How great is the German influence on American culture?

How great is the German influence on American culture?

We know more about the immigrants who have made it in the New World: The list of successful German-American entrepreneurs is long. The brewery is almost entirely in German hands. Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, Schlitz and Blatz are legendary, to name only the largest companies. Prussian-born Charles (Karl) Krug experiments with grape varieties and is the first to press wine in Napa Valley, California. The Palatinate Friedrich Weyerhäuser buys forest areas and is soon considered the wood magnate of the West. Württemberg's Henry Müller (Miller) becomes the cattle king of the West. Johann Jacob Bausch, an optician, and his financial partner Henry C. Lomb founded a manufactory for monocle in Rochester, New York in 1853: Bausch & Lomb.

German-Jewish business people are often, if not only, to be found in the clothing industry and in the textile trade and lay the roots for department stores such as Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue. The piano maker Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, who was born in Wolfshagen in Lower Saxony, is legendary and calls himself Henry E. Steinway in the New World. At the same time, a small elite of Jewish merchants is forming in the financial sector. Bank J. & W. Seligman & Co. plays a crucial role in the financing of important railway lines. A new start in America is particularly tempting for Jews because in Germany the matriculation laws stand in the way of a free choice of profession and place of residence.

Many German engineers are also lucky in the United States. This includes the bridge builder Johann August Roebling. However, he did not see the completion of his most famous building, the New York Brooklyn Bridge. He suffers a serious accident during surveying work and succumbs to his injuries shortly afterwards. Roebling's eldest son, Washington, who takes over the construction management, also brings the bridge bad luck: after diving, he suffers from decompression sickness and has to hand over the tasks to his wife Emily Warren, who is reserved to be the first to cross the bridge on May 24, 1883.

From the American perspective, the Germans appeared as a large group connected by their language. The situation was more complicated for the Germans themselves. We can easily imagine the communication problems between Swabians and North Germans, who might not even speak High German. Unlike the Irish, the entire social spectrum is represented by Germans, from large landowners to agricultural workers. There are also religious differences. Protestants and Catholics can be neighbors, but avoid each other in everyday life. Apart from the negative attitude to prohibition, to the total ban on alcohol, there are hardly any concerns for which all Germans speak with one voice. In the context of a bill for the Illinois Parliament in 1883, the Chicago Workers' newspaper criticized: "The whole election dispute turned once again to the tiresome beer and Schnapps question. And for this poor interest, Germanism appeared unanimously, the same Germanism that cannot agree on higher, more important, more ideal interests. "

How can we assess the German influence on American culture as a whole? An answer to this question was difficult for contemporaries. There are German-Americans who hold political offices, such as the legendary Carl Schurz or Adolph Sutro (1830–1898), who has been mayor of San Francisco for two years, but there are repeated criticisms that political visibility does not correspond to their numerical presence. On the other hand, Albert Bernhardt Faust, who works at Cornell University, compiles a whole catalog of important people in the book “ Das Deutschtum in den Vereinigten Staaten in seiner Bedeutung für die amerikanische Kultur (1909) he says: "German culture has shaken the young American giant out of dull self-consciousness and has awakened a soul in him,  that resonates with the senses and feelings of all mankind. " The historian Frederick J. Turner, who has become known for his concept of the frontier,  ascribes it to the Germans "that they imparted German consistency, persistence and tenacity to the American tribal type and society,  who happily complement the nervous, erratic energy of the native American ".

Of course it is pure speculation to suspect such a "mentality transfer". Beyond that there is only a look at numbers: in 1870 there were forty million people in the United States; more than six million of them were Germans. Immigration decreased to the same extent that Germany began to prosper after the founding of the Reich in 1871. Especially in the last two decades of the 19th century, the numbers declined sharply. Most New Americans now come from Eastern Europe. Germany has meanwhile turned from an emigration country to an immigration country - for the Poles, for example, who come to the Ruhr area by the hundreds.

Bernd Brunner, born in 1964, lives in Berlin as a freelance writer

Hugh Wallace Boyle Sr. January 1906 to March 1982

Grave of Hugh Wallace Boyle Sr. This Grave can only be seen on the internet and in Heaven. His ashes were put into the Ground in a RC Church yard in Bradenton Florida with a small plaque of one of the churches walls. Grave markers are a waste of  good land, since few people visit them for long, but remembering them on the internet on sites like Ancestry.com or Grave sites more people now and in the future will be able to see what they were like when they were alive.

The Life of Ann Wallace. By her Grandson Richard Boyle

I didn’t know either of my Grandmothers as they lived on the other side of the pond. I pieced together the story of Ann Wallace from what my father told me about his mother plus from sources I got from Ancestry.com and Scotlandspeople.gov.uk. I think I got most of the highlights correct. 

Ann Wallace born on the 21^st if March in the year 1879 the ninth child of Twelve Children to Mary McTeiney and James Wallace in the small village of Carluke in Lanarkshire in the country of Scotland. She lived with her family having fun playing with her brothers and sisters. The family moved to Combusnethan Wishaw where she went to school.

After school she went to work in a factory that made nails making money to help support the Wallace family. One Sunday her day off she met and fell in love with Hugh Boyle my Grandfather. They started a relationship right there in Wishaw Scotland with my Grandfather working as a Boiler maker which I figure must have been in nearby Glasgow maybe in the shipyards.

What with love blooming at the dawn of a new century Hugh decided to go to Boston in America figuring that it being a port so must have jobs for Boiler makers. So, in 1901 Hugh traveled to Boston and a year later sent for Ann who arrived in Boston in April of 1902 and they were married on the 8^th day of October 1902 in Boston Massachusetts.  

My Dad said that the family moved around a lot he even remembers moving to Utica NY and since my Aunt Mary Angus Boyle was born in Providence RI on the 24^th of April in the year 1904, we know they moved to there around 1904. The family must have moved back to Boston after that for my Dad was born in Boston on the 24^th day of January in the year 1906 and My Aunt Sarah Veronica Boyle was also born in Boston on the 4^th day of April in the year 1912. So they were on the road a lot while they were in America it must have been hard on Ann Wallace and she must have been getting feed up with my Grandfather Hugh.

Scottish Parish Relief

While looking at the hints for my maternal Grandmother Janet Wilkes on Ancestry.com I noticed that she filed for Parish Relief in Combusnethan Wishaw Scotland in 1908. Which was a year before my mother was born in 1909. Now I already knew that both my Grandfathers had left my Grandmothers. So, the Relief forms both confirmed what I already knew adding the date and that it was shortly after they were married.

 I also found a similar hint for my paternal Grandmother Ann Wallace also in Combusnethan Wishaw Scotland. I had already on Ancestry.com the Ship's manifest from 1913 Showing that Ann Wallace return to Scotland with her three children including my father but no husband Hugh Boyle in November of 1913. I learned from the Relief that she left Boston with the understanding my Grandfather Hugh Boyle would follow in December of 1913. She had not heard a word from him as of April 1914 so filed for relief. She was living with her brother James Wallace with her three children. It also says the my Grandfather was in England so I think he took a ship from Boston to Liverpool instead of Glasgow like my Grandmother Ann Wallace had done. He decided for some reason to stay in Liverpool maybe he got a job there as a Boilermaker which was his trade.

I think one of the reasons my parents met and got along so well is their similar stories. My parents were married for 50 years before my father died in 1982.

Johann Frederick (Friedrich) Eiermann

1864 to 1915

Johann Frederick Eiermann was born in Rohrbach which at the time was in the Duchy of Baden, now Southwest Germany. When Frederick was only 16 years old he left home to immigrate to New York. It is a family story that he had some trouble with his parents, but it might only have been that he didn’t any future for him in Baden.

There is a story about a local tradition that since the oldest son gets the land the younger sons immigrate to somewhere else. The local church actually preforms a funeral for those leaving and put on a train. We don’t know if that had anything to do with Frederick’s decision.

Once in New York Frederick went to live with his Uncle John Georg Schnetzer and worked as a Wood Carver in Brooklyn and Queens.

We’re not sure if Frederick knew Marie Rusterholz back in Baden, but on the 20^th of July in the year 1884 they got married in New York City soon after that they had a daughter Emma Eiermann on 24^th of July 1884 and then on the 15^th of September 1885 Frederick became a Naturized Citizen of the United States of America. Later that same year his son Frederick. Herman Eiermann Then in 1890 his second son George Eiermann was born Followed by a daughter Marie Othilda Eiermann.

Then in 1894 he received a letter telling him that his mother died and asking him to return to Baden to sign papers, so he could receive an inheritance. Therefore he traveled though England going from South Hampton to Germany.

It seems that he received enough money to start a house building business on his return to New York. He built houses in Brooklyn and Queens a business he passed on to his son Frederick Herman Eiermann and his Grandson Frederick George Eiermann.

Johann Frederick Eiermann Died of Chronic Myelitis on the first of September 1915 in Floral Park Long Island.

How my workingclass ancestors lived

I guess most people when doing their genealogy wonders what was life like for my ancestors. If your ancestors were of the upper class you have a lot of books and even television shows about their life style, but if they were of the lower workingclass there are only a few books and some documentaries that give you some idea about their lives, but you must look hard and be lucky to find them.

I know that my ancestors were workingclass in Scotland. My parents told about their lives growing up and I think some of that does relate to older generations. I was lucky to find two books on the history of Scottish working people by T.C. Smout; The History of the Scottish People 1560 – 1830 and The Century of the Scottish People 1830 – 1950. They both gave a good account of the common people of Scotland with their everyday struggles that must have been part of my ancestor’s life.  PBS put on some shows about life of the poor in London with a series of shows 1860 Victorian Slums, then 1870, 1880, 1890 and finally 1900 Victorian Slums even if none of my family lived in London at that time they must have had similar things happen to them in Glasgow.

The Manhattan Lower East Side Tenement Museum is well worth a visit if you want to learn about immigrant’s life in New York City in the early 19^th century. There are more and more books, documentaries, and museums that try to show what life was like in bygone eras.

Once you have an idea of your family’s location, ethic group, and social status you should look for books, documentaries and museums that will give you an idea of how your family lived.    

A Picture is worth a thousand words

One thing I wanted to show in the genealogical history of my family was what life was like for our ancestors. Photography only came into being in about the mid nineteenth century so unless you are lucky enough to have aristocrats in your family that had oil painting of themselves you must rely on documents like birth, marriage, death, census records and maybe a journal or letters to tell their story.

          So, I started collecting old family photos from both my wife’s family and my own family photos. The first anyone should do is to try and get the older family members to identify the date, people and places in the old photos so you and future generations know what they are looking at. A lot of people don’t think of writing descriptions with their photos so once they are gone people must guess who, what and when are in the photo. We should remember that new photos will be old photos someday so adding descriptions to your photos is a good idea, not making the same mistake that past generations made in their photos.

          I had the thought of trying to get photos from Google map of Addresses of our ancestors. I found that only a few remain many lived in cities like New York, Glasgow or Boston that have had urban renewal so fairly new buildings are where my ancestors had lived. The churches where they were baptized and married are an exception many have not changed that much over the centuries. I try to look for old photos of the places that my ancestor had lived either through the internet, libraries or historical societies that may have old photos and newspaper of places that they had lived.