Meixner Family History #6 - The Journey

Once Frank and Theresa made the decision to go, how did they get to America?  How long did it take for them to actually be on their way?

By 1881 Frank's father was deceased.  I do not know about his mother or Theresa's parents.  Frank had at least one sister living at that time.  I have records of her marriage and the births of her children after 1881.

How hard it must have been to say good-bye to family and friends knowing you would most likely never see them again.  Also to leave behind most of their belongings, their old life, country, and language and head for an all new beginning.

The 1871 marriage record of Franz (Frank) and Theresa stated he was an innkeeper.  This was basically a house where they rented rooms to workers of the town that did not have homes of their own.  Did he sell this place to raise the money to pay for their trip to America?  

The next step would have been to get their train tickets and head to Bremerhaven.  This would be their port of departure for America.  I am certain they rode the train to Bremerhaven.  There were thousands of miles of train track in Europe by 1881.

Here are some pictures of trains I found on Wikipedia that would have been in operation in the 1880s.

   

I don't know the route they took from Abtsdorf.  Below is a google map of the route you might take today.  I don't think the route was too much different then but obviously it would have been along the rail lines in use at the time.

This route shows to be about 850 kilometers or 530 miles.  Probably longer and certainly a lot slower back then.

All that is left is for the 33 year old Frank and Theresa is to take their suitcases and trunks and cram them as full as they can with their belongings, take the hands of Herman (Harmon in the U.S.) aged 2, Herminia (5), Theresia (6), Antonia (7), Alvisa (8), and Franz (Frank) (10), and head to the train station to travel some 4300 miles to America.  WOW!!  That took some courage.  I've never lived outside the state of Texas.

So they headed out on the several days journey by train.  I can't imagine this was a very comfortable trip to Bremerhaven.

Next:  The Journey (part 2)

Meixner Family History #5 - The Decision

We know Frank and Theresa Meixner immigrated to the U.S. in 1881.  What we don't know is why.  I'll explore some possibilities.

I mentioned in post #3 that tensions between the Czech and German populations in Bohemia may have been a contributing factor in the decision. There were several other reasons for leaving.  Of course it is likely that all of these reasons were contribuitng factors.

All numbered paragraphs below are from the article: Landskroner Emigration to the American Midwest , by Edward G. Langer, Copyright 1001, Edward G. Langer.  All quotes will be from the article.  Google it and read the article.  It is very interesting.

Landskron is a district right next to the District of Leitomischel.  Leitomischel is the district where Frank and Theresa lived.  The town of Landskron was only a few miles to the northeast of Abtsdorf.  I think the same conditions would have existed in Leitomischel.

1)  "Until 1848, the people of the district of Landskron were still subject to feudal restrictions limiting their ability to move and requiring them to provide certain services to the local ruling class.  In 1848, revolutions rocked much of Europe.  When the Revolution of 1848 began in the Austrian Empire, the landless peasants hoped there would be a land reform that would give them land."  Unfortunately nothing came out of this revolution that helped the peasants regarding securing land.  There was one very big result, however, that effected them greatly.  The landless received the right to emigrate from the Empire.  The peasants started to take advantage of this right.

2)  "Another reason why people emigrated was to escape the effects of imperial wars.  The Austrian Empire was involved in frequent wars, resulting in increasing taxes and the drafting of young men sent to fight in distant locations."

3)  Improved food and sanitary conditions in the mid-1800" resulted in a population explosion and overpopulation.  The direct effect was limited opportunities for young people.  Housing conditions were difficult with people crammed into small one-room houses.  "There was little virgin land in the area, and subdividing the existing farms would have made them unprofitable.  There was little local industry to provide work for the excess farm population."

4)  "By the 1850's, numerous sources encouraged European peoples to emigrate to America.  'How-to-emigrate' books extolled America's virtues, especially the freedom and cheap land available in America.  Rail and shipping interests made emigration sound very attractive in an attempt to increase their business."  Once relatives and friends settle in America they wrote letters back telling everyone how great things were in their new land.

A very difficult decision to leave your homeland and family and friends even with all the compelling reasons I have mentioned.  That decision had to be made even more difficult when you consider the distance they would be traveling and the dangers they would face.  What ever the reasons that prompted Frank and Theresa to decide as they did I am very grateful that they did.  That is the reason I and all their Meixner descendants reading this are here today.

Next up will be "The Journey".

Meixner Family History #4

I had a question come up after my last Meixner Family History post.  I was asked "So are we of German decent?  Bohemian? Czech? Austrian?"

After all the reading and research I have done about this question, I say that I am of Germanic decent.

The area of Bohemia that our German ancestors migrated into was almost completely of Germanic decent.  There were few people of Czech decent according to the population schedules.  Our ancestors spoke and read the German language and indeed were German as that is who they lived among and who they married.  


It is no different if a military family moved to Germany today and lived on the base.  If they were there 20 years and their daughter married another American service man's son and had children those descendants would still be American even though they were born in another country, right? 


On my Mom's side of the family I found that she is of Scotch-Irish decent.  I saw the explanation that these descendants came from settlers that moved from Scotland to Ireland but maintained their Scottish communities there and intermarried with other Scottish men and women before migrating to the U.S.  They were not half Scotch and half Irish.  The term denoted Scottish people that had been living in Ireland before moving to the U.S.  


I hope this helps.  Ultimately we each have to answer the questions "who am I" and "where did I come from" in our own way.  I claim German, Scottish, & English among my ancestors and I am proud of all of them.  It's what makes up who I am as an American.

I think that combination turned out a pretty good looking bunch of kids.

Father's Day June 17

I had a wonderful Father's Day on the 17th.  Thought I'd share some things I received from my grandchildren.

First is Maggie's handcrafted Father's Day card.

And a photobook of Maggie pictures for her Pop Pop, as she is now calling me.  Lots of wonderful pictures.  I only included a few.

From Connor and Caleb a bucket that said "Granny Kay & Pa Pa Rock!"  Inside were dozens of hand painted rocks with notes from Connor and Caleb.  They are now in our rock garden around our fountain.  Also a great picture Kristina took of the boys.  

Also in the basket were letters for Granny Kay and PaPa.  (I forgot to note that this basket was for Granny Kay too.)  I hope you can read their answers to the questions in the letters.  Very cute.

Like I said above it was a wonderful day and I love my children, children-in-laws, and my wonderful grandchildren!!  I hope all of you fathers out there had one just as special.

Meixner Family History

On my last post I added a picture of Abtsdorf.  I will add 4 more today.  All these pictures came from the website:  http://www.zwittau.de/orte/abtsdorf/abtsdorf.htm   Click on it and take a look around.  It helps if you have your browser convert the text from German to English.

Bohemia is a very interesting place.  It was around as the Kingdom of Bohemia many hundreds of years then it came under the control of the Austrian Empire starting in the 1500s.  It became Czechoslovakia in 1918, after World War I, and finally split in two in 1993 and became the Czech Republic and Slovakia. There are other complications around World War II and being under control of Russia that I will leave for you to research on your own.  


There is another complex part of the history of Bohemia that I will go into a little bit because it identifies who our ancestors were and how they were effected by the events of World War II.  


In 1881 our great-grandfather lived in an area of Bohemia that was predominantly of Germanic decent.  The majority of the rest of the country of Bohemia was of Czech decent.  There was an area around the border of Bohemia next to the bordering German speaking countries (also between Bohemia and Moravia where Abtsdorf was located) that was predominantly German in origin.  This area later became known as Sudetenland and the people as Sudeten Germans.  They are also known as German-Bohemians.  Our ancestors were German-Bohemians or Sudeten Germans.  


After World War II, about 3.5 million Sudeten Germans were forcibly expelled from their homes in Czechoslovakia and compelled to resettle in other countries.  This makes finding our long lost cousins very difficult but is one of my research goals.

The shaded areas of this chart shows the German speaking Sudetenland. 

Here is another map that shows Abtsdorf and some of the area towns.  I highlighted some of the towns of our ancestors.

Though the split between the Germans and the Czechs in Bohemia didn't culminate in expulsion until 1945, there were tensions between the two groups in the late 1800s.  By 1881 when Frank and Theresa made the decision to leave their homeland and come to the United States the rise of tensions and competition between these two groups may have contributed to their momentous decision.

Next time I will look at several other possible contributing factors in the move.

Meixner Family History

Yesterday I posted a document regarding Frank Meixner, my great-grandfather.  The contents of the document were quite surprising to me.  I had always been told and had thought that my ancestors came from Germany.  This document states:  "Personally appeared Frank Meixner, who declares, upon oath, that he is the natural born subject of Osterich Empire, that he was born in Bohmen (or Borhmen) that he is 39 years of age, that he emigrated to the United States of America and arrived at the port of New York in the State of New York on or about the 26th day of August, 1881, ....".  It goes on to say he renounces his allegiance to the foreign state and that he will bear allegiance to the United States.  

From this I learned that Frank was actually from the Austrian Empire and was born in the country of Bohemia.  Seems we had been looking in the wrong place to find our ancestors!

I took this document along with information from my grandfather Harmon Meixner's death certificate to the head of the genealogy department at the Fort Worth Library.  He advised me that according to the information I had I should search in Abtsdorf, District of Litomysl, in the Country of Bohemia in the Austrian Empire.  In 1989 when I was doing this research Bohemia was no longer and the country was then Czechoslovakia.  Today the country is the Czech Republic.  Here is a picture I found on the Internet:

  

My contact said I should contact the Czechoslovakian embassy and that they would do research.  So I put together all the information I had and sent it to the embassy.  Many months later I received a report back with information and supporting documentation regarding births, marriages, and deaths of many of my relatives in the old country of Bohemia.  It was all in the Czech language so I then had to wait several more weeks until I could get the report translated.  The day I received the translated report I was ecstatic.  It was THE most exciting day of my genealogy research and remains the most significant. If anyone is reading this that is not a history buff or a genealogy buff you are probably saying "it doesn't take much to get this guy excited" or "really, you got that excited about receiving a report?"  For one thing this was the culmination of over 12 years of research and secondly I received dozens and dozens of names of relatives that I had not known before!  That's exciting stuff!  The report showed the marriage of Frank and Theresia as well as other relatives information back to the mid 1700's.  There are Meixners in several of the surrounding towns and many new branches of the family I did not know about before.  Here is the first page of the 10 page report:

I am continuing to search to find where the Meixners were prior to the mid 1700's  Maybe they came from Saxony and the area around the city of Meissen as some sources suggest.  I don't know when the Meixners arrived in Bohemia but this report indicated my g-g-g-g-grandfather Martinus Meixner was a "newcomer or colonist" in the area.

Next time I'll examine the German-Bohemians and go over a few of the reasons people were leaving Bohemia in the 1880's  

Meixner Family History

Over the next few weeks I plan to post information that I have about the Meixner Family that came to Texas in 1881.  I hope it is of interest to at least a few folks out there.  If not I will at least enjoy doing it.

I started getting interested in my family history in about 1977-78.  I communicated with my parents and aunts  to try to determine what information they could give me.  Early on I got connected with my cousin Claudia Brown and together we researched the Meixner name in Germany.  We started here because we had an entry in a family bible that said Frank Meixner and Theresia Eigel were married in Absdorf, Germany.

Claudia lived in Bell County, Texas where our grandfather Frank Meixner and family had settled in 1881.  She was doing research in the courthouse for citizenship papers for Frank but had no luck.  Then in one of those moments of serendipity she asked if she could look through boxes in storage.  She was looking through stacks of papers in a box when she came across this document:

The information in this document would change our direction and ultimately lead us to the country of Bohemia.

More to follow in the next installment.

WSSU Students Win State-Wide Competition

WSSU Students Win State-Wide Competition

I just came across this searching other blogs.  A neat article about Andy and his students at Winston-Salem State University.  I think you can click on the link and pull it up.  If not try googling it by the name above

I am going to try to get this blog going again that the kids set up for me a few years ago.  I plan to talk about things that are of interest as they happen and to discuss genealogical information/family history.

If you receive this notice in an e-mail I hope you will go to this link:   http://meixnermessages.blogspot.com/  and add your comments or input.

I want to use this blog as a means for the Meixner family (my immediate family members) and extended family (those that are named Meixner or that are related to Meixners) from around the world to communicate and share stories about day to day things or about family history, etc.  I hope to make some connections and further my quest to find more of my extended relatives from around the United States and in other countries and also to share interesting happenings in our lives.

Here we go:

Mom and Dad.  I guess that is the best place to start.  Where was this taken?

Fishing With Connor & Caleb

Had a great day fishing with my Grandsons.  Look forward to going again.

Halloween 2009

Recent Pictures of My Boys

Here are some recent pictures of my boys! For those of you who know how scared Connor was to swim alone at the reunion, check out his latest accomplishments! He's a little fish now! As for Caleb, he's already 14 lbs and does a pretty good job at holding his head up on his own. Just thought I'd share my precious angels with everyone! Love to all...
Kristina

I know that my dad has already blogged about our wreck, but I thought I'd put up some pictures. I hope all of the insurance stuff is over soon!!!

Latest Update

Well, it has been a while since I last "blogged". I had meant to after the reunion but I am very slow as usual.

We had a great time!! It was so good to see everyone. Wish everyone could have been there but I know that is impossible. Gets harder every year with growing kids and more and more involvement. I hope I didn't bore everyone too much with my going on and on about the family tree. You can probably tell I love that stuff and could talk about it all day.

It is amazing how quickly the kids are all growing. Seems like they should be the nieces and nephews instead of the grand nieces and nephews!!

Thanks Harmon for putting everything together. I enjoyed looking at the old pictures and visiting. Of course it seems we talk a lot about our ailments. That doesn't mean we are getting older does it?

Kay and I went to Missouri this week but yesterday Kristina called us about 11:30 AM and said she had been in a car wreck (Dan was at work) and they were taking her and the boys to the hospital. She thought they were all OK but until we were able to hear that they were OK and were being released from the emergency room we were really nervous. We thought about it for about 2 seconds and started packing to come home. We new we would not enjoy ourselves being there knowing they were badly shaken up and their car possibly totaled. We got home last night about 11:15 PM and spent today taking care of Connor and trying to help Kristina so she could rest a little. We will try to help her get a rent car tomorrow. Dan is on a new job and really does not need to be taking off. Thank goodness for car seats and seat belts. A Hummer hit them while they were stopped at a red light. It appears he was not looking and never hit his breaks. It shoved her car through the intersection. Fortunately no one was coming through the light from the right or left that could have hit them broadside. That could have been really bad. Kristina is very sore and stiff today. We are so thankful they are all OK.

We received Harmon and Tanya's e-mail today. We will certainly be keeping Michael and Kim in our prayers next week.

Again, it was great to see everyone. Please make this blog known to your kids and see if they will start posting messages. Maybe this could become a good source for family information.

Love,

Moody

Mugg Update

Caleb is getting big! He is already 11 lbs. 4 oz. He, like most of the rest of us, is having reflux issues. We went to the Gastroenterologist yesterday to get some guidance on helping him be more comfortable. I will be starting a "no cow's protein" diet next week. Sounds like fun doesn't it???? :) Anything to help him out! Hope everyone is well! Kristina

Trying to get the hang of this blogging business.  Here is a picture of me with my two grandsons.

Looking forward to the reunion this weekend.  Hope a lot of the family can come.