Bavaria? 👎🏻☹️ Minnesota? 👍🏻🤩
It's an immigration story!
Today we’re diving into Carl’s parents and my great-great grandparents, John and Theresa:
Smash the patriarchy, but let’s start with Great-Great Grandpop John:
John was born on December 27, 1857, to Therese Schambeck, age 40, and Peter Eidenschink, age 37.
Let’s quickly cover John’s ancestral history for a second, because there’s really not much to go on:
Peter Eidenschink, my great-great-great grandfather, was born in 1819 in the village of Zinzenzell in the municipality of Wiesenfelden, which is located in Bavaria, Germany. His parents were:
I don’t have any information on these 4th great-grandparents other than Georg appears to have been born in Schleissersgrub, which is a parish in the village of Wetzelsberg. Wetzelsberg is in the municipality of Stallwang, Bavaria. Katharina appears to have been born in Painstreich, which can no longer be located on a map, but I’m going to assume was also a parish of Wetzelsberg.
Other than that, that’s all the info I have on Great-Great-Great-Great Grandparents Georg and Katharina. No birth dates, no death dates, no records of Great-Great-Great Grandfather Peter’s other siblings if there were some.
Great-Great-Great Grandmother Therese Schambeck was born May 27, 1817 in Haslstein, which appears to be a parish in the village of Wiesenfelden, in the municipality of Straubing-Bogen, Bavaria, Germany.
Her mother (my 4th great-grandmother), Maria, appears to have been born in 1785 in Haslhof.
And I know what you’re thinking…
But feast your eyes on this instead:
Haslhof in Bavaria, Germany
For both Therese and Peter, the above is all the info I could find about their families.
On August 16 1844, my 3rd great-grandparents Peter and Therese married in Zinzenzell, and together, they had five children:
Which again, brings us back to Great-Great-Grandpappy John. John was born and raised in Oberpfalz in the Upper Palatinate of eastern Bavaria, Germany:
Also, just to make it about me for a second, can I just say that Bavaria has always been the part of Germany I’ve most wanted to visit? It has low mountains and fairy-tale forests and sun-dappled valleys and over 100 castles along the Naab river valley!!!!
ALSO LOOK AT HOW CUTE THE TOWNS LOOK!!!
And yet, in 1882, at the age of 25, Great-Great Granddad John was like, “Germany? Tired. America? Wired!” and said see ya to the beautiful landscapes, gingerbread houses, depressed economy and zero jobs in exchange for the flat boring plains, long winters that break the soul, and fertile but also constantly-flooding river valleys in Minnesota.
Thus, John came to the United States alone at the age of 25, arriving on May 16, 1882 in the village of Detroit Lakes, MN - which at the time comprised of mostly a “few scattered buildings” - and rented a farm five miles north of town for his brother to operate while he worked in town.
But not before asking his hometown hottie Miss Theresa Winzerl if he could continue to court her by writing to her from America 🥰✍🏼👄🚢.
That’s right, folks - Great-Great Grandpappy John was in love with a girl from home, and wrote her letters that basically consisted of “Oceans apart, day after day…and I slowly go insane 😱…I hear your voice, on the line in my mind (transcontinental phone calls weren’t possible until 1914!), but it doesn’t stop the pain ☹️. If I see you next to never…then how can we say forever?”
To which Theresa would reply, “Wherever you go…whatever you do…I will be right here waiting for you 💋. Whatever it takes! Or how my heart breaks 💔…
BUT ALSO SEND ME A TICKET TO THE U.S. OF A., BUDDY, BECAUSE AMERICA? HOT. GERMANY? NOT. SO GET ME ON A SHIP AYYY-SAP OR ELSE THIS LONG DISTANCE ROMANCE IS OVER!!!”
And so he did! On April 7, 1883, Theresa arrived in Detroit Lakes to be with her man her man her MAN.
And that is where we will pick up again in the next chapter! Mostly because I tried to fit everything into this one and Substack was like, “oh bet?”!
See you in the next part!
Lightly tip-tappin’ my manicured fingertips across your back,
- Amber