My great grandfather was Charles Henry SCHROEDER, born 1858 in Hanover, Germany. According to family records, he came to the United States in 1866 with his father, John SCHROEDER. The family lived in southern Indiana. John SCHRADER filed his naturalization declaration March 30, 1867 in Jackson County, Indiana, stating he was a native of Hanover, aged about 52, owed allegiance to the King of Hanover, embarked at Bremen and arrived at Baltimore September 1866. Every record located for John and Charles simply lists Hanover, Germany as place of birth, nothing more specific. The 1880 Jackson County, Indiana census lists John 68, wife Kate 48, and children Charley 22, John 20, Annie 16, Willie 11, and Louisa 8. The Charles H. Schroeder family relocated to northeast Texas in 1907, and has had no contact with other descendents of John Schroeder for many years. I would love to reestablish a connection with this Schroeder family. Eventually I hope to find where they lived in Hanover. I would appreciate hearing from anyone familiar with this family.
Sandra Powell
Sandra,
My ancestors came from Hanover, traveled from Bremen to Baltimore in Dec
1865. I found them in "Germans to America," as from Germany, with the name
of the ship and date of arrival. From that, I found the passenger list on
microfilm, which listed their actual residence as Escherode, a town in the
Kingdom of Hanover.
I've looked in the "Germans to America" CD for your names. There are many
similar, but none quite fit the names and ages you listed. However, since
you know the probable month of arrival in Baltimore, it would be worth
checking that microfilm roll for ships from Bremen. If you find them on a
list, it may list the town they came from. September 1866 should be on Roll
15 of National Archives Microfilm Series M255, "Passenger Lists of Vessels
Arriving at Baltimore, 1820-1891."
John
Good idea, John!
Sandra, before you go through microfilm rolls, be sure to check the
online lists of immigration ships at www.istg.rootsweb.com I just checked
for the Schroeder name and got 195 hits, so you could go through all those
and see if you find your family. However, not all ship lists give the
place of origin, sometimes it just says Germany or Hannover or whatever.
Maybe you'll get lucky!
Barbara
John and Barbara,
Thanks so much for the suggestions. I hope I have the same good fortune
in finding my Hanover ancestors that John did. I have ordered microfilm for
Baltimore arrivals--the film that includes the Baltimore City lists. Based
on John's advice and the tip from Barbara about checking the Immigrants
Ships Transcribers Guild lists at Rootsweb, I spent several hours checking
every Bremen to Baltimore ships list for 1866, then the ships from Bremen
that docked in other ports, then the ships that sailed from Hamburg. I also
checked several months in the latter part of 1865 and early 1867. So far I
haven't found my family. The one thing I am pretty certain of is the 1866
time period, as that information came from my great grandmother's records.
Her actual note is: Charles Schroeder "came to United States after the war
was over, in the year 1866, with his father John Schroeder". Charles
Schroeder's 1937 obit says he came to America with a sister at the age of
seven years. There is no mention of a mother or other siblings, and I have
wondered if John married wife Kate after arriving in the United States.
According to the 1880 census the two younger children, Willie and Louisa,
were born in Indiana. My aunt told me the family sailed from Hamburg, which
is why I also checked those lists.
I'll keep looking. Maybe they will be on the microfilm. I really
appreciate your help.
Sandra
Sandra,
Oh, dear! I should have told you that there is a search engine for
ITSG at the bottom of each page (after you click on one of the volumes).
That is where there were 195 hits for Schroeder. You would have to try the
various spellings of Schroeder as well.
I searched through the Baltimore ship lists for 1853 not long ago. It
doesn't take that long. I don't have what it takes to go through the 13
rolls of film for arrivals in New York for one year!
If you're from a city that has a genealogy dept, you should check the
Germans to America volumes. A new one came out recently that may not be on
John's CDs. If you still don't have success finding the right ship, you
could try a search for emigrants that is on a German website. It is:
http://app.staatsarchive.niedersachsen.de/findbuch/
It has the records for permission to emigrate (like passports). It is a
little hard to read if you don't know German. You can search the archives
in Osnabruck, Hannover, and Wolfbuttel one at a time. Unfortunately, I
never found anything there, but I wrote to the Osnabruck site and they
answered that indeed there were no Gugelmeyers. What's more, Werner
Honkamp who is on our list and helps people A LOT actually went out of his
way to check in the Osnabruck archives personally. He's a good man!
Anyway, you should continue what other paths you can, because I can tell
you for sure that the great majority of the Baltimore lists I looked at
never gave the specific town to my dismay.
Barbara
Barbara,
I'll admit to being a bit obsessive, but not enough to scroll through 13
rolls of microfilm overnight. <LOL> That said, I don't quite trust search
engines with the Schroeder search, because I'm concerned about missing them
due to spelling variations. Actually, I only looked at ships departing
Bremen and Hamburg, so it wasn't too difficult. I have used the search
engine at Genealogy.com to search (without success obviously) the
immigration and ships records. The surname list at Genealogy.com is alpha,
so I found the ISTG lists on Rootsweb helpful as family members are grouped.
My local library doesn't have the Germans to America series, and the
closest is about 130 miles away. The next time I'm in Little Rock, I will
check those. In the meantime, I'll check the German website. I don't know
German, but have a couple of German friends who will translate.
Thanks for your help.
Sandra
Sandra,
One comment on the ships' lists on microfilm:
These lists sat in storage for over 100 years before microfilmers came along to preserve them. During that time, the lists were exposed to rodents, leaky roofs, high-acid storage boxes etc. It's a wonder any made it into the 20th century! I know from my own research as a professional genealogist (specializing in German-American families) that some of these lists were found in fragments, and microfilmers had the unenviable job of trying to reassemble lists before they could be microfilmed. Some lists were published in German-language newspapers (in Baltimore, for example), and from these published lists, we know that some lists were improperly re-assembled by the microfilmers--e.g., date and title page of one list put together with list of names from another list. So trying to find your ancestor in the ships' lists is anything but an "exact science". I have often told clients, "finding your ancestor in the ship's list is the frosting on the cake for your genealogy". I recommend exhausting every other source in the U.S. when trying to find place of origin (German-language church records in the place of settlement, possible obits in local German-language newspapers, if still extant etc.
I wish you much luck (viel Gl�ck!).
--Gary
Gary E. Myer
37 Colonial Drive
Linthicum Heights, MD 21090
(voice) 410-636-1113 (email) bruggeym@bcpl.net
I Cor 13:4 (from "The Message", Eugene H. Peterson's transl. of NT)
Gary,
Thanks for the information re the condition of the ships' lists, and
your other suggestions. It appears the ships' lists may be a long shot, but
the films have been ordered, so I will check them for my Schroeders. I
checked the LDS library catalogue for microfilmed Jackson County, Indiana
newspapers, but didn't find any. Also, the microfilmed church records for
Jackson County have almost nothing related to the Lutheran Church.
I subscribed to the Jackson County mailing list on Rootsweb and inquired
about where my German Lutherans, living in Vallonia, would have attended
church; however, I haven't received a response. There were a group of
German immigrants who settled in southeast Indiana in the same time period
that my ancestors arrived. The group is referred to as the "Venne
immigrants", and Schroeder is one of the surnames listed. I thought that
might be the answer, but a gentleman from the area checked the list and said
the Schroeder family on the Venne list is not my family.
Next step is membership in the Jackson County Genealogical Society.
Maybe they will have some information. This may call for a trip to Indiana
for some personal research.
I appreciate your help and will keep searching.
Sandra