Family History Writing Challenge - The Journey to Milwaukee

                           

The Journey to Milwaukee

The villages of Villmar, Selters, and Bad Camberg
are all part of the  Burbach saga.

Georg Burbach left his home village in Oberselters, Nassau, Hesse, Germany in search of a better life.  He moved to the village of Villmar where he met and married Catherine Caspari about 1848.  Their oldest son Adam was born in Sept 1849 and died in Dec 1854.  Son Hermann was born in 1852 and John was born in 1854.  In 1856 Georg and Catherine, with their two surviving sons left Villmar and began their journey to America.  Later Georg’s sister Helena and her family would settle in Milwaukee along with members of Catherine’s Caspari family.

                              

In 1846, three neighboring towns combined to form the city of Milwaukee. The population continued to grow thanks to the waves of German immigrants over the next several decades.  Originally the area was home to many Indian tribes. The word "Milwaukee" may come from Potawatomi language minwaking, or Ojibwe language ominowakiing, "Gathering place [by the water]”.[i] [ii]

The German Revolution of 1848 sparked the immigration of over a million Germans to the United States.  Wisconsin was a popular destination because of the availability of cheap land and assurances of freedom.[iii]  Many of those arriving had suffered poverty in Germany. 

Milwaukee has long been known for it’s meat packing and processing businesses.  In the 1860s the pork processing industry boomed, in part due to the Civil War and the needs of the war effort.  It was also the era that Patrick Cudahy and Phillip Armour were establishing their companies. Many of Milwaukee’s population were involved in the meat industry as drovers, butchers, packers, and transporters.  It was a good place to settle and raise a family with good opportunities to make a living. Georg was first a drover, then a cattle broker and later a butcher.

Milwaukee’s large German community supported the publication of many German Language Newspapers, such as Wisconsin Banner and Volksfreund, which reported on local as well as world news.  Church and club news as well as school news and births, marriages, and deaths often appeared only in the German Language Newspapers.

(358)

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[i] ^ ^a b Bruce, William George (1936). A Short History of Milwaukee. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: The Bruce Publishing Company. pp. 15–16. LCCN 36010193.

[ii] ^ "Ojibwe Dictionary". Freelang. Retrieved 2007-03-25. 

[iii] Wikipedia

photo credit Google images

Doors of Faith - Oberselters, Hesse, Germany

St Antonius Catholic Church, Oberselters, Hesse, Germany

This church was the home of my German Burbach ancestors as far back as 1732.  I have read the records of marriages and baptisms of this church.  Oberselters was a small village outside of Bad Camberg.  The Burbach family attended this church until recent times and may still be members there.  The name still appears in the cemetery.  My Great-great-grandfather Georg Burbach left Oberselters about 1848 and traveled to the nearby village of Villmar where he met and married Catharina Casperi.  They remained in Villmar until 1856 when they immigrated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin with their sons Hermann and Johann after burying their son Adam in Villmar in 1854.

We visited this church in 2003 and took this photo of an informational plaque posted on the wall.

Photo of St Antonius Church, Oberselters by ({Information |Description = Kirche St. Antonius Bad Camberg-Oberselters, Deutschland|Source = selbst fotografiert |Date = 26.01.2008|Author = Volker Thies (Asdrubal) |Permission = siehe unten |other_versions = }}  used under the creative commons license.

Geneabloggers Surname Saturday - Burbach of Oberselters, Germany

One of my genealogy goals for this year is to concentrate on one family line every month and clean up their file.  I wrote about the Burbachs on the first Saturday of January.  Today I will summarize what I have accomplished this month.

I have established that 2 additional lines of the family migrated to Milwaukee, WI in the 1870s.  They remain to be explored fully.

I have ordered several transcriptions from Milwaukee German Newspapers in  hopes of documenting cause of death, marriages, etc.  One thing I hope to get more details on is the drowning death of my grandmother's brother John at age 9.  I have only found one reference to it.  In the personal diary of a Milwaukee policeman.

I will continue to check for possible duplicate people and enter source citations.  As information becomes available I will keep working on the Burbachs but with February it will be time to concentrate of the Fergusons.

Genabloggers - Surname Saturday Burbach and Associated Families

As one of my genealogy goals for 2011, I plan to work on one family per month and clean up my files, find new information, and cite sources.  For January I am beginning with 


BURBACH - Milwaukee, WI and Hesse Nassau, Germany
                        (also Heer, Meurer, Probst and others)


My Burbach line is from Oberselters, Hesse-Nassau, Germany.  The family lived in Oberselters as far back as 1732 and began the migration to the United States in the 1850s.   Church records show marriages into the Heer, Muerer, Probst, Kreppel, and Schwartz families among others.  The Burbachs from Oberselters were farmers and became grocers, butchers, farmers, and newsmen.
Various branches of the family settled in Milwaukee, WI, St Louis, MO, and Harris County, Texas.


As I persue this family, I often reflect on the courage it took to travel to a new country, learn a new language, and learn a new trade.  I am sure their faith gave them strength and comfort as they have retained it to this generation.  

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Same birthday as yours?

1)  Is there a person in your genealogy database that has the same birth date that you do?  If so, tell us about him or her - what do you know, and how is s/he related to you?

2)  For bonus points, how did you determine this?  What feature or process did you use in your software to work this problem out?  I think the Calendar feature probably does it, but perhaps you have a trick to make this work outside of the calendar function.

Above is Randy Seaver’s challenge for this week.  I have accepted that  challenge and it exposed me to new ways to use my genealogy software.  I did the work using both Family Tree Maker and Roots Magic using the calendar option.  I also used the index of individuals in Legacy and moved the date of birth field to the first column and just scanned through the list.

Using the calendar option in both programs I found five individuals  in my data base that share my  October 6^th birthday.  Only one of those individuals is a blood relative.  She is Katherine Josephine Spiller and a 4^th cousin once removed.  Katherine is a descendant, as I am, of the Burbach family of Oberselters, Hesse-Nassau, Germany.  She was both born and died in Austin, Travis, Texas.    Both on our immigrant ancestors came th the United States in the 1850s.  Her ancestors went to Texas and mine to Wisconsin.  The others sharing my birthday are ancestors of my husband. 

The challenge was probably faster using the calendar report, but it was a totally new report for me and I use the index of individuals on a regular basis to go to who I am working on.

Tombstone Tuesday - Agnes and Jacob Pabst

Cemetery of St Anthony Church, Oberselters, Nassau, Hesse, Germany. Some of their ancestors migrated to the United States. Most likely it was St Louis or Texas.

This tombstone resides in the cemetery of St Anthony church in Oberselters, Nassau, Germany. Amazingly the Burbach family has lived in this tiny village for over 200 years. To be sure, remnants of the family have emigrated to the United States in the 1840s/50s. The destinations selected ranged from Milwaukee, WI to St Louis, MO, and the hill country of Texas.  My G-g-grandfather Georg left Oberselters about 1847 and settled in Villmar, Nassau, Germany where he met and married Catharina Caspari.  They has three sons before they emigrated to Milwaukee in 1856.  Sadly, their oldest son, Adam, was buried in Villmar in 1854.  George was one of eleven children which may explain why the family name still appears in the parish cemetery.

Anna Burbach

Anna Burbach - Oberselters, Nassau, Germany

In December of 2003 my husband and I traveled to Germany to visit our daughter and her family. While there, we made a visit to Oberselters, Nassau, Germany. My great-great-grandfather, Georg Burbach, traveled from Oberselters to Villmar and married Catharina Caspari in 1848. We were very lucky to find the family name still present in the cemetery in Oberselters. Usually one only retains a grave, in Germany, for 20 to 30 years.

Surname Saturday - The Burbachs

I always knew my grandmother Henrietta was born and raised in Milwaukee, WI and that she was of German heritage. What I didn't know was that her father was born in Germany and immigrated with his parents in 1856. In all the censuses the family faithfully said that they came from Hesse-Nassau. That helped me find the immigrant records from Hesse-Nassau and that gave me the date and village that Georg and Catherina Burbach left with their 2 sons, John and Hermann. It was from the village of Villmar.

The church records from Villmar revealed that Georg Burbach (born in Oberselters) married Catharina Caspari in Villmar and they had three sons born there. Adam (b 1849 - d 1854 Villmar), Hermann (b 1852 Villmar - d 1896 Milwaukee, WI), John (b 1854 Villmar - d ? Milwaukee), George (b & d 1857 Milwaukee, WI), Helena (b 1868 Milwaukee, WI), and William (b 1870 Milwaukee, WI).

Exploring the Oberselters church records shows that the prolific Burbach family (George was one of 11 children) were farmers and remained in the village for over 100 years before they began to emmigrate. At this point I can go back to 1756 when Johan Jacob Burbach married Helena Mueller in Oberselters. On the marriage record Johan Jacob said he was born in Oberselters in 1713/1723. Guess I'll keep looking for him - it's an unsolved mystery.