Immigration – Page 3 – A Deck of Ancestors

52 Weeks – Week 49: New Horizons

It’s Week 49 of the 52 Ancestors Challenge. As we approach the horizon of a new year, this week’s theme is “New Horizons”.

I’ve written before about my mother’s maternal lineage, who are all Germans from Russia. This is the story of my mother’s immigrant great grandparents, Michael Lerner and Barbara Schmidt, who sought new horizons in not one, but two countries.

Michael Lerner (1862 – 1947)
Barbara Schmidt (1865 – 1936)

Michael and Barbara were both born in the Beresan district of Kherson province in what is now Ukraine, but which at the time was part of the Russian Empire. Michael was born in Rastatt and Barbara was born in nearby Karlsruhe. As should be apparent, the colonies were generally named after the cities and towns in what is now Germany from where the colonists came.

The German colonies in the Beresan district in 1890, as seen in relation to Odessa.

Michael and Barbara married in Rastatt in February 1865. They lived there for the next ten years, where Michael was engaged in farming. Michael and Barbara had six children together during this time.

The family emigrated from the Beresan to the United States in 1893. They travelled across the Atlantic on the S.S. Lahn, landing at Ellis Island on May 12, 1893, where immigration officials did not change their surname.

The passenger list for the S.S. Lahn showing the Lerner family.

The family settled in Henrietta, Clay County, Texas, where Michael continued farming. Census records show that he farmed on Jacksonboro Road. The name must have changed over the years, as I cannot find it on any map. Michael did not waste any time in applying for American citizenship, as he filed a Declaration of Intention in 1894. However, he took no further steps towards that goal for another thirteen years, in 1907, when he filed a new Declaration of Intention. Michael and Barbara became naturalized American citizens on May 23, 1907.

From 1895 to 1908, Michael and Barbara had eight more children while living in Henrietta. My great grandfather, Heronimus (Jerome) Lerner, born March 12, 1895, was the first of their children born in the United States.

However, most of the family did not stay there for long after the youngest child was born. In 1913, Michael and Barbara’s son Rochus (1892-1970) moved to south-west Saskatchewan, where there were many other settlements of Germans from Russia. Rochus took up farming near Fox Valley, Saskatchewan. According to my mother, Rochus sent word back to Texas saying that there was a lot of good farmland available in Saskatchewan.

My great grandfather, Jerome, followed the call and moved to Fox Valley in 1917. Michael and Barbara followed in 1918, where they settled on land just outside of Fox Valley, near Rastadt. (See how the names followed the settlers around?) Most of the family ended up in Saskatchewan, but a few of Michael and Barbara’s children remained in Texas. As well, some of the family who moved to Saskatchewan later returned to Texas.

Fox Valley, Saskatchewan is in the oval on the left. The land Michael and Barbara farmed is to the east, marked in the box on the upper right. The smaller nearby box shows where Rastadt once stood.

Michael and Barbara became naturalized British subjects domiciled in Canada in 1896 (there was no “Canadian” citizenship until 1947).

Naturalization of Michael and Barbara Lerner in the *Canada Gazette* 1929-1930, page 692

Barbara died on October 21, 1936. Michael died just over ten years later, on January 16, 1947. Michael is buried at the Fox Valley Cemetery. There is some insistencies in the records as to where Barbara was interred.

Records show that “Barbara (Schmidt) Lerner” is buried in both Rastadt Cemetery and the Fox Valley Cemetery. It may be more likely than not that Fox Valley is the correct location. The record for that cemetery gives her plot as W23-2, which is right beside where her husband, Michael, is buried (plot W23-3). As well, other close Lerner family members are buried in Fox Valley Cemetery, including their son Jerome Lerner (plot W13-1). On the contrary, there are no other Lerners buried in the Rastadt cemetery. As well, there appears to be inconsistency in the plot in which she is supposedly interred in Rastadt. An older listing (ca. 1997) indicated plot 61; in 2004, it was said to be plot 70. This inconsistency is consistent with the conclusion that her being buried in Rastadt is less likely to be reliable.

The family group for Michael and Barbara.

52 Weeks – Week 36: Exploration

Looking back over past posts, I have come to realize that writing this blog as part of the 52 Ancestors Challenge has been an exercise in exploration. I also realized that I have written a lot about exploration, both my own and my ancestors’. In this post, I will be recounting my exploration of Cardston, Alberta in 2015, when I visited my great aunt Fon Hogg (née Burgess) and her husband Dave. Aunt Fon, who passed away in early 2021, was my maternal grandfather’s youngest sister and a dedicated genealogist.

My aunt Fon in her amazing home office, which was primarily dedicated to genealogy and crafting.

I don’t often get the opportunity to visit ancestral homelands, so I was excited to undertake my adventure. One of the goals of my visit was to learn more about my great great grandparents – Aunt Fon’s grandparents – John Alexander Nelson and Ella Elizabeth Thomas. They were amongst the earliest settlers of Cardston, which was founded in 1887 by members of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons). John and Ella were both born in Utah a few short years after it became a territory of the United States.

Ella Elizabeth Thomas (1859 – 1941)
John Alexander Nelson (1854 – 1942)

John was born in 1854 to Irish immigrant parents. Ella was born in 1859. Her father was originally from North Carolina and her mother was from England. John had worked as a farm labourer in Utah before he married. John and Ella married in Salt Lake City in 1879. Shortly afterwards, John and Ella moved to Smithfield, Utah, where John continued to work in farming.

John and Ella came to Canada in September 1890. John and Ella had five children at the time. The family travelled to Canada by covered wagon. Their eldest daughter, Maria, said that she often drove the wagon team while her father managed the cattle. The family first settled in a sod dugout at “Lee’s Creek”, west of Cardston. They arrived with 13 horses, 7 cows, 7 “other horned cattle”, and a pig.

Aunt Fon told me that this was the land where John and Ella first settled in Canada, just west of Cardston, where the prairies meet the foothills of the Rockies.

The book, Alberta Past and Present, states that upon moving to Canada, John homesteaded on 160 acres of raw land. The homestead was located on Lee Creek, which ran through the property and into the centre of Cardston. The farmhouse was about four kilometers southwest of the town centre and is located on what is now Alberta highway 501.

There was a quarry on the land, which supplied the stone for many of the buildings in Cardston, which, according to Alberta Past and Present, included the courthouse. According to John’s obituary, one building in Cardston built not using stone from his quarry was the first saloon built there – John refused to supply stone for that purpose. Aunt Fon told me that stone from the quarry was also used to build the foundation of the Alberta Stake Tabernacle. The Tabernacle stood from 1912 to 1954. Uncle Dave said that when the Tabernacle was demolished, people in Cardston used the stone for other projects. In fact, Uncle Dave told me that their first house originally had a fence built with stone from the Tabernacle.

In addition to farming, John also worked in carpentry. As well, John and a partner, John Turner, constructed and operated the first lime kiln in this part of the country. In 1906, John and Ella moved to nearby Woolford, Alberta, where John continued farming. John and Ella briefly returned to Utah in the early 1920s, where John operated an orchard or fruit farm, but they returned to Woolford in 1924. John continued farming the rest of his working life.

*The Lethbridge Herald*, November 5, 1941, page 11.

Meanwhile, Ella did not simply bide her time in the background as a farm wife and mother. According to a Lethbridge Herald article published after her death, in 1892 Charles Ora Card, Cardston’s founder and stake president, called to on Ella to study nursing and obstetrics. She was sent to Salt Lake City to study under the tutelage of a Dr. Shipp. Ella left her five eldest children at home, taking with her “a six months old baby”. Based upon this timeline, the baby would have been Seth Henry Nelson, who was born in October 1891.

However, another source stated that Ella went to Utah in 1893 and that the baby she brought with her was her son Cleveland, who was born in March 1893. After six months’ training, Ella returned to Cardston and started her service. The Herald article says that Ella “answered every call from 1892 to the time when the district was supplied with medical men, and after that time when there was more work than one doctor could do”. Ella continued as a midwife until 1932, when she was 73.

John and Ella were nationalized as British subjects domiciled in Canada in 1896 (there was no “Canadian” citizenship until 1947).

Together, John and Ella had twelve children, two of whom died in infancy. This included my great grandmother, Hazel Nelson, and her twin sister, Irene, who died at one month old. Ella died in October 1941. John died almost a year later, in September 1942. After I left Fon and Dave’s house, I drove to the Cardston Cemetery, where John and Ella are buried, along with other close relatives.

Unfortunately, while I often emailed Aunt Fon, my trip to Cardston was the last time I saw Fon and Dave. Dave passed away in October 2020 and Fon passed away five months later, in March 2021.

52 Weeks – Week 25: Broken Branch

For this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge, Amy Johnson Crow wrote “Are you researching a branch that it feels like there is nobody else in the world who is researching them? What about a collateral line that seems to have gotten lost?”

Turns out that line was mine!

Through sheer chance, through a random encounter with a farmer in the middle of nowhere, I discovered that my great grandfather, Heronimus (“Jerome”) Lerner and his descendants had “gotten lost”. I thought I was looking for them, it turns out they were actually looking for me!

Jerome Lerner was born in Henrietta, Clay County, Texas on March 12, 1895. His parents, Michael Lerner and Barbara Schmidt, were Germans from Russia. They lived in one of the many German colonies in Imperial Russia, in what is now part of Ukraine. These colonies usually bore the names of the places in Germany the original settlers had come from. After Michael and Barbara married, they lived in the village of Rastadt, where their first six children were born. In 1893, the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Henrietta, Clay County, Texas. Jerome was the first of eight children Michael and Barbara had after coming to America.

*Michael Lerner (1862-1947) and Barbara Schmidt (1865-1936)*

During the mid-1910s, members of the family began moving between Texas and Saskatchewan. Jerome was one of the first. Ultimately, Jerome, his parents, and at least four of his siblings ended up permanently moving to Canada and settled in the area of Fox Valley, Saskatchewan.

Jerome married my great grandmother, Emelia Anton, in 1920. They separated sometime around 1937. As far as I can tell, they never formally divorced. I thought that being Catholic, they might have simply separated without divorcing. However, my great aunt Adeline (their third child) told me that it was more due to the difficulty in obtaining a divorce at the time. Prior to 1968, divorces in Canada were granted through a private act of Parliament, through a difficult and expensive process.

*Jerome and Emelia, likely sometime around 1931.*

I’d known my great grandmother since I was born. We visited her almost every time we went to my parents’ hometown. As she lived until I was thirty, she was the great grandparent I knew best. I’ve written quite a lot about my Anton ancestors in this blog. They were also Germans from Russia. They came to Canada in 1912 and settled in Rastadt, Saskatchewan. All that is left of Rastadt is the schoolhouse and the cemetery.

*Rastadt, Saskatchewan Cemetery, April 1, 1997.*

While I knew Emelia, I never met Jerome. He died in 1954. My mother never even met him. From what I know, Jerome may have had some mental health problems from sometime around the time he and Emelia separated. As well, from what my mother has told me, the Lerner side of the family was none too pleased with Emelia after she and Jerome separated.

After the separation, Emelia moved to Alberta. I doubt she had much contact with her former Lerner relatives, although it sounds like my grandmother and her siblings might have. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the Lerner branch of the family might have lost track of Emelia and Jerome’s family. As well, while I know my grandmother, her siblings, and my mother all seem to have been in close contact with their Anton relatives, the fact that branch of the family relocated may have made for a much looser connection. So it seems that Jerome and Emelia’s branch of the family became lost, or lost-ish, to both the Lerners and the Antons.

How were we “rediscovered”?

First, the Antons. In the mid-90s, I made contact online with a Paul Antone of Washington state. It was the early days of online genealogy, so we probably met on a message board or something similar. I wasn’t even using Netscape yet! Paul’s father was one of Emelia’s first cousins. I don’t know if they knew each other. Paul and I sporadically exchanged emails. Through him, I learned of Gordon Anton, a nephew of Emelia’s. At the time, he was compiling a history of the Antons. I don’t know if Gordon ever met Emelia, but it was apparent he didn’t know much about her branch of the family. Apparently he had been in contact with one of Emelia’s sons, my great uncle Herb, but he never got much information through that contact. Gordon ultimately published a history of the Antons, but it was pretty sparse when it came to Emelia and her descendants. Gordon was hoping to publish a second edition, but it never came to be.

Nowadays, finding a lost branch online – even if you are the missing branch being found – is hardly unique or exciting. In comparison, the rediscovery by the Lerner side was largely a matter of coincidence, even though it was because I had been in the right place at the right time. Even today, it would be an unusual occurrence.

In 1997, I left a long-term job and was taking a few months off before embarking on a short-term gig and a return to university. One of the things I did during that time off was visit my parents, who had returned to living in southern Alberta. I had not been to Fox Valley since I was a child, so I suggested to my mother that we go there for a daytrip.

Upon arrival in Fox Valley, we stopped at the village hall where we gathered a wealth of information. Among other things, I was able to discover the exact place where my grandmother was born. After visiting the Rastadt schoolhouse and cemetery, my mother and I made our way to the place where my grandmother was born.

*Beautiful downtown Rastadt, Saskatchewan.* *Actually, this is suburban Rastadt, but no one really is counting.* *If the middle of nowhere has a middle of nowhere, this is it.* *Where I am standing once stood the farmhouse where my maternal grandmother, Helen Lerner, was born.*

I was not surprised at all to find nothing but a field of wheat. We snapped some photos of the site and decided it was time to head back to Alberta. We drove a bit down the narrow road to find a place to turn around. We soon found a farmhouse with a driveway that provided the opportunity to turn around. After I pulled in, the farmer who lived there saw me and came out, thinking anyone he didn’t know who was out there must be lost.

He seemed surprised that we actually meant to be in his part of the world. We got to talking. It turned out he was a cousin of my grandmother’s. He and his wife invited us in for coffee and they showed us all sorts of interesting family photos and mementos. Talk about serendipity! He even told me the farmhouse my grandmother was born in still existed – a farmer had bought the building and moved it to his land.

Even more fortuitous, he told me that a family history was being put together of the Boechler family. Jerome’s maternal grandmother was a Boechler. The farmer gave me the contact information for the author. My timing was another stroke of luck. I made the call not long afterward and learned that the book was being finalized and would be going to press in a matter of days. It also turned out that Jerome and Emelia’s branch of the family was a huge mystery to the authors. I was able to supply most of the information about Jerome and Emelia’s branch in time for publication.

Not only was Jerome’s branch lost to the family, he seems to have been lost by both the United States and Canada. Upon learning of Jerome’s death, the US consulate in Winnipeg submitted a “Report of the Death of An American Citizen” to the American Foreign Service. The Foreign Service stated that it did not have any evidence that Jerome had American citizenship beyond the statement in the registration of death issued by the province of Saskatchewan. This, despite the fact the United States issued Jerome a passport when he first left for Saskatchewan in 1916. Meanwhile, there is no indication that Jerome was ever naturalized as a Canadian (or, at the time, as a British subject in Canada) or that he had renounced his American citizenship (which he was, as evidenced by his US passport).

52 Weeks – Week Seven

Landed

I’m starting to realize that when I choose a topic for the theme of the week for the 52 Ancestors Challenge, I should look ahead to see what other topics are coming up. That way I can avoid getting to a topic like this week’s, “Landed”, and seeing that I’ve written on the topic before. Then again, a little repetition here and there won’t hurt.

If I had approached this topic a few hours ago, I would probably be sitting here casting about in my mind as to what “landed” means to me. Fortunately, our eldest son inadvertently gave me a focus to write about. During dinner, out of the blue, he asked “besides Opa, did any of our ancestors come to Canada on steamships?”

The *Sibajak*, which brought my father and his family to Canada.

Opa is my father, the Dutch side of my family. I’ve already written about his coming to Canada on the Sibajak. He and his family came in early May 1954, travelling from Rotterdam to Halifax. They landed at Pier 21, which could be described as the Canadian equivalent of Ellis Island. My father’s aunt and uncle came over four months earlier, in January 1954 on the Groote Beer, while another aunt and uncle followed in late May 1954, on board the Castel Felice.

While it was a Holland America ship during his crossing, built and originally operated by Rotterdam Lloyd, along with other ships that they mainly used to go to the East Indies. Built in 1927, the Sibajak served as a troop ship during World War II. After the war, the Sibajak was one of a number of ships operated by Holland America that were used almost entirely for Dutch emigrants, along with the Grote Beer, Waterman, and Zuiderkruis. It was sold and scrapped in Hong Kong in 1959. When I was in Hong Kong in 1996, while travelling around the harbour and between its islands, I wondered how close I might have come to what scraps of it might remain.

This is a fascinating short documentary about a voyage the Sibajak made to Australia carrying Dutch emigrants. The video is in Dutch, but the images convey a lot of meaning.

In the late 1990s, my parents went on an Alaskan cruise on a Holland America ship. During the trip, my father, who loves to talk to people, fell into a conversation with one of the older hands on deck. My father mentioned having come to Canada on the Sibajak. After a few questions from the crew member, my dad learned that the man had been on the Sibajak during my father’s trip, in his first year or two of service.

On my mother’s side, the most recent ancestor to arrive by steamship was my great grandmother, Emelia Anton. She came to Canada at the age of nine, with several of her siblings and her parents, Jacob Anton and Margaretha “Margaret” Heck. They were Germans from Russia. The family sailed out of Hamburg on June 18, 1912 aboard the S.S. Pennsylvania. They arrived at the Port of New York (Ellis Island) on July 1, 1912. Their declared destination was Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, to join Emelia’s older brother, Rochus. The passenger manifest stated that Jacob paid for the entire family’s transport, other than that of one of his daughters-in-law, whose passage had been paid by her father.

The Anton family, circa 1910. Likely taken in Selo Suchoi, Veronesch, Russia.

Emelia had not had much schooling before coming to North America, but was very religious. She said that she was frightened and nervous during the journey, as she did not know anything about where she was going and did not fully understand what was going on. However, on reaching New York, she said her fears subsided when she saw “the Madonna”. When she saw that, she knew she would be safe and all would be well. Of course, the “Madonna” was the Statue of Liberty. As she had never heard of it before, she thought it was a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Passenger list for the *S.S. Pennsylvania* showing the Antons.

Emelia’s husband, Heronimus “Jerome” Lerner, was born to parents who were also Germans from Russia, Michael Lerner and Barbara Schmidt. Michael and Barbara came to the United States in May 1893 aboard the S.S. Lahn, with the five children they had at the time. They landed at Ellis Island and made their way to Clay County, Texas. Jerome was the first child born to Michael and Barbara in the United States. They had seven other children in Texas after Jerome was born. Jerome moved to Saskatchwan in 1917, preceded by an older brother. Jerome’s parents followed a year later. Other siblings came north at other times.

Passenger list for the *Lahn* showing the Lerners

The ancestors furthest back in time that I can find who came to North America on a steamship were my great x3 grandparents, Robert Nelson and Elizabeth Joseph. They were both born in Muff, Donegal, Ireland in 1818 and married there in 1842.

Joseph Nelson (1818-1902) and Elizabeth Joseph (1818-1902)

Sometime in the early 1840s they had moved to Linwood, Renfrew, Scotland. They were there at least by January 1844, when their first son, Samuel, was born. By 1850, Robert was working at Brown’s Sugar House, on Roxburgh Street in Greenock, Scotland as a sugar baker. Sugar bakers usually refined muscovado sugar, an unrefined brown sugar imported from Barbados.

On September 3, 1850 Robert and Elizabeth, along with their three children, departed Liverpool on board the ship “North Atlantic” bound for New Orleans. For a long time I had been confused by references I had seen to them coming over on “the north Atlantic”, thinking it meant the route they travelled. It wasn’t until I came across the passenger list that I realized that “North Atlantic” was the name of the ship. Having a name like that makes it difficult refine a search to distinguish the ship from where it sailed. However, while I have not found very good sources, it appears that the North Atlantic was a steam powered ship.

Passenger list for the *North Atlantic* showing the Nelson family

The records show that there was at least one other family headed by a sugar baker from Brown’s on the same voyage. Robert and Elizabeth were part of a company of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) converts travelling from the United Kingdom to Utah. The family spent a short period of time in Missouri, where in 1852 Elizabeth had her first child born in America. By late 1854 they were in Farmington, Utah, where my great great grandfather John Alexander Nelson was born.

Looking at my pedigree for this post, I realized I might have one other ancestor who might have travelled from the United Kingdom to the United States by means of a steam powered ship. That would be my great x3 grandmother, Maria Hadlond, who was born in Cheltenham, Gloucester, England in 1838 and who emigrated sometime in the 1850s. I have not really researched this branch of my family beyond collecting names and basic vital stats. For whatever reason, it has never caught my interest.

I also have a great x3 grandmother, Susan Turple, whose family had been in Nova Scotia since the 18^th century, who would have travelled by means of a ship with sails. In 1849, Susan joined the Mormon church in 1849. In 1852, she went from Halifax to Boston to join a westward migration of Mormons. It is most likely that the initial part of Susan’s travels was by means of steam powered ship.

Before these people, any ancestors I have who crossed the Atlantic would have done aboard ships with sails.

Speaking of looking ahead, I see that next week’s theme is “Courting”. Since I am writing this on February 14, I wonder if that should have been this week’s theme!

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Landed

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