Love and Loss on the Way to America ~ Gertrude & Theodore Zoeller

It's 1845.  First we find a family, the Zollers, on a sailing ship named Probus, which left Le Havre, France, for a 6-week voyage to America.  Barbara Magdalena, who is 56, appears to be the mother, and she has 3 teenagers, Theodor, 19, Leopold, 16, and Victoria, 12. Theodor is a farmer, and they are from the tiny town of Mechenhard, squeezed in the Bavarian mountains along a narrow strip of land by the Main River.  Where is the father, Simon?  Why would they leave?  Surely Barbara Magdalena has more than 3 children.  She didn't suddenly start having babies at 37.  She probably has 4 or 8 more, all older than 19.  Where are they? 

Next on the passenger list is Gertrude Kress, the same age as Theodor.   Do they know each other from Mechenhard, or did he suddenly notice how pretty she was when she walked up the gangplank behind him?  Are they already sweethearts planning a new life in America, or is she just along to help take care of Barbara Magdalena, who is in poor health?  

Two weeks from port, tragedy strikes.  Barbara Magdalena dies on August 5 and is buried at sea.  I don't think she was sick when she embarked, or she would not have been allowed to go.  Traveling in  steerage was unsanitary, with no fresh air and terrible food.  

Both Gertrude and Theodor are stepping out into the unknown.  They don't know a soul in America.  Life in Bavaria was getting difficult, with a poor economy and political unrest.  But suddenly, two teenagers are left in charge of younger siblings in a foreign country where they don't speak the language.  When they land on August 22, all of them are grieving, confused, and scared.

Gertrude has all the more reason to be scared, and sick, because she was at least 3 or 4 months pregnant on the voyage.  So one of the first things they do in Manhattan is find a Roman Catholic church and get married, on Sept. 4 at the Most Holy Redeemer Church, a new wooden building on East Third Street in Kleindeutschland, Little Germany, so named because of the growing number of immigrants.   Why didn't they get married in Bavaria?  I don't know, but in some parts of the German states, town officials were the only ones who could grant permission to get married.  They liked their power, and they were very stingy with it.  Men had to own quite a bit of land or have completed many years of military service or apprenticeship to get permission.  It was fairly common in towns like these for couples to have several children together before they could finally get married.  I don't know if this applies to Gertrude and Theodore, but it could be one reason they emigrated.

Maybe the stress and poor living conditions combined to make the pregnancy difficult.  Leopold Otto didn't live very long after he was born on January 10, 1846.  This must have been their darkest time.  Theodore's brother Leopold either died or disappeared, never to be heard from again, but the fact they named their baby Leopold makes me think he died.  Tears will mess up my laptop, so I need to move on from this tragic love story before I start to cry.

In April, Gertrude's family arrived.  Things started looking up when her father, 5 brothers, and 2 sisters immigrated too, from Caspar, the oldest at 23, on down to Otillie (oh-TILL-yuh), who was 4.  Where was Gertrude's mother, since she wasn't with her 4-year-old?  Probably dead too, and it's probably why the Kress family decided to make the move to be with Gertrude.  Lots of death in the 1840s.

Gertrude and Theodore's love story does have a happy ending.  Within 5 years of their sorrowful arrival, the census shows them making a good living with 3 babies.  Gertrude has opened their home to 4 boarders who also work with Theodore, and Victoria lives with them too.  You need two women to take care of 3 babies and 5 hungry men. Theodore, the small country farmer, has become a big city cabinet maker, an occupation that many Germans took up.  (Almost all furniture was some kind of chest, hence the name cabinet maker.)  Both of them achieve successes they are proud of in a 40-year marriage --- but that's for another story.  You can see the rest of their family on the Sulzbach Pedigree Chart.

The Probus