Nineteenth-Century Germans to America

Description

This latest consolidation of works of Clifford Neal Smith encompasses transcriptions or abstracts of emigration notices previously published in six separate booklets. The articles pertain to the following localities: Beihingen am Neckar (Baden-Wuerttemberg), Hamburg and Bremen, Recklinghausen (Nordrhein-Westfalen), Siegkreis (Nordrhein-Westfalen), Kreis Simmern (Hunsrueck), Rheinland-Pfalz, and the Island of Foehr (Schleswig-Holstein). For the most part, these transcriptions span the period 1840 to 1900; however, the Beihingen and especially the Kreis Simmern components refer to 18th-century emigrants. The U.S. was the destination of most, but not all, of these immigrations.

As one might expect in a work of this nature, the source and scope of the information varies. For Beihingen am Neckar, Mr. Smith relied upon a 1939 German-language publication by Albrecht Ritz entitled Gestalten und Ereignisse aus Beihingen am Neckar. The Bremen and Hamburg lists were extracted from the Allgemeine Auswanderungs-Zeitung (German Emigration Newspaper) published in Rudolstadt, Thuringia. On the whole, however, Mr. Smith compiled his information from obscure sources published in German that otherwise would have eluded even the most fastidious researcher. Many of the entries are rather detailed, providing the names of the immigrant, age, occupation, next of kin, sponsors, dates of birth, name of ship, and date of departure. For the most part, researchers can expect to learn the passenger’s name, place of origin, number of persons traveling with, and year of departure.