Where to begin?
I'm trying to further my research on my Great Grandfather Wilhelm Eggersdorf who left the Port of Hamburg in 1872 to come to the United States. I have no idea where he was born in Germany and my research on this website is a dead end.
Answers
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Start with finding every possible U.S. document that you can find for Wilhelm and his children. You need to figure out his birth date and birth location. Marriage records, census records, death records, naturalization records should all exist and may have valuable clues. Also look for his and his wife's obituary in both german language and english language newspapers where he lived in the U.S.
Be sure to look for both the civil and church records for him for each event. See what records are available from the cemetery where he is buried. Sometimes a cemetery record will include birth date and location.
Are there other Eggersdorf's living nearby in the U.S. that could be his relatives? Follow the same process for them.
You say he left Hamburg in 1872 so I assume you have found him on a passenger list. At that time Hamburg passenger lists recorded a place of residence and age. What age and place of residence is recorded? Who else traveled with him? If it appears someone else was traveling with him then follow the same process for them to see if you can locate their place and date of birth.
Is this your Wilhelm https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/L6NB-GB1 on familysearch (born 1849)?
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Ancestry has a Wilhelm Eggersdorf who emigrated in 1872:
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I've only been seeing Germany listed as birthplace on the documents I've seen so far, the ship's manifest only shows Germany for the passengers as well. Yes, born in 1849.
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It looks like you have only found the passenger list upon arrival in New York. As Ulrich Neitzel posted above, Ancestry has the Hamburg passenger list upon departure which gives his residence as Grünberg, Brandenburg.
Ancestry also has an index from the Brandenburg Prussia Emigration Records
which gives his full name as Wilhelm Ferdinand August Eggersdorf, birthdate as 11 Sep 1849 and place of origin as "Grueneberg/Prenzlau" which is here:
That is only an index, you might want to try finding the actual image of the document, it may have more information.
Unfortunately he must have moved to Grünberg from elsewhere because his birth record is not in the church records there.
There is a Gottlieb Müllenhagen b 1852 from Grünberg traveling with him in 1872 whose birth record is in the Grünberg records. Gottlieb Müllenhagen ended up in Michigan also as George Mullenhagen.
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The actual Hamburg passenger list image on Ancestry is here:
Wilhelm Eggersdorf appears on line 362. His age is recorded as 23 and his occupation is smith. The column heading which records his residence is entitled: "Bisheriger Wohnort" = Previous place of residence. What is written in this column is: Grünberg, Brandenburg. This is not necessarily where Wilhelm was born.
One of William's daughters, Mary Genevieve (Eggersdorf) Dresser (FS ID: LXQF-77Q) died in November 1908. Her death certificate states her father William Eggersdorf was born in Mecklenburg, Prussia (at least that's how I interpret the handwriting on the death certificate).
Here is the link to this death certificate on Ancestry:
If you don't have access to Ancestry at home, you can go to your local/nearest FamilySearch center.
Note: The passenger list image was found in an Ancestry database entitled: "Hamburg Passenger Lists, 1850-1934".
The death certificate image was found in an Ancestry database entitled: "Michigan, U.S., Death Records, 1867-1952".
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