What is the point? What did our ancestors think about? What will my descendants think about me? Will my descendants think about me? What if I don’t have any descendants? Will I leave anything behind that anyone will care about? How will I make my mark on the world? Who, what, when, where, why? Go back far enough, and there are ancestors who we will never even know their name. We know they existed, but not who, or where, or when.

You have left your mark on the world more than you realize, though, in countless ways, that you may not even have noticed at the time, but made a difference in someone’s life. It may be a descendant, a neighbor, friend, even a stranger. It could be something as little as giving a nice restaurant server a big tip, which meant she could now afford to get a cake for her son’s birthday, and you’ll never know it but it made a difference to her, and to her son. Or maybe something bigger, like helping an elderly neighbor by mowing her lawn every week after her husband died. Or volunteering for your church, animal shelter, food bank, whatever. You have touched many, many lives. People may not remember your name, or even know your name, but you changed their life, if even a little bit.

Our ancestors did the same, and we will most likely never know how. But the world is a better place because they, and you, have been a part of it.

Yeah I updated to the latest release of WordPress, and it screwed up all my little emojis on my posts. They are now little squares. Sigh. I guess I better go see what else got screwed up on the site. But it does drop caps now, oh boy.

The research has been slow going lately, as it seems to yield more questions than answers. Nothing to write about. So I decided to devote some time to answer a question that was nagging at me, and couldn’t get out of my mind.

Years ago we found Peter Christian and Christine Dabel Muesebeck, with their three children at the time (Wilhelmine, Rudolph, and Maria), had arrived in New York 25 Jan 1869 on the ship Deutschland from Bremen. That actually took awhile to find, what with bad handwriting and spelling. The Bremen departure lists mostly no longer exist, so I couldn’t cross-check their departure from Bremen, but there was no reason to doubt that journey.

Recently, however, Hamburg departure lists became available, and the family showed up on the list as departing 01 Oct 1868 on the ship Palmerston from Hamburg.

So the question is, why did they leave Hamburg on one ship, and arrive in New York about four months later on a different ship and from a different port? That makes no sense, and the voyage should have taken about two months.

So first I looked for an arrival in New York of the Palmerston, but there was no arrival list within that time frame. An old Google Groups posting had a list of the Palmerston’s voyages, and there was one listed as “1868/69 New York/Bremen” which was curious. So it really did get to New York but from Bremen, is that what that means?

Next I searched every free newspaper site I could think of, to see if I could find any information, but came up empty-handed.

Maybe there was a problem with one of the family members, and the family had to stay in Germany awhile? So I took a look at the page of the departure list for the Palmerston that had our Muesebeck family on it, and searched for some of the other families listed to see if I could find their arrivals. And I did find them: 3 of the families also arrived on the Deutschland on 25 Jan 1869, and the other 2 families arrived on a different ship two weeks later, also from Bremen. That strongly hints that there was a problem with the Palmerston after it departed, and all the passengers ended up in Bremen where they eventually departed for New York.

The next thing to do was try to find out information about the Palmerston. The Hamburg departure list gave the captain’s name, the shipping line, and other information, all of which I searched for with little success. I added the word Hamburg to the search criteria, and finally started to get somewhere.

There was a German Wikipedia article about the shipping line, which described filthy conditions on board its ships, with not enough food and water, and many deaths aboard from hunger, thirst, and cholera. The ship Palmerston was mentioned as having a “Complaint about Illegal Establishment(s) 1869-1870,” with the source for that as the Hamburg State Archives: Headline on Palmerston.

Searching the Hamburg State Archives doesn’t yield much information, because only the titles of articles are online; the actual articles have to be ordered. But the title of one, under the subheading England and Great Britain, was something about thanking the Senate for supporting police in matters relating to the Palmerston. Now there is a clue, something happened to the Palmerston that resulted in a police inquiry in Great Britain. And I still have a sub to FindMyPast, which has lots of historical newspapers, mostly Great Britain because it is a British site after all. They also have US newspapers that are not available on any other site, but I digress.

So searching for Palmerston in British newspapers in 1868-1869 yields thousands of hits. Turns out there is a Lord and Lady Palmerston, buildings and streets named Palmerston, etc. So like before I added the word Hamburg to the search criteria, and voila. Many articles about the ship Palmerston, although they are mostly the same one copied to various other papers, as far away as London and Glasgow, so it was definitely newsworthy.

In trying to figure out the details of a voyage from Germany to New York, I would not think to start with Britain 😆

Click here to read transcripts of the two main articles.

Well it seems I have a bit more time to myself the past few months, since I can’t go to the hospital or doctor office any more. Only the actual patient can come in the building, and they monitor that very closely, looking up your appointment to be sure you really have one, and making sure you leave the building as soon as you are done.

Still researching hubby’s ancestors, now on a different line. It’s slow going because these families are very complicated, what with many early deaths. So there are widows and widowers remarrying, many more than once. Some of the children get all blended together in one family, and some of the children end up being raised by different families altogether. One particular family ended up with three boys all named Henry, all about the same age. I hope they had an easier time keeping track of them than I’m having.

Hope everyone is okay out there, and things get back to normal soon. But some jobs and businesses are gone for good, so it’s going to take awhile for the country to get back to where we were last year. 🙁 And it sure looks like common sense is a thing of the past too 😐

All ye within this place. And with true love and brotherhood, each other now embrace.