Solving a tough puzzle with persistence

I have the names of 27 of my 3rd great grandparents (out of 32).  Besides their names, I have a fair amount of information on about half of them.  One couple, Christian Mathias Wrocklage and Mary Elizabeth Gerdemann, were merely names to me so I decided to see what I could learn about them.  I knew they were born in Germany and died in the United States, but didn't know when they left Germany, so I first looked at immigration records. 

When you search immigration records at ancestry.com you are likely to be directed to hundreds of records with men and women of the same or similar names to those of your ancestor.  So I had to wade through many Wrocklages, but none named "Christian."  So I looked for "Mathias" as I have learned that Germans in the nineteenth century often gave their children the same first names (girls were often named "Mary" for instance) and then called them by their second names.  I found a Mathias Wrocklage that came from Germany at about the right time and I then looked at the original passenger list.  The wife's name was "Elizabeth" which fit, as like so many Germans, she probably didn't use her first name of "Mary."

There were four children also listed, so at first I thought I had the wrong ancestor, as I knew there were at least seven children in this family, all born before the date of immigration. Three of the children had the same names as three of the children on my list, though two of them had the wrong ages.  I also saw the name of one child whose name was not on my list - "Agnes." So, in addition to the different ages listed for the children on the voyage, there were at least four children not included in the passenger list, and one extra child.  Could this family have left four children behind or did I have the wrong family? 

I looked more closely at the name of the father.  He was listed as "Mathias Esch Wrocklage" and it was then that I knew I had the right family.  I recognized the name "Esch" from a handwritten family tree that my uncle had given to my mother.  Under the name "Christian Mathias Wrocklage" were the words "born Esch," which I assumed meant that he had been adopted, or perhaps born out of wedlock and then adopted later by a stepfather when his mother married.    Now that I knew I had the right family, I was curious about the discrepancies in the number and names of children that appeared on the passenger list with this couple.

Then I looked at birthdates and figured out ages of the children left behind.  They were all in their twenties at the time of the voyage, so they could have preferred to stay behind.  Or perhaps the family could not afford to bring the adult children, or were not allowed to.  In any case, they were not children who were left behind. They were adults.   There was another possibility, however.  The adult children could have come to America before their parents. 

The only way to find out was to search census and immigration records.  I started with the 1900 census, the first census that gives the date of immigration. Only two of Mathias and Elizabeth's children were alive in 1900 and one of them was named "Gertrude," and she was one of the adult children who had not come with the rest of the family.  On the census form, it indicated she had arrived in 1843.  In looking for the original immigration record, I only found one with the name Gertrude Wrocklage, in 1840 not 1843.  So whether she arrived in 1840, as the immigration record says, or in 1843, as she said sixty years later, it appears certain she came over to America before her parents and younger siblings. 

I continued my search in the immigration records for Theodore, Mary Elizabeth and Anna Maria, the other adult children who did not come with their parents and I found two interesting passenger lists.  One was in October, 1836, and included both Theodore and Elizabeth Wrocklage. A second one in 1842 contained the names of both Theodore Wrocklage and a Rinehard or Bernard Esch (the original surname of Theodore's father, and probably a relative).  Perhaps Theodore came over, got settled, and returned to Germany for a visit, bringing Rinehold (or Bernard) back with him.  Finally, I found an immigration record for Anna Maria, which lists her arrival as September, 1844, one year prior to her parents' arrival.  From these records I am fairly confident that all four adult children of Mathias Wrocklage and Mary Elizabeth Gerdemann came to America before their parents.

Now the only mysteries were the child "Agnes" and the age discrepancies of two of the children who came with their parents.  A second child named Elizabeth was listed as 8 years old, while the child Dina (Bernadina) was listed as 5.  Yet, my records showed Dina to be older than Elizabeth by several years.  The only conclusion I could draw from this was that the person who filled out the passenger list inadvertantly reversed the ages of the two girls. Since the process of listing passengers was a very informal one in the 1800s, with one person writing down the names and ages as they were spoken to him by the passengers, it is highly likely that many mistakes were made.  I believe that's what happened here.

As for Agnes, whose name didn't appear in my original records, I am still searching for answers and will post later, when I find evidence of what became of her.

This little example of trying to piece together the various events in our ancestors' lives shows how difficult it can be to find the right records and the correct information.  One has to search, formulate hypotheses about why all the information doesn't fit, and then test out those hypotheses with more searching.  It is tedious and time consuming, but when you finally fit the pieces together, it can be exhilarating.