Newspaper Article About My Visit to Germany

I'll likely put together a post about my recent trip to Germany. In the meantime, here is an article posted at Baden-Online. This site requires registration to read the full article in the original German. I've done a translation for my family and readers. 

Book written about suffering and hope
Emigrated hungry: US genealogist outlines the fate of Mösbach
September 25, 2024

The family tree that Matthew K. Miller from Omaha/USA published in his book based on the original
couple Moriz Panther and Elisabeth Birk from Mösbach goes back to the 17th century. Sonja
Schuchter (from left): Karen Miller, Matthew K. Miller and Sonja Schuchter are also part of their
extended family. ©Roland Spether

In the 19th century, Mösbach was also in dire need. Many emigrated. A genealogist from the USA has found out a lot about this, which also interests Sonja Schuchter.

Matthew K. Miller from Omaha in the US state of Nebraska wrote a book about Mösbach citizens after meticulous research. He knows the cherry village very well. Now he has visited; he is very passionate about genealogical research.

He knows the events surrounding the emigrants from Mösbach in the 19th century, who came from families with names like Sutterer, Hund, Doll and Panther, who put everything on the line in years of hardship and set out on the long journey to the new world.

Among them were the brothers Ferdinand and Aloys Panther from a farmhouse on what is now Renchtalstrasse, they were the sons of Moriz Panther and Elisabeth Birk. They married on May 14, 1831 and gave birth to six children. Sonja Schuchter, a native of Mösbach and now mayor of Sasbachwalden, is related to this family “through countless connections” and thus also to the Panther emigrants, whose descendants include the author and son of Agnes Catherine Panther and John Anthony Miller.

Two years of work

“It is incredibly impressive to be in the homeland of my ancestors,” said Matthew K. Miller. He and his wife Karen were searching for traces in “Panthers Home.” Her mother came from Kaiserslautern, married a US soldier and went to America with him. “My wife supported me with great patience,” says the author, who worked on the book for two hours a day for over two years.

Miller’s book is a first-class work that, starting with the original Mösbach couple, shows the family trees of their children, grandchildren and respective spouses with many relevant biographical details. Then we look back into the past and the lines of both spouses are sketched out very thoroughly from files, church records or sources such as the Mormon archives.

The ancestors of the spouses of the emigrants Ferdinand and Aloys Panther are described, creating a unique family puzzle in longitudinal and transverse lines. Far back in time, the name Christianus Brandstetter (1610-1644) appears in Renchen via Sonja Schuchter's great-grandfather Vincentius Panther and her grandmother Josefine Panther. The author describes him as a councilor, poet and major and who is said to have been related to Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. If Miller's research is correct, then the "family connections" from Christianus Brandstetter to Sonja Schuchter span eight generations of "great-grandparents".

The joy and suffering, happiness and sadness that people have experienced since 1610 would fill entire bookshelves and much of it would be unbearable to read if the fury of war swept through the country again, small children died shortly after their birth and hunger, hardship and epidemics swung the scythe of death.

Enormous hunger

In Mösbach too, the misery was so great that between 1851 and 1861 a third of the inhabitants emigrated to America. Years of rain caused the harvest in the fields to rot, and the "starving people" were a drain on the communities' purse strings. The community of Mösbach paid the emigrants money for the crossing.

Crooks and agents of the shipping companies took advantage of the hardship and deceived the hopelessly lost into believing that there was a land of milk and honey on the other side of the ocean. Senior teacher Josef Fahrländer wrote: “The local authorities were very keen to persuade the poorer or destitute residents to emigrate and to raise the funds for the journey.”

Cholera on the ship

The deportees included in particular “poor single women with their illegitimate children” and those who, as poor people, were a financial burden on them. Such as the family of Agatha Reichert, who set out on the journey with eight children via Rotterdam and Liverpool to New York. Cholera broke out on the ship, and in eleven days three children, her husband and another child died immediately after arrival.

Agatha Reichert herself ended up in a poorhouse, became ill, was unable to gain a foothold in the promised paradise and after a year of painful wandering she was back in Mösbach with three children. The eldest son stayed in America.