Friday, September 18, 2009

Where IS Horrenburg?

Thanks to Google, here're a couple of maps of the JANSON and FUCHS home territory.
The red marker, left, is the Balzfeld/Horrenburg area.

Larry found a website this morning called Auswanderung aus Sudwestdeutschland (Emigration from Southwest Germany) and with the search engine there, we found 49 Jansons who left between 1852 and 1883 (altho many names are duplicates).
There seemed to be a "first wave" in 1852-54 and a "second wave" in 1883. Wonder what made some Jansons wait 30 more years before leaving?
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There's a family story that our two Janson families left the district of Horrenberg clandestinely, by taking row boats at night and floating down the Rhine to the port of Amsterdam. Between the families there were 10 kids, three of them under 3 years old.
Nine of the 10 were boys, and the oldest, Wendelin, was 11.
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The Rhine River begins in the Alps and flows north. (Growing up near the Mississippi, it's tough to imagine that). Balzfeld and Horrenburg are just below and a little east of Mannheim.

Imagine what fantastic impressions Wendelin had from that trip....and how he'd naturally compare the new land in Virginia* and Minnesota to where he was born.

Nine years after arriving in America, Wendelin enlisted in the cavalry and fought in the Spanish-American War. Larry found his enlistment record online, but we don't know if he was assigned to Cuba, or the Phillipines, a half-world away. He spent most of his life in California, so we assume the latter.

*Oh, the reference to Virginia? Evidentally, the Jansons may have tried Virginia first to have land most like home, or they bought land there later--the whole family is listed in the 1900 census in Hampden, Prince Edward Co, Virginia. Grandpa said later, in his book, that the area was still so economically affected by the Civil War that they gave up, and went back to Minnesota.

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