Chapter 7: the Great Migration Down the Danube
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Chapter 7: The Great Migration down the Danube Introduction The format of this chapter is unique to the ones presented thus far. It is essentially a travelogue of the Troester exodus from Owen, Wuerttemberg, to Izmail across the New Russian border. At this point we have four sources to help us plot the exact itinerary that Russian Patriarch Johann George Troester took with his family down the Danube. The most prized is the travelogue extracted from a letter by Johann’s Oetlingen Harmony leader, Johann Christoph Bidlingmaier. Our Russian Patriarch Johann Georg Troester and family were a part of this harmony. What he saw and experienced is exactly what they did, in that very moment in time. I supplement Bidlingmaier’s experience with the detailed writings by voyagers to New Russia in the summer of 1817 that they have given us in a travelogue and a letter home. I will add further color by supplying background, illustrations, maps, and representative music. For the most part, the End Notes consist of the original sources, namely, a travelogue, two letters, and Dr. Joseph S. Height’s work, Homesteaders of the Steppe. I also use a valuable secondary resource, Murray’s Hand-Book of Southern Germany (1857), which gives us colorful descriptions of the environment along the way. All pictures and illustrations are garnered from various websites, especially Wikipedia. I’ve placed links to these website in the End Notes for your further study and examination. Please email me if you have any comments or suggestions. I want this website to be as authentic as possible. It’s my hope that when the reader sees these combined sources merged into one grand travelogue, the experience of our Troester ancestors will be unveiled and appreciated after being forgotten for over 100 years. The Outline Our vicarious journey is presented in eight segments: I. En Route to Ulm IV. Brief Sojourn in Vienna A. The Preparations A. Obtaining transportation (zells) B. The Emigrants B. The Sites C. The Journey C. Kindness of the People II. Brief Sojourn in Ulm V. The Austrian-Hungarian Stretch A. The Business at Hand B. The Sites C The Ulmer Schachtel III Bavarian-Austrian Stretch A. The Kingdom B. The River C. The Experience VI. The Hungary-Slovanian Stretch VII. Romanian-Bulgarian Stretch VIII. Galatz-Ismail Researcher’s Notes: The Bavarian-Austrian stretch is dotted with many villages and a few cities along the way. Mostly I have only included places documented by travelers who personally experienced this Great German Migration of 1817. These towns become our focus because they were worthy enough to be included in the collective memories of these pioneers. Occasionally I did detective work among secondary sources to discover exact spellings, pronunciations, and locations. Some spellings are bound to change after nearly 200 years. Because most of these locations were foreign to the traveler, he had to ask a crew member where they were. The inquirer may not have heard the name correctly and most likely didn’t a map or travel guide to verify spellings. It’s possible the responding crew member didn’t know exact pronunciations, so this was then reflected in the traveler’s writings. The mystery was usually solved by finding the town in question between two towns already identified. To help keep this travel experience completely factual, email corrections or insights. I. En Route to Ulm After making up his mind to leave for New Russia, our Russian Patriarch Johann George Troester signed on with the Oetlingen Harmony led by Jakob Lutz from Plochingen and Johann Christoph Bidlingsmaier of Oetlingen. Thanks to Bidlingsmaier’s detailed letter from Galatz, we can follow and experience our ancestor’s actual itinerary to New Russia. Johann got the appropriate permissions from king and czar, paid his 10% emigrant tax, packed up baggage and part of his three-generation family, and met the Oetlingen Harmony wagon train at the designated point. With at least 300 florins in his hand and hope in his heart, he stepped out into the most harrowing journey of his life. Later, others from Johann and wife Johanna’s families would follow, but Johann’s party were the first to venture forth. They said their tearful good-byes and Johann left kingdom, district, and Owen forever. However, they didn’t leave town alone. Accompanying them from Owen was the Johann Leonard Wall family. While the Troesters and Walls joined the Oetlingen Harmony, others from this or the Weissach Harmony left about the same time. We know them from Hoffnungstal in New Russia, and Hamilton County in Nebraska. The first three are from the Kingdom of Wuerttemberg: 1. The Gottlieb Bamesberger family from Guendelbach, Maulbroon District 2. The Joh. Georg Wagner family from Hoepfighelm, Ludwigsburg District near Stuttgart 3. The Mathias Wagner family from Grossbottwar, also from the Ludwigsburg District 4. The Christian Georg family from Scheina, Meiningen Distirct, Kingdom of Saxony. These and 58 other families eventually founded the same colony in New Russia. Johann Leibbrand’s Weissacher Harmony left by mid-May, just before our Oetlingen Harmony, and were among the first columns to depart for Ulm. The above families and other participants in both harmonies founded Hoffnungstal, the Troester’s Russian ancestral home. These were among the first wave of 900 families that crowded the road to Ulm. Most were Swabians. They were divided up into 14 separate wagon trains, leaving at brief intervals in groups averaging 64 families each. The Troester family departed from Owen near the end of May. Owen was about 40 miles from Ulm. By wagon, they traveled 20-25 miles per day. If they made the same arrangements as the earlier Franconian emigrants, friends, family, or hirelings brought them to the collection point of Ulm. It was an unusual sight for the locals as they looked up from their fields to eye this never-ending march of walkers and wagons. Miles before they arrived on the Danube, our Separatist emigrants saw the largest steeple in the world guiding them to their destination. After arriving at Ulm, they sojourned a few days while family heads approached the Russian embassy to show their papers and Lutz and Bidlingsmaier met with Russian deputies to secure watercrafts for the journey of June 2. Where they lodged is unclear, but we have the travelogue of Friedrich Schwarz. Some of his experience may have paralleled that of Troester’s. Schwartz Travelogue: “1817 Thursday, June 26. It was on this day that I set out, with my wife and 9 children from Kupferzell, & had to taste the bitterest pain of separation. June 27. We arrived at Unterkocken. June 28. [We got] as far as Allbek (Alpeck, near Ulm). June 29. Sunday morning at 8 o’clock we arrived safe and sound in Ulm and were lodged in the inn ‘To the Golden Goose.’” II. Sojourning in Ulm Coat of Arms for Ulm During their few days at Ulm, they had time to contemplate and experience some of the sites and recent history surrounding this large commercial city. Although the community may have impressed village serfs, Ulm was actually a city on the decline. Ulm was 1150 English feet above sea level. It was 300 feet broad and 10-12 feet deep. New Ulm, is a suburb located across the river in Bavaria. Upon entering the town, they immediately felt akin to its citizens, who spoke the same Swabish dialect. But there was a difference between a small village like Owen and a city like Ulm 1817. By now this town was nearly 1000 years old and had been a Free Imperial City of the former Holy Roman Empire until 1806 when Napoleon dissolved this European authority. During the Middle Ages, Ulm exported high quality textiles and grew wealthy as a major crossroads for chief trade routes extending to Italy. However, its importance began to wane with Columbus’s “discovery” of America and Vasco da Gama’s discovery of an ocean route to India. Ulm also took a beating when foreign foes repeatedly invaded for the last 200 years. Finally, in 1810 Napoleon defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Ulm, taking the city from Bavarian and giving it to the Kingdom of Wuerttemberg. Remember the steeple that guided our Swabian emigrants to Ulm? They called it Ulm Minster (Minister/Muenster of Ulm). Builders had erected it long before the Troesters spied it from afar; stonecutters laid the Gothic church’s foundation stone over 400 years before our Troesters entered the city. During the Age of the Reformation, by a 1530/31 referendum of its citizenry, the congregation converted to Lutheranism. Consequently, the church had been Lutheran for nearly 300 years before Johann’s family saw it in Ulm that spring. It’s not certain if they ever entered the building because, as Separatists, they had separated themselves from the state church, which they called the Whore of Babylon, making reference to St. John’s Book of Revelation. If they did enter, they viewed a most beautiful house of worship. If they climbed the 768 steps within the highest steeple in the world (530 ft.), on a very clear day they saw the Alps. On an average day, they saw their final view of their ancient Wuerttemberg in the west and, to the East, the winding Danube, carrying fellow Swabs to the Black Sea and an earthly land of hope and promise. The church was still not finished by 1817, when the Troesters could see artisans finishing the three smaller spires. Further exploration of the city would have brought them to the famous ancient Town Hall, with its beautifully-colored murals and astronomical clock.