenbeck only fifteen miles to the northeast.
Anna and her five children did not travel to America alone. Sailing with Anna and her family were Maria and Anna M. Bockstiegel. Maria Bockstiegel, age fifty-five, and Anna Bockstiegel, age nine, were listed on the ship's passenger list as farmers travelling from Joellenbeck to St. Louis. While we don't believe the Landwehr and Bockstiegel families were related, it seems likely that they would have known each other before embarking on their momentous journey, and that they would have travelled together on the first leg of their journey from Joellenbeck to Bremerhaven.
What an impression the sailing ships must have made on the Landwehr family when they first saw them in the harbor at Bremerhaven! The ship which would be their home during their long ocean voyage was the Albert. We undoubtedly know more about the construction of the Albert today than Anna knew when she took her children aboard in 1859. The Albert had been built three years earlier, in 1856, at Brake, a town on the Weser River, midway between Bremerhaven and Bremen. She was constructed of oak, with fastenings of copper and iron, and "knees" of iron and wood ("knees" were bars fashioned into right angles to add strength and support at the point of intersection of ships timbers). Her hull was sheathed in copper a year later, in 1857.
The Albert weighed 783 tons, and had two decks above the hold of the vessel. She was owned by Gebruder Kulenkempff, and her home port was Bremen. A sketch of a sailing ship typical of the period is provided by :figref refid=ship..
:fig id=ship frame=box depth='4.7i'.
:figcap.Sailing ship similar to the Albert.
:efig.
What personal possessions did Anna and the children carry with them when they boarded the Albert? We don't know which of their belongings they judged to be of sufficient value to pack for the arduous journey that lay ahead. One of Anna's great-grandsons, however, remembers seeing the enormous wooden trunk, or kissen, that Anna used to transport the family's possessions to America.
From the passenger list of the Albert, signed in Bremen on September 15, 1859, we can determine that the Landwehr family traveled to America with a contingent of "three hundred and fourty two Passengers and fifteen suckling babies." Traveling in the First Cabin were a merchant and his wife, and a blacksmith from Cincinnati. In the Second Cabin, sixty-five passengers were listed. The "Vorcastle" carried nine passengers. The balance of the passengers, including our Landwehr family, travelled on the "Zwischendeck". These were the steerage passengers.
Anna was identified in the Albert's records as Elisab Landwehr, age forty-two, a farmer from Joellenbeck, traveling to Missouri. Her children were identified as:
Joh. H., age 20
Joh. Ph., age 17
Maria, age 9
Friedr., age 7
Friedr. W., age 5
See :figref refid=list. for a copy of the original passenger ship list.
:fig id=list frame=box depth='3.2i'.
:figcap.Passenger list for the Albert.
:efig.
It is interesting to note that the ages listed for the two oldest children, Henry (Joh. H.) and Philip (Joh. Ph.), and for the youngest child, William (Friedr. W.), are correct. Yet the ages listed for Maria and Fritz (Friedr.) are understated by five years and three years respectively. The reason is not difficult to deduce. An 1867 advertisement for steamship travel from Hamburg, Germany to New Orleans listed reduced fares for "kinder unter 10 Jahren"--children under ten years of age. This fare reduction for children was undoubtedly a common practice, and it must have been very tempting for a widow of limited means to take advantage of the reduced fares for any of her children who could pass for less than ten years of age.
Katie Wolff's history describes the Atlantic crossing:
"Then the voyage began. Grandma got sea sick, the children got home sick, nothing to see but water and sky, this was in 1859. They rocked on the waves for thirteen long weeks. They had several severe storms that would almost tear the vessel up, the beds and trunks would go from one side of the cabins to the other, the waves would lap over board on deck. People were praying and screaming everwhere. Such mighty wind would drive the ship in a contrary course altogether ever time, that's why it took so long. Finally food and drinking water were getting scarce. Each one would not get much to eat and drink..."
It appears likely that the length of their voyage, recalled by Katie Wolff as thirteen weeks, was exaggerated over the many years that had passed since the voyage took place. The passenger ship list, which included the final count of passengers, was signed in Bremen on September 15. If the Albert sailed on that date, then the Landwehr family's passage to America took nine weeks. The fact that the voyage from Bremen to New Orleans normally took about six weeks supports Anna's recollection that their passage was considerably slowed by storms at sea.
While the length of their voyage may have been exaggerated over time, the rigors of their journey were probably not exaggerated. Many contemporary writers likened the conditions under which emigrants traveled to those which had prevailed on the Middle Passage during the days of African slave trading. This was of course an exaggeration--yet the 'horrors of the steerage' were real enough. Until sailing ships gave way to steam, the voyage took about six weeks, and adverse winds or bad weather could extend it considerably, some journeys having taken as long as a hundred days. And when hundreds of people were crowded together for weeks on end in cramped, dimly-lit and poorly-ventilated compartments, even a quick passage was one of squalor and misery. Sea-sickness, lack of proper food, tainted water and a total lack of hygiene contributed to the general wretchedness--as did the ruffianly crews. Worst of all were the dangers of fire, shipwreck and plague.
Katie Wolff described the jubilation of the passengers when land was finally sighted:
"Then at last, yes at last the Captain stood on deck, from time to time he was watching for land, and shouted LAND, and it went like a wild fire through the whole company on board--Land. They were shouting and singing. At last they too, could see a speck of land, always larger and larger, then they reached it. Anchors were cast and they were in the new world to them..."
As the Albert approached land and lowered its sails, it was still some distance from the port of New Orleans. A look at a map of Louisiana reveals that New Orleans lies about ninety miles upstream from the Mississippi River delta. Sailing ships could not sail up the river to port, but instead had to be towed. Stubby steam towboats would tow sailing ships leaving the port of New Orleans to the Gulf, and then tow arriving ships back to the port on their return trip. The round trip usually took from four to eight days.
The next leg of the Landwehr family's journey, then, would be the ninety-mile tow up the Mississippi River to New Orleans. The towboat Ocean started downriver from New Orleans on November 10, towing the ships Atlantic and Northampton to "the Passes". Completing the downstream half of its trip, the Ocean then took the Albert in tow, along with the ships Albatross (completing a sixty-day trip from Trapani, Sicily) and New Orleans (completing a fifteen-day trip from New York), and towed them upriver to New Orleans.
The long ordeal for the steerage passengers finally ended on November 17, when the Albert docked at the port of New Orleans. The Captain of the Albert disembarked his passengers, and completed the required paperwork.
:fig frame=box place=inline.
.sk 1
.ce
District of New-Orleans
.ce
Port of New-Orleans
.sk 1
:P.I, :hp1.D. Kamp:ehp1. Master or Commander of the :hp1.Ship Albert:ehp1. do solemnly,
.br
sincerely and truly swear, that the within list, signed by me, and
.br
now delivered to the Collector of this District, contains the names
.br
of all the Passengers taken on board the said :hp1.Ship Albert:ehp1. at the
.br
Port of :hp1.Bremen:ehp1. or at any time since, and that all matters therein
.br
set forth are, according to the best of my knowledge and belief,
.br
just and true. I do further swear, that :hp1.one:ehp1. of the said passengers
.br
have died on the voyage.
:P.Sworn before me, this :hp1.17th:ehp1. day of :hp1.Novbr.:ehp1. 18:hp1.59:ehp1.
.sk 1
.ce
(signed) :hp2.D. Kamp:ehp2.
.sk 1
:efig.
While the passage had been slowed by storms, the toll on the passengers in steerage had been small. Only one death had occured on the voyage. The Collector for the District of New Orleans acknowledged receipt of $10.00 in "dead money". The "dead money" paid by the Master of the Albert represented the standard fine of $10.00 for each passenger who died during the trip.
On November 18, the day after the arrival of the Albert, the New Orleans Daily Crescent reported daily port activity in a column on page 8 entitled "Shipping Intelligence". Among other activities, the column reported that two ships had cleared (sailed) and fifteen ships had arrived the previous day. Among the list of ships that had arrived the previous day, the arrival of our Landwehr family in America was marked by the words "Bremen ship Albert, Klamp, fm Bremen, 21st Sept. to master--4th dist 58". And in a section entitled "Passengers", the column reported "Per ship Albert, frm Bremen--358 steerage passengers".
Not every emigrant with the Landwehr surname was as fortunate as our family. Just seven days before the Albert docked at New Orleans, the passenger ship Carl arrived from Bremen. Its passenger list included the names of two Landwehr families. One Landwehr family, emigrating from the German state of Hanover to Missouri, apparently arrived without incident. The second Landwehr family, emigrating from Prussia to Indiana, was less fortunate. The passenger list records that the father, 25-year-old Philipp Landwehr, died on board ship on the 4th of October of diarrhoea. His 23-year-old wife Caroline died two weeks later, on the 18th, of the same malady. And the only surviving member of the family, their 10-month-old son Ludge, died of debilitation on the 4th of November.
On disembarking from the Albert, the Landwehr and Bockstiegel families found themselves in the new world--a world that must have seemed very foreign to them. Their voyage to America had been made on a German ship, carrying German passengers, and probably manned by a German crew. As they left their ship in New Orleans, they found themselves, for the first time, in surroundings where German was not the principle language. Katie Wolff's history recalls their reaction:
"Trouble then began, they could not understand one word. They had landed in New Orleans..."
The Landwehr family experienced the sights and smells of New Orleans in 1859, less than eighteen months before the outbreak of the Civil War. The waterfront was the heart of New Orleans' economic life. During the summer months, there was little activity. But in the busy winter season, steamboat pilots were often ask to anchor their vessels in the middle of the Mississippi until room was available for them to dock. During the 1850's, more than 30,000 steamboats tied up at the New Orleans waterfront. In addition, there were as many as two hundred ocean vessels in the harbor at once.
The most important product handled on the wharves of New Orleans was cotton. During the winter that our Landwehr family arrived in New Orleans, more than 2,250,000 bales of cotton were shipped through the port, with a value of $109,000,000. Other products important to the New Orleans economy included sugar and tobacco. In addition, New Orleans was the greatest slave trading center in the South. The bull market in slaves, which lasted through the 1850's for the Southwest, made slaves one of the major products sold in the city.
There were, of course, many slaveowners in Orleans parish, where New Orleans is located. In 1860, the year after our Landwehr family emigrated, Orleans parish included 13,385 slaves. Fritz Landwehr was ten years old when he arrived in New Orleans, a very impressionable age, and he got a first-hand view of some of the evils of slavery. He would recall, for the rest of his life, seeing three or four pair of Negro slaves hitched up to a wagon like horses, and watching their overseer use an old black whip on them.
New Orleans served as a chief port for steamboats that traveled on the Mississippi River in the mid-1800's. On the day that our Landwehr family arrived in New Orleans, there were no fewer than thirteen steamboat arrivals, including arrivals from Cincinnati, Mobile, Vicksburg, the White River, Alexandria, Memphis, Yazoo City, Balize, Donaldsonville, and St. Louis. With frequent departures to St. Louis available, the Landwehr family probably spent very little time in New Orleans. Katie Wolff confirmed that:
"They and their belongings were put on a steamer and up the Mississippi River they went to St. Louis..."
Fast steamboats plied between the ports of New Orleans and St. Louis in from six to eight days. Cabin fare from New Orleans to St. Louis was twenty-five dollars, while freight cost around sixty-two and one-half cents per hundred. Since most immigrants could not afford cabin passage they usually booked as deck passengers. Adults were carried for three or four dollars--children at half fare. Deck passengers had to provide their own food and assist the crew in wooding-up.
In comparison with the ordeal of the Atlantic crossing, the steamboat trip up the Mississippi should have been an enjoyable trip for the Landwehr family. The beauty of the river, the excitement of the stops in the river ports, and the anticipation of the end of their journey may have tempered their weariness from their long journey.
Within a few days, the Landwehr stepped off the steamboat onto the wharf at St. Louis. Anna was apparently not impressed with the city, as Katie Wolff's only comment was that "she (Anna) said St. Louis wasn't much of a city then". Several Midwestern cities attracted large concentrations of German immigrants in the 19th century. Chief among them were Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. St. Louis would have been a comfortable place for a German immigrant to settle. Of the 157,476 residents in 1860, 96,086 of them were foreigners, and 50,510 (almost one-third) of them were German. St. Louis served as a "jumping-off" place for many German immigrants planning to settle in surrounding areas of Missouri and Illinois. While many stayed only long enough to make arrangements for transportation to their final destination, other stayed through the winter months, waiting for the warmer spring weather to go out into the countryside, and still others settled permanently.
Their stay in St. Louis was probably short. Anna and the children must have been very anxious to reach their final destination. Katie Wolff commented on the final leg of their journey:
"Then they emigrated to Franklin County, how she came she never said, and I guess I forgot to ask her, but I suppose by ox wagon..."
The last leg of their journey, from St. Louis to Franklin County, was only about seventy miles in length. Anna's long and arduous journey, from Joellenbeck to her sister's Missouri farmstead, was finally over. At some risk to their lives, Anna and her five children spent between ten and eleven weeks en route to their new American home--to an area that many of their descendants would call "Home" for generations to come.
As we focus our attention on that important period in the history of our Landwehr family, it is an opportune time to introduce a document of great interest. To understand the nature of this document, we must jump ninety years ahead in time. After emigrating to America in 1859, Anna Landwehr would continue to live among her children for another forty years. Many of her later years would be spent living with the family of her son Philip. It was during these later years of Anna's life that she would spend time with Katie Landwehr, Philip's youngest daughter, and would tell Katie of some of the events that shaped Anna's life.
Katie was about sixteen years old when her grandmother Anna Landwehr died, but she remembered many of the stories that she had heard. Then, in 1949, fifty years after her grandmother's death, Katie (Landwehr) Wolff recorded her recollections of the events that her grandmother Landwehr and her parents had earlier recounted to her. While it was only a few pages in length, Katie's hand-written account of her own personal family history provides us with information about the history of our Landwehr family that would have otherwise been lost forever. Throughout this chapter, and several of the remaining chapters of this book, we will quote sections of this 'Katie Wolff History'. Katie began her account with the following statement:
"My father's mother (Anna Landwehr) was a widow with five children, and she had a pretty hard road while the children were small yet, when her husband passed on.
"When the children grew up and time drew near that the two oldest sons had to go to military training, for every young man had to go there in Germany, she made up her mind to go to America. She heard quite a bit about that land and supposed she thought that milk and honey flowed therein. Her sister lived in this country so she wrote to her and plans were made to go..."
Emigration! To cross the Atlantic in search of a better life. To say 'goodbye' to family, and friends of a lifetime, realizing that you will never see them again. To leave behind forever the land of your birth, the graves of your parents, the only language and customs that you have ever known. To leave everything that you have ever known, and to start a new life in totally new surroundings.
In most cases, the decision to emigrate was not the decision of someone who was happy with their circumstances. It was the decision of someone who was dissatisfied with their lot in life, someone who had little to lose, and much to gain, from starting over. It was the decision of someone who had ambitions, but no means to achieve those ambitions, in their current circumstances. Katie Wolff's opening comments support the hypothesis that Anna Landwehr, after her husband's death, "had a pretty hard road", and had little to lose by taking her family on a quest for a new beginning in a new land.
Katie Wolff's history suggests that Anna's decision to emigrate to America may have been influenced by her sister's experiences. Anna's sister Hannah, six years younger than Anna, had married Hermann Doermann fourteen years earlier, in 1845. About five or six years after their marriage, Hermann and Hannah Doermann emigrated to the United States, and established their home four miles west and one mile south of the current location of New Haven, in Franklin County, Missouri. By the time Anna and her children embarked on their journey to the United States, her sister had been living in Franklin County for at least eight years. For further information about Hannah (Bonsen) Doermann and her family, see :hdref refid=bonsen..
As difficult as the decision to emigrate may have been, Anna Landwehr was not alone in her deliberations. During the 1700s, the total emigration to the American colonies has been put at only 450,000. In 1780, more than three of every four Americans were descendants of English and Irish settlers. The others came from Germany, The Netherlands, France, and Switzerland. Fewer than a million immigrants entered the country between 1790 and 1840. Then, a mass movement began which persisted until it was checked by the restrictive immigration laws of the 1920s. In a period of less than a century a total of thirty-five million people entered the United States. This massive emigration--the largest human migration in recorded history--included our immigrant Landwehr family.
Between 1841 and 1860, the United States welcomed 4,311,465 newcomers. Almost all came from Ireland, Germany, Great Britain, and France. Many emigrants left Europe because of poor harvests, famines, political conflicts, or revolutions. Immigrants praised the United States as the 'new land of opportunity' and the 'land of second chance'. Agents of steamship lines and railroad companies attracted thousands of immigrants with tales of the wonders of the United States. Employers who wanted laborers for their factories, and landowners who sought tenants for western lands, sent agents to Europe to "sell" America to emigrants. By the time our Landwehr family arrived, about thirteen of every one hundred persons in the United States had only recently come from other lands.
Focusing our attention on Germany, emigration slowly gathered momentum in the 1830s, and in the decade after 1846 more than a million people left for the United States. The German emigration which reached its peak in the 1850's was a rural and village movement. It was the cumulative result of long-term social and economic changes--the growth of population and the subdivision of land holdings to the point where they could no longer support those who depended upon them. In these cimcumstances, periodic pressures were more likely to drive the peasant off the land. Then the only alternatives were to become a propertyless laborer, as was Friedrich Landwehr before his death, or to emigrate. The emigrants consisted largely of small farmers, many of whom did not wait to be dispossessed, but got out while they could.
The avoidance of conscription was often said to have been an important cause of emigration. Whether it was so in reality is less clear, though military service was unpopular, and undoubtedly there were times when it induced young men to leave who might not otherwise have done so. Katie Wolff's history mentioned Anna Landwehr's desire to avoid compulsory conscription of her sons as a factor in her decision to come to America, and that reason is normally mentioned by any of Anna's great-grandchildren who recall hearing any stories about the Landwehr family's emigration.
But once Anna made her decision to emigrate, preparations did not go smoothly. Katie Wolff relates:
"She lived at Joellenbeck, Besickmean, Prussia, she had a hard time to get her relief papers. They did not want to leave the two oldest sons go for another year. They had to enlist, but finally they did leave them go with their mother. So finally they did get started and at last they got to Bramahafen where the big sail ship lay at anchor..."
One of the decisions that Anna had to make before booking passage to America was the route to be taken. Emigrants sailing from Germany to the western United States had four choices for their route. They could land at New York, at Montreal, at Philadelphia, or at New Orleans. New Orleans was said by some to harbor the "worst people in the United States". Nevertheless, New Orleans was considered to be the best choice for emigrants to Missouri, Iowa, and southern Illinois, since the expense was much less and there were fewer difficulties to contend with than by any other route. And New Orleans was the route that Anna chose.
The village of Joellenbeck is located seventy miles south of the German city of Bremen, and one hundred miles south of the port of Bremerhaven. While we don't know how Anna and the children traveled to Bremerhaven to begin their sea voyage, they could have traveled by boat. The Weser River, which flows through Bremen and empties into the North Sea at Bremerhaven, passes Joellenbeck only fifteen miles to the northeast.
Anna and her five children did not travel to America alone. Sailing with Anna and her family were Maria and Anna M. Bockstiegel. Maria Bockstiegel, age fifty-five, and Anna Bockstiegel, age nine, were listed on the ship's passenger list as farmers travelling from Joellenbeck to St. Louis. While we don't believe the Landwehr and Bockstiegel families were related, it seems likely that they would have known each other before embarking on their momentous journey, and that they would have travelled together on the first leg of their journey from Joellenbeck to Bremerhaven.
What an impression the sailing ships must have made on the Landwehr family when they first saw them in the harbor at Bremerhaven! The ship which would be their home during their long ocean voyage was the Albert. We undoubtedly know more about the construction of the Albert today than Anna knew when she took her children aboard in 1859. The Albert had been built three years earlier, in 1856, at Brake, a town on the Weser River, midway between Bremerhaven and Bremen. She was constructed of oak, with fastenings of copper and iron, and "knees" of iron and wood ("knees" were bars fashioned into right angles to add strength and support at the point of intersection of ships timbers). Her hull was sheathed in copper a year later, in 1857.
The Albert weighed 783 tons, and had two decks above the hold of the vessel. She was owned by Gebruder Kulenkempff, and her home port was Bremen. A sketch of a sailing ship typical of the period is provided by :figref refid=ship..
:fig id=ship frame=box depth='4.7i'.
:figcap.Sailing ship similar to the Albert.
:efig.
What personal possessions did Anna and the children carry with them when they boarded the Albert? We don't know which of their belongings they judged to be of sufficient value to pack for the arduous journey that lay ahead. One of Anna's great-grandsons, however, remembers seeing the enormous wooden trunk, or kissen, that Anna used to transport the family's possessions to America.
From the passenger list of the Albert, signed in Bremen on September 15, 1859, we can determine that the Landwehr family traveled to America with a contingent of "three hundred and fourty two Passengers and fifteen suckling babies." Traveling in the First Cabin were a merchant and his wife, and a blacksmith from Cincinnati. In the Second Cabin, sixty-five passengers were listed. The "Vorcastle" carried nine passengers. The balance of the passengers, including our Landwehr family, travelled on the "Zwischendeck". These were the steerage passengers.
Anna was identified in the Albert's records as Elisab Landwehr, age forty-two, a farmer from Joellenbeck, traveling to Missouri. Her children were identified as:
Joh. H., age 20
Joh. Ph., age 17
Maria, age 9
Friedr., age 7
Friedr. W., age 5
See :figref refid=list. for a copy of the original passenger ship list.
:fig id=list frame=box depth='3.2i'.
:figcap.Passenger list for the Albert.
:efig.
It is interesting to note that the ages listed for the two oldest children, Henry (Joh. H.) and Philip (Joh. Ph.), and for the youngest child, William (Friedr. W.), are correct. Yet the ages listed for Maria and Fritz (Friedr.) are understated by five years and three years respectively. The reason is not difficult to deduce. An 1867 advertisement for steamship travel from Hamburg, Germany to New Orleans listed reduced fares for "kinder unter 10 Jahren"--children under ten years of age. This fare reduction for children was undoubtedly a common practice, and it must have been very tempting for a widow of limited means to take advantage of the reduced fares for any of her children who could pass for less than ten years of age.
Katie Wolff's history describes the Atlantic crossing:
"Then the voyage began. Grandma got sea sick, the children got home sick, nothing to see but water and sky, this was in 1859. They rocked on the waves for thirteen long weeks. They had several severe storms that would almost tear the vessel up, the beds and trunks would go from one side of the cabins to the other, the waves would lap over board on deck. People were praying and screaming everwhere. Such mighty wind would drive the ship in a contrary course altogether ever time, that's why it took so long. Finally food and drinking water were getting scarce. Each one would not get much to eat and drink..."
It appears likely that the length of their voyage, recalled by Katie Wolff as thirteen weeks, was exaggerated over the many years that had passed since the voyage took place. The passenger ship list, which included the final count of passengers, was signed in Bremen on September 15. If the Albert sailed on that date, then the Landwehr family's passage to America took nine weeks. The fact that the voyage from Bremen to New Orleans normally took about six weeks supports Anna's recollection that their passage was considerably slowed by storms at sea.
While the length of their voyage may have been exaggerated over time, the rigors of their journey were probably not exaggerated. Many contemporary writers likened the conditions under which emigrants traveled to those which had prevailed on the Middle Passage during the days of African slave trading. This was of course an exaggeration--yet the 'horrors of the steerage' were real enough. Until sailing ships gave way to steam, the voyage took about six weeks, and adverse winds or bad weather could extend it considerably, some journeys having taken as long as a hundred days. And when hundreds of people were crowded together for weeks on end in cramped, dimly-lit and poorly-ventilated compartments, even a quick passage was one of squalor and misery. Sea-sickness, lack of proper food, tainted water and a total lack of hygiene contributed to the general wretchedness--as did the ruffianly crews. Worst of all were the dangers of fire, shipwreck and plague.
Katie Wolff described the jubilation of the passengers when land was finally sighted:
"Then at last, yes at last the Captain stood on deck, from time to time he was watching for land, and shouted LAND, and it went like a wild fire through the whole company on board--Land. They were shouting and singing. At last they too, could see a speck of land, always larger and larger, then they reached it. Anchors were cast and they were in the new world to them..."
As the Albert approached land and lowered its sails, it was still some distance from the port of New Orleans. A look at a map of Louisiana reveals that New Orleans lies about ninety miles upstream from the Mississippi River delta. Sailing ships could not sail up the river to port, but instead had to be towed. Stubby steam towboats would tow sailing ships leaving the port of New Orleans to the Gulf, and then tow arriving ships back to the port on their return trip. The round trip usually took from four to eight days.
The next leg of the Landwehr family's journey, then, would be the ninety-mile tow up the Mississippi River to New Orleans. The towboat Ocean started downriver from New Orleans on November 10, towing the ships Atlantic and Northampton to "the Passes". Completing the downstream half of its trip, the Ocean then took the Albert in tow, along with the ships Albatross (completing a sixty-day trip from Trapani, Sicily) and New Orleans (completing a fifteen-day trip from New York), and towed them upriver to New Orleans.
The long ordeal for the steerage passengers finally ended on November 17, when the Albert docked at the port of New Orleans. The Captain of the Albert disembarked his passengers, and completed the required paperwork.
:fig frame=box place=inline.
.sk 1
.ce
District of New-Orleans
.ce
Port of New-Orleans
.sk 1
:P.I, :hp1.D. Kamp:ehp1. Master or Commander of the :hp1.Ship Albert:ehp1. do solemnly,
.br
sincerely and truly swear, that the within list, signed by me, and
.br
now delivered to the Collector of this District, contains the names
.br
of all the Passengers taken on board the said :hp1.Ship Albert:ehp1. at the
.br
Port of :hp1.Bremen:ehp1. or at any time since, and that all matters therein
.br
set forth are, according to the best of my knowledge and belief,
.br
just and true. I do further swear, that :hp1.one:ehp1. of the said passengers
.br
have died on the voyage.
:P.Sworn before me, this :hp1.17th:ehp1. day of :hp1.Novbr.:ehp1. 18:hp1.59:ehp1.
.sk 1
.ce
(signed) :hp2.D. Kamp:ehp2.
.sk 1
:efig.
While the passage had been slowed by storms, the toll on the passengers in steerage had been small. Only one death had occured on the voyage. The Collector for the District of New Orleans acknowledged receipt of $10.00 in "dead money". The "dead money" paid by the Master of the Albert represented the standard fine of $10.00 for each passenger who died during the trip.
On November 18, the day after the arrival of the Albert, the New Orleans Daily Crescent reported daily port activity in a column on page 8 entitled "Shipping Intelligence". Among other activities, the column reported that two ships had cleared (sailed) and fifteen ships had arrived the previous day. Among the list of ships that had arrived the previous day, the arrival of our Landwehr family in America was marked by the words "Bremen ship Albert, Klamp, fm Bremen, 21st Sept. to master--4th dist 58". And in a section entitled "Passengers", the column reported "Per ship Albert, frm Bremen--358 steerage passengers".
Not every emigrant with the Landwehr surname was as fortunate as our family. Just seven days before the Albert docked at New Orleans, the passenger ship Carl arrived from Bremen. Its passenger list included the names of two Landwehr families. One Landwehr family, emigrating from the German state of Hanover to Missouri, apparently arrived without incident. The second Landwehr family, emigrating from Prussia to Indiana, was less fortunate. The passenger list records that the father, 25-year-old Philipp Landwehr, died on board ship on the 4th of October of diarrhoea. His 23-year-old wife Caroline died two weeks later, on the 18th, of the same malady. And the only surviving member of the family, their 10-month-old son Ludge, died of debilitation on the 4th of November.
On disembarking from the Albert, the Landwehr and Bockstiegel families found themselves in the new world--a world that must have seemed very foreign to them. Their voyage to America had been made on a German ship, carrying German passengers, and probably manned by a German crew. As they left their ship in New Orleans, they found themselves, for the first time, in surroundings where German was not the principle language. Katie Wolff's history recalls their reaction:
"Trouble then began, they could not understand one word. They had landed in New Orleans..."
The Landwehr family experienced the sights and smells of New Orleans in 1859, less than eighteen months before the outbreak of the Civil War. The waterfront was the heart of New Orleans' economic life. During the summer months, there was little activity. But in the busy winter season, steamboat pilots were often ask to anchor their vessels in the middle of the Mississippi until room was available for them to dock. During the 1850's, more than 30,000 steamboats tied up at the New Orleans waterfront. In addition, there were as many as two hundred ocean vessels in the harbor at once.
The most important product handled on the wharves of New Orleans was cotton. During the winter that our Landwehr family arrived in New Orleans, more than 2,250,000 bales of cotton were shipped through the port, with a value of $109,000,000. Other products important to the New Orleans economy included sugar and tobacco. In addition, New Orleans was the greatest slave trading center in the South. The bull market in slaves, which lasted through the 1850's for the Southwest, made slaves one of the major products sold in the city.
There were, of course, many slaveowners in Orleans parish, where New Orleans is located. In 1860, the year after our Landwehr family emigrated, Orleans parish included 13,385 slaves. Fritz Landwehr was ten years old when he arrived in New Orleans, a very impressionable age, and he got a first-hand view of some of the evils of slavery. He would recall, for the rest of his life, seeing three or four pair of Negro slaves hitched up to a wagon like horses, and watching their overseer use an old black whip on them.
New Orleans served as a chief port for steamboats that traveled on the Mississippi River in the mid-1800's. On the day that our Landwehr family arrived in New Orleans, there were no fewer than thirteen steamboat arrivals, including arrivals from Cincinnati, Mobile, Vicksburg, the White River, Alexandria, Memphis, Yazoo City, Balize, Donaldsonville, and St. Louis. With frequent departures to St. Louis available, the Landwehr family probably spent very little time in New Orleans. Katie Wolff confirmed that:
"They and their belongings were put on a steamer and up the Mississippi River they went to St. Louis..."
Fast steamboats plied between the ports of New Orleans and St. Louis in from six to eight days. Cabin fare from New Orleans to St. Louis was twenty-five dollars, while freight cost around sixty-two and one-half cents per hundred. Since most immigrants could not afford cabin passage they usually booked as deck passengers. Adults were carried for three or four dollars--children at half fare. Deck passengers had to provide their own food and assist the crew in wooding-up.
In comparison with the ordeal of the Atlantic crossing, the steamboat trip up the Mississippi should have been an enjoyable trip for the Landwehr family. The beauty of the river, the excitement of the stops in the river ports, and the anticipation of the end of their journey may have tempered their weariness from their long journey.
Within a few days, the Landwehr stepped off the steamboat onto the wharf at St. Louis. Anna was apparently not impressed with the city, as Katie Wolff's only comment was that "she (Anna) said St. Louis wasn't much of a city then". Several Midwestern cities attracted large concentrations of German immigrants in the 19th century. Chief among them were Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. St. Louis would have been a comfortable place for a German immigrant to settle. Of the 157,476 residents in 1860, 96,086 of them were foreigners, and 50,510 (almost one-third) of them were German. St. Louis served as a "jumping-off" place for many German immigrants planning to settle in surrounding areas of Missouri and Illinois. While many stayed only long enough to make arrangements for transportation to their final destination, other stayed through the winter months, waiting for the warmer spring weather to go out into the countryside, and still others settled permanently.
Their stay in St. Louis was probably short. Anna and the children must have been very anxious to reach their final destination. Katie Wolff commented on the final leg of their journey:
"Then they emigrated to Franklin County, how she came she never said, and I guess I forgot to ask her, but I suppose by ox wagon..."
The last leg of their journey, from St. Louis to Franklin County, was only about seventy miles in length. Anna's long and arduous journey, from Joellenbeck to her sister's Missouri farmstead, was finally over. At some risk to their lives, Anna and her five children spent between ten and eleven weeks en route to their new American home--to an area that many of their descendants would call "Home" for generations to come.
