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| Adolph Sturm (seated) and Johanna Schoth Sturm |
We are lucky that this branch of our family has had an interest in genealogy going back a few generations. I first heard of August and Louise when I was a child. I knew that their daughter Johanna had married Adolph Sturm and that Johanna's sister Henrietta had married Adolph's brother Edward.
It was not so easy to learn more about their families, though – a common refrain on this side of the family tree! Luckily for us, our grandmother had saved a letter from a cousin outlining a few generations of Schoth descendants. Using this as a starting point, we were able to learn more about the Schoth-Wenzlaff family.
In this post, I will discuss what we know about the Schoth-Wenzlaff family. Future posts will discuss the DNA evidence and possible connections to other Schoth and Wenzlaff families from Gross and Klein Jannewitz.
Schoth and Wenzlaff origins
According to the Hamburg passenger lists, our Schoth family resided in Gross Jannewitz, Lauenburg, Pommern (Pomerania), Prussia. This location is now in Poland (Janowice, Pomorskie, Poland).
Although Gross Jannewitz was just a little further west from the border between the provinces of Pomerania, where the Schoths lived, and West Prussia, where many of my father's Kashubian family lived, there was a significant cultural difference between the two groups. Pomerania had been Germanized for centuries already. Most inhabitants spoke German and were of Protestant religion. Almost certainly they identified as German. Whereas in West Prussia, many inhabitants still spoke the native Slavic language, Kashubian, and most were Catholics.
Unfortunately, though we were able to trace my father's family back several more generations using the Catholic church record books, very few record books from the Protestant parishes in this region have survived. There was an Evangelical Lutheran parish in Gross Jannewitz but none of the records survive today. Civil records from 1876 onward were preserved, but August and Louise Schoth and their family had already emigrated by then. From these civil records, however, it appears that the Schoth family may have been from Gross Jannewitz and the Wenzlaffs from Klein Jannewitz (now Janowiczki).
Migration to the new world
August and Louise came to the U.S. in 1872 with eight of their children. Their son Carl followed in 1874. They can be found in the New York and Hamburg passenger lists. The names, ages, and even genders of the children are mixed up, but we can be sure this was our family. The majority of records quite consistently show that the arrival date was 1872 and, even though the record itself is inaccurate, it is nonetheless quite close to the names of the children in the proper order.
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| Schoth family arrival: 28 March 1872, New York; ship: Hammonia |
Strangely, although images of the corresponding Hamburg passenger lists were scanned, the page with our Schoth family was left out. It would have been nice to see the original handwriting. I bet it would have made more sense than what we see in the New York passenger list. Luckily for us, Gustav Schoth, though traveling on the same ship as his parents, was a young man listed separately. His entry clearly shows the correct surname as well as the village name.
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| Gustav Schoth departure: 13 Mar 1872, Hamburg; ship: Hammonia |
It is not clear whether the family lived in Chicago when they first arrived in America, though I suspect they did. There were already other families from Gross Jannewitz and neighboring villages living there, including several Wenzlaffs. No doubt some were relatives.
At some point between 1872 and 1880, August purchased farm land in Logan county. In January 1874, daughters Johanna and Wilhelmine were both married in Chicago. It is very likely that they were living with their parents at that time. Thus August and Louise probably left Chicago after this date. They and their children Gustav, William, and Anna all lived in Atlanta, Illinois, when the 1880 census was taken. One married daughter, Fredericka Hoose, also resided in Atlanta with her family in 1880.
