Hello, My Great-grandmother was named Anna Margaretha Sophia Pachelbel. She was born 20 February
My Great-grandmother was named Anna Margaretha Sophia Pachelbel. She was born 20 February 1819 in Nuremburg, (baptized at either St. Sebald or St. Lorenz) the daughter of Elias Pachelbel and Katherina Margaretha Jaekel.
The family lived at 280 Ludwigstrasse. I have ancestral data on the family back to the 1100 AD in Austria.
I am looking for more detailed biographical information regarding Margaretha. She emigrated from Nuremberg in 1849, on the paddle wheel steam ship U.S.M. Washington, arrived in New York City, and settled in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. She came from a family who were master bottle makers for at least six generations in Nuremberg. She was 30 years of age and not married when she departed alone from Bremen in 1849. Both of her parents were deceased, and she was one of only three siblings still living.
My primary question is, why did she leave? I have some theories, the foremost of which is that she may have been involved with the German Revolution of 1848, whether as an activist or solely in principle. Based on her family, status, and location, she seemed to fit the profile. However, I have found no way to prove this, one way or anohter. I am wondering what records or information sources may exist that could provide more detailed information about what may have made her decide to leave her family and the land of her nativity and go to the United States, and specifically to Reading, Pennsylvania? Was there a known movement of people from Nuremburg to this American location?
I am also interested in descriptions of what the life of a 19th-century master bottle maker would have been like. Also, descriptions of the journey Margaretha would have made to get from Nuremberg to Bremen.
Any information or direction for further research that you could provide will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your kind assistance with my inquiry.
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I looked at the St. Sebald and St. Lorenz church records on Archion for the baptism of Anna Margaretha Sophia Pachelbel but found nothing. I also saw an Ancestry family tree (Chadwick) that had baptism dates for Margaretha as well as her siblings. With a bit more searching in Nürnberg I found the baptism records for all the children in the records of Nürnberg-St. Jakob. I also found the death of Elias Pachelbel there in 1826. However, I could not find a marriage record for Elias and Katharina Margaretha in any of those records, nor a death for her. The records for St. Jakob only start in 1810, so too late to look for baptism records of the parents.
That doesn't directly answer your question, but I thought you might want to know the facts. It would appear that Margaretha married soon after arriving in Reading, since she appeared with her husband in the 1850 census there. I would suggest that perhaps she knew someone who had previously settled in Reading, perhaps a friend or another family member. One suggestion would be to look at sponsors for their wedding or the baptisms of their children to see if there are any familiar names. Another idea would be to look at some of the people near her name on the passenger list and see if you can find evidence of them in the Reading area.
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Wow, I'm very impressed with your research! I think it's wonderful that you know so much about your family already!
I think it would be incredible if every family knew the story behind their immigrants. Unfortunately, not everybody keeps a record of why they emigrated, so often we do have to do some sleuthing and come up with some good guesses based on what we know about the individual and their life, and what was going on in their home country.
Another valuable source of information can be to see what was going on in the country they emigrated to. Often, destination countries offered numerous benefits that seemed to outweigh the drawbacks of all the effort and money it took to get there. For example, many Germans emigrated to the American Midwest later in the 19th century because large amounts of land had opened up for settlement (Germany was very crowded at the time), not to mention the religious freedom offered by the United States in contrast to the political religious oppression that was happening in Germany.
You may be on to something with the German Revolution, so I think that is an intriguing theory. I also find it interesting that Margaretha went to Reading, Pennsylvania, of all the places. Do you know what her occupation was in Reading? Maybe she had heard of a job opportunity there. Reading was a major stop on the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, which was built in 1843 and was a huge railway that provided coal from the coal fields of western Pennsylvania to Philadelphia and the eastern seaboard cities. Reading probably grew rapidly in the 1840's due to the rapid expansion of the P&R Railroad during that time, which meant lots of job opportunities in the area.
Finally, putting myself in Margaretha's shoes, if I was single, past the age when most women were getting married, and all of my immediate family had passed away, I imagine I might move to another country simply for a change of pace and to try to start over with a new job in a new place. Perhaps there were not many career opportunities (or good marriage material) for Margaretha in Nuremberg, so she decided to be adventurous and see what the US had to offer her. (And clearly it worked out for her because she ended up meeting her husband there.)
As far as actual records or information, in lieu of family stories from a primary source, I think your best sources would be any emigration information you can find on her, mainly a ship's passenger list and any US naturalization documents if she ever applied for citizenship. A passenger list may have recorded information such as her occupation at the time of her emigration and where she was planning on staying upon arrival.
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>My primary question is, why did she leave?
The answer to this question is almost never possible to ascertain. Unless you have a journal from her or at least a family story *that can be traced directly back to the source*, you cannot know for sure why someone emigrated. As you have suggested,there may be some hypotheses based on social and political circumstances, but that is not proof.
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Thanks everyone for the input. I think Fritz is probably right about never knowing, but there's still hope. Bob, thank you for making the effort to find that reference to St. Jakobs. That is a missing piece I did not previously have. I had copies of their civil birth records, but they did not specify in which church they were baptized. I had always assumed it was either St. Lorenz or St. Sebald, since those were the traditional Pachelbel family churches. Like you, I was puzzled when I didn't find the birth records in those specific churches. Thanks for take the extra step. That will help me out tremendously!
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