Hallelulah! (or however you say it in German)

Tonight my good friend Suzi (she writes a new genealogy blog here so do go there!) and I were talking genealogy, as we often do when we're together.   I was telling her of my longstanding troubles finding the passenger lists for either of my mother's German grandparents, the Deppermans and the Papsteins.

In the Papstein case (August Karl Papstein, his wife Anna, and their daughter Minna) I have some naturalization records and a story written for their 50th wedding anniversary about how they met and where they lived in Germany (Koslin District, Neu Lobitz/Janicow, Kreiß Dramburg, Hinterpommern, Prussia (now Poland) and what August did (served in the German Cavalry training Lippanzer stallions) and the date that they came over (29 Mar 1889, no sure place where they disembarked, but they ended up in Peotone, Will Co., IL.) I've had no luck finding them in the lists, however.  None.  Grrrr.

Then there was the even trickier one -- my great-grandfather Franz (Frank) Herman Depperman.  Franz ended up marrying Minna, the daughter of August and Anna.)

I'd been looking online for Franz for years, and in books for years before that, with no luck whatsoever.  I told Suzi the little I thought I knew --  that family stories had been that Franz had come over from Germany as a teenager and had spent some time in Pennsylvania as a barber before finding his way to Peotone in Will Co., IL.  As the years passed I wondered if these stories were completely true because I found that his mother Henrietta had died in Peotone, so that meant she'd come over too.  I also learned that she had married at least twice more....once to a Schmidt and once to a Johann Koehn.  She was buried in Peotone next to Johann.

 I'd tried every possible combination of spellings that I could think of to look for Franz and his mother (and for Johann too since the immigration date was 1897 on the 1900 census.) Nothing.

I was convinced that both my German families had just grown wings and flapped over here.

Anyway, Suzi was looking over the lists on Ancestry with me and out of the blue she said,  "Have you tried D-O-E-P-P-E-R-M-A-N-N?"

*blink*  Huh.  No.  No, I hadn't.  I typed it in, and POW!  There it was!  Ta daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I am fairly certain I squealed.

The stories were true or at least partially so.  My great-grandfather didn't come over alone, but he was a teenager, and he came over with his mother and stepfather (mistranscribed as Kolhn) on the ship Switzerland out of Antwerp, Belgium.  Whatever were they doing in Belgium?  They landed in Philadephia, Pennsylvania, in May 1896, and there's the Pennsylvania connection.   They were from either Bramburg or Dramburg -- it's hard to read.  Which one do you think it is?  I hope Dramburg since so were my Papsteins, and even if the two families didn't know each other in Germany (which I wonder about -- Franz's mother-in-law Anna Papstein's maiden name was Koehn!) it allows me to concentrate on one area of Germany for further research.  Their passage was paid for by a man named Ferd/Fred/Ferdinand Nickel, Johann Koehn's son in law.  Is that Johann's daughter's husband from a first marriage, or Henriette's?  Who knows?  Anyway, they were going to join Ferdinand in Peotone.

I looked down the list and saw another teen going to Peotone named Gustav Borwig.  He states he is going to be with his uncle Ferdinand Nickel. So who is Gustav?

Well, I have more avenues of research now.  I will have to find out who all these people are and that'll be fodder for another post.  As it was, I jumped up and gave Suzi a big old hug.

She said, "My bill will be in the mail."

Now THAT'S a debt I'll be happy to pay!  *cue genealogical Happy Dance music*