Dry History - Our German Roots

As we begin to explore our roots, I believe it is important to understand the climate of the times. We find that nations are ravaged by wars. People are defending their faith, and hardship is always a step away. The 17th Century was years filled with war. They spanned all across Europe.

In the 1600's: Many Germans emigrated through the ports of LeHavre, Rotterdam and London. Some were seeking religious freedom in the United States after Martin Luther split from the Catholic Church.

Jamestown, Virginia was established in 1608 as the first permanent English settlement in America. Only one year later the ship "Mary and Margaret" brought the first German immigrants to the United States.

In 1620, more German immigrants arrived on the legendary Mayflower. Inspired from those who fled before them, German mineral specialists and saw-millwrights who came to live and work in the United States. In fact, the first sawmill in the U.S. was opened by German millwrights who came over on the Mayflower from Hamburg.

The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) and the War of Spanish Succession had destroyed vast parts of Southwest Germany (this is the general area where our ancestors lived). The fighting often was out of control, with marauding bands of hundreds or thousands of starving soldiers spreading plague, plunder, and murder.

The armies that were under control moved back and forth across the countryside year after year, levying heavy taxes on cities, and seizing the animals and food stocks of the peasants without payment.

The enormous social disruption over three decades caused a dramatic decline in population because of killings, disease, crop failures, declining birth rates and random destruction, and the out-migration of terrified people. Many immigrants left in the hope that the New World would provide a brighter future for themselves and their families.

If you are a true history buff, check out 18th century history of Germany, The Holy Roman Empire, History of Germany and German Empire on Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia: " Throughout the 18th century, the Habsburgs were embroiled in various European conflicts, such as the War of the Spanish Succession, the War of the Polish Succession and the War of the Austrian Succession. The German dualism between Austria and Prussia dominated the empire's history after 1740."

It is during this time that ancestors of the Rockefeller, Presley and Astorthese families emigrated from Germany to the U.S. It is during these years that the borders and structure of Germany was in a constant state of change. Kingdoms rose and fell. Regions were renamed. Countries expanded and contracted. 1806 was the end of the Holy Roman Empire. Germany had been its biggest holding.

I attempted to reduce this era into a snapshot view, but it is far too complex. It is in this complex world that the parents and grandparents of our known ancestors grew up. This couldn't help but make an impact on their lives and ways of thinking. Life in the Kingdom of Wurttemburg was not easy.

In the end analysis, the German Empire was established in 1871. The reagans were free to choose their own state religion. The region of our forefathers chose Lutheranism.

Throughout the 1800’s religious freedom, and economic benefits continued to motivate forces of German emigrants to come to America. Among the immigrants were Lutherans, Swiss Mennonites, Moravians, Baptist Dunkers, and Schwenkfelders.

In a heavily agrarian society, land ownership played a central role. Germany's nobles dominated not only the localities, but also the Prussian court, and especially the Prussian army. Increasingly after 1815, a centralized Prussian government based in Berlin took over the powers of the nobles, which in terms of control over the peasantry had been almost absolute.

The emancipation of the serfs ended in 1830. The peasants were now ex-serfs and could own their land, buy and sell it, and move about freely. The end of serfdom raised the personal legal status of the peasantry.

A bank was set up so that landowner could borrow government money to buy land from peasants (the peasants were not allowed to use it to borrow money to buy land until 1850). The result was that the large landowners obtained larger estates, and many peasant became landless tenants, or moved to the cities or to America. The other German states imitated Prussia after 1815.

The Kingdom of Württemberg existed from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the end of World War I. From 1815 to 1866 it was a member state of the German Confederation and from 1871 to 1918 it was a federal state in the German Empire.

The agrarian reforms were driven by progressive governments and local elites. They abolished feudal obligations and divided collectively owned common land into private parcels.

The reforms produced increased productivity and population growth. It strengthened the traditional social order because wealthy peasants obtained most of the former common land, while the rural proletariat - those whose only resource was their labor - was left without land. The Junker class (young nobleman) maintained its large estates and monopolized political power.

This was the political climate our forefathers lived in. I can only assume grandparents spoke to their children and grandchildren about these years.

Letters became the social media for the Europeans of the 17th and 18th centuries. Public postal systems became the equivalent of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and smartphones. Letters crisscrossed Europe by the thousands daily.

The 1800s would bring more wars, new countries, new challenges, new innovations, and new opportunities. It is still a decade before our first known ancestor is born in 1821.

It seems logical to me that events of history got passed down from generation to generation. I also imagine that history got changed a bit with every telling. Doesn’t it seem surreal that the families of our ancestor heard firsthand stories of the the Spanish Inquisition and the cruelties surrounding it?

These wars would serve a positive purpose. They allowed the U.S. to grow when it transacted the Louisiana Purchase <ref>Louisiana Purchase</ref> (828,000 square miles) for less than three cents per acre. This averages to less than forty-two cents per acre in 2010 dollars.

This purchase included areas which would become the portion of Minnesota <ref>wikipedia:Minnesota</ref> west of the Mississippi River <ref>Template:Mississippi River</ref> and a large portion of South Dakota <ref>wikipedia:South Dakota</ref>, both of which would be home to our ancestors and to their descendants.

It would be another hundred years before our ancestors reached this promised land, but come they would.