“Family Archaeologist” explores a century of family letters, diaries, and artifacts, and how they illuminate history and our shared humanity. To get an overview of the blog, click “Welcome to Family Archaeologist.”
While Josef makes his way across the Atlantic to America in early January, 1911, I thought I’d use his “travel time” to fill you all in on some details of this family archaeologist’s dig. First–a little more about the unreadable letters, [...]
Friedrich der Grosse from NorwayHeritage.com Crossing the North Atlantic in the heart of winter was a grueling experience, as Josef reports in his diary. The first and second days were fine, but the other ten days we had [...]
12/30/1910—First page of letter from Josef to Lisi on F. Missler stationery Once Josef arrived in Bremen, and his path to America seemed clear, he wrote to Lisi. Not only had Friedrich Missler, probably Bremen’s most successful ticket [...]
Josef wrote both in his diary and to Lisi about his terror atop the train from Pressburg (Bratislava) to Vienna, one corroborating the other, but each using slightly different language. In the diary he wrote: I thought the sharp wind [...]
Josef Gärtz, 1909 or 1910, age 20 or 21 I’d always known my grandfather was often impatient, and apparently was so as a young man. I learned from my cousin’s family (also from Neppendorf, the same Transylvanian town [...]