Preface to Census
Surveys
The purpose of these census surveys is to catalog the names
and ages of first generation German-speaking immigrants to Sonoma. Children of
immigrants and people with German surnames born in the US are not listed. I
have a separate listing of general Sonoma Germanic surnames that are not time
or generation-specific.
I may refer to Germany, even if before 1871, for convenience
and to identify the ethnic/ language region as a whole.
We can tell a few things from the people surveyed on the
censuses: they were German speakers, a profession was listed and the value of
their real estate and property. Each census kept track of different data,
sometimes level of education, marital status, year naturalized, whether they
had a radio etc. In some cases ethnicity can be told by the name, Solomon Levy
for example.
The states and localities that Sonoma immigrants came from
in Germany stay largely the same through the censuses of 1860 and 1870:
Prussia, Hanover, Bavaria, Holstein, Saxony, Switzerland and Austria; Bremen
and Hamburg.
A unified state of Germany did not exist until 1871. Until
that time immigrants would have come from free states and cities in the
German-speaking region of northern Europe. These states and cities as they
apply to Sonoma history are listed below. Immigrants before the 1880 Census
would many times list the state within ‘Germany’ that they were from. Many
however would just say ‘Germany’ as their country of origin. Much less
typically would a city or town be listed. On the 1880 Census and later,
immigrants had a higher tendency to say ‘Germany’ rather than another state or
region within.
‘Prussia’ is similarly vague to ‘Germany’ concerning the
exact location of origin; Hanover, Bavaria, Holstein, Saxony, Switzerland,
Austria, were all large enough states as well and so it is difficult to say
exactly where the Sonoma immigrants came from in terms of what town or
county. Only Hamburg, Bremen and
Darmstadt were cities. Niederweis was a town. In terms of the Census data
itself, from 1850 -1880, for Sonoma German-speaking immigrants the latter three
cities and one town is as specific as it gets.
An interesting piece of the immigration puzzle is to figure
if there was any chain migration and/or founder effect by particular immigrants
from particular places. Typically people follow the first immigrants and many
come to the same place or region, from the same place or region. This is chain
migration. This is observable today in Boyes Hot Springs as many immigrants are
from the same region of Michoacan, Mexico.
I believe I can demonstrate chain migration and founder
effect for the Philip Bill lineage. Ernst Rufus may be the person responsible
for people coming from Wurttemberg and C.F. Leiding for people from Bremen.
John Sutter may be responsible for many Swiss-German immigrants to California
in general and the effect of the Gold Rush was a powerful draw aside from any
other founder effect or chain migration.
Of historical note, the Protestant Reformation divided Germany into the Lutheran north and
Catholic south. Generally speaking, immigrants from northern Germany may be
more likely to be Protestant and from southern Germany more likely to be
Catholic. Knowing the location of German states allows some inference as to
religion.
Reading the census documents can be a challenge in and of
itself. Handwriting on the censuses is in many cases illegible; some of the
names that appear to be odd spellings may be incorrect. The Ancestry.com Index feature shows the names and some
data typed out, in some cases repeating misspellings. In many cases the Index
makes it much easier to catalog and read the names and information. The Index
can be readily understood but does not show occupation, value of real estate
and property etc. To glean that data necessitates reading the actual script and
cursive, a tedious and time-consuming task beyond the scope of my current
interest.
A complete survey of Sonoma immigrants will entail going
over the actual page copies and reading the information in old-style cursive.
One tactic for understanding hard to read, stylized script: find legible
letters in other words and then compare to letters in the word difficult to
read.
Interestingly, as technology marches on, cursive and script
are no longer being taught in school. As this skill becomes lost, the ability
of future amateur researchers to access primary documents like the census, will
be increasingly compromised and left to specialists. And so the past recedes
and is forgotten.
The 1850 Census has Eliza Van Geldern from the city of Braunschweig.
Of the few German immigrants on this census it’s interesting to have an actual
city.
On the 1860 Census, from the standpoint of social justice,
the naming of Chinese immigrants as all
‘John Chinaman’ and sarcastic names for Indians such as Dick Bean Soup and Hard
Pan is disturbing according to modern standards. This notable evidence of past
prejudice leavens the sense of who we are as a country. American history has a
clear dark side that cannot be glossed over. Prejudice and discrimination
against women, minorities, immigrants and people of different cultures and
races continues in 2014.
The new immigrants from 1880–1920 faced many negative
aspects of Nativism: Italians, Slavs, Jews, southern and eastern Europeans were
seen as volatile, emotional and less sophisticated. It took generations for
these types of prejudices to subside. In fact, these sentiments were merely
transferred onto new groups of immigrants.
In Sonoma the keeping of Indian and Chinese personal
workforces can be seen as a form of slavery or indentured servitude. M.G.
Vallejo and John Sutter among others did this on large scale and were emulated
by other settlers such as A. Harasthy and the Robbin family. This is not so far
different from current use of low-wage Mexican immigrant labor in agriculture,
construction and service jobs. These and above observations are not for the
purpose of moralizing but rather to simply point out that while Sonoma history
is very colorful and interesting, the full story is more nuanced than a picture
of happy workers of color picking grapes.
The 1860 Census was one year before the Civil war. The two
‘colored’ people mentioned in this census are not noted as being free or slave.
That they were even counted might indicate they were free.
On the 1860 Census there are a lot of younger, single men.
There is also an apparent tendency to shorten and/or Anglicize surnames.
Some observations on the 1870 Census: Prussia was the
dominant place of origin for many German-speaking Sonoma immigrants, followed
by Bremen, Wurttemberg, Bavaria, Baden, Hanover, Hamburg, Saxony, Holstein,
Switzerland, Austria, and Frankfort. These areas stayed more or less the same
from the 1860 Census.
There is no doubt that people world-wide became aware of
Northern California after the 1849 Gold Rush. German speakers may also have had
more of an inside track from the ads, writings and letters of the Swiss-German
Johann Sutter. A case could certainly be made that Ernst Rufus started a chain
of migration from the state of Wurttemberg, Rufus being closely associated with
Sutter, would have sent letters home and he went back to Wurttemberg in person
in March of 1854. His notoriety and first hand accounts surely inspired others
to emigrate.
Ernst Rufus, while not as large a character as John Sutter,
was nevertheless a very important figure in Sonoma and Sonoma County history.
In the absence of specific cities of origin, hard evidence
for chain migration is difficult to provide, although it can certainly be
inferred. Migration can also be in the basis of family ties, for example, the
Philip Bill family from Darmstadt and Niederweis.
It’s safe to say there was chain migration and founder
effect, we just don’t know exactly with how many and from where. Further
research would certainly turn up more evidence.
On the 1880 Sonoma census there were lots of Chinese and
Swiss-Italian speaking immigrants. Female German immigrants with an Anglo
surname most likely had their non-Germanic surnames through marriage.
Even though the overall population of Sonoma started to drop
after the 1870 Census, the immigration pulse to the US between 1880 and 1920
does show an increase in the percentage of first generation immigrants. War, militarism,
forced conscription and poor economic conditions contributed to a large number
of emigrants from Germany.
An astute historian would probably be able to connect
climatic events to this second great wave of immigration to the US. Another
factor to possibly connect would be technology and the Industrial Revolution
displacing hand-workers.
Central characters
George Wallman came from Hanover; his wife Catherine came
from Holstein.
Otto Rufus: southern Wurttemberg near Switzerland
C.F. Leiding: Bremen
Philip Bill #A: Darmstadt
Philip Bill #1: Neiderweis
Philip Bill #2: Neiderweis
Otto Schuhmann: ‘Germany’
Lena Berta Grande Heilmann Wallman: Poland
Ernst Rufus was from Wurttemberg, an area and former state
in southwest Germany now known as Baden-Wurttemberg. Stuttgart is the capital.
Other early Sonoma German immigrants: Julius Poppe, Berlin,
Prussia, central eastern Germany. Solomon Schocken, Rosasen, Prussia occupied
Poland. Johane Breitenbach, Clausthal, state north of Hessen.
Widukind was a
Saxon chief during the Saxon wars of 772-804; this must be the namesake of the
late Wedekinds nursery.
Population of Sonoma
by decade
The population of the valley as a whole was always more than
that of the township itself. The 1870
population represented a peak that would not be reached again until the mid
1940’s. 1870 was a heyday decade in Sonoma history. What factors contributed to
Sonoma’s population decline?
1860: 597
1870: 1513
1880: records unavailable
1890: 757
1900: 652
1910: 957
1920: 801
1930: 980
1940: 1,158
1950: 2015
1960: 3023
1970 4,112
1980: 6,054
1990: 8,121
2000: 10,000
2010: 10,648
German States,
Place Names, Names and Geography
Prussia: (PreuBen) a
previous state, kingdom, empire and ethnic German area extending north and east
towards Russia, along the southern margins of the Baltic Sea
Bremen: A free
Hanseatic port city on Weser River leading to the North Sea; full of history
from settlement 12,000 BC to Romans, Middle Ages, the Reformation etc
Braunschweig
or Brunswick: Hanseatic city in Lower Saxony, connects to North Sea via
Aller and Weser Rivers. Braunschweiger, aka liverwurst is a namesake.
Hamburg: another
free Hanseatic port city on the Elbe River leading to the North Sea. Hamburger,
liverwurst, seems like these Germans knew their processed meats.
Neiderweis: town in the municipality of Irrel in the
district of Bitburg-Prum, in Rhineland-Palatinate, western Germany. This region
is bordered by Belgium and Luxembourg to the west, a transition zone between
Dutch, Belgian and German language areas. Alternate spellings:
Niederwisse, Niedervisse. Further research shows this area to be in Alsace-Lorraine
(Elsass-Lothringen,) from a map guide to German Parish registers. (1)
Niederweis is between Strasbourg and Verdun, in the Pfalz or Palatinate region
of Alsace-Lorraine
Darmstadt: City
in between state of Hesse and region of the Palatinate.
Holstein: the most northerly German state, bordering
Denmark, in the region of Bremen and Hamburg
Schleswig-Holstein:
encompasses most of Holstein plus a bit more
Lower Saxony: state
in northwestern Germany, to the immediate southeast of Holstein
Hanover: capital
of Lower Saxony
Saxony: central
eastern state bordering Poland and Czechoslovakia
Bavaria: state in
southeastern Germany
Wurttemberg: state in south central Germany
Baden: state
immediately east of Wurttemberg
Hesse: state in
Central Germany
Clausthal: state
north of Hesse
Frankfort:
largest city in the state of Hesse, where hot dogs (frankfurter) came from,
named for tribe of Franks
The
Crisis of the 1840's
“Until about 1850, Germany was still a country of villages and
farms, jobs outside agriculture were rare = not enough employment for the
fast-growing population. The import of cheaper British goods ruined many
people. The result: wages and the standard of living for the majority of
Germans declined until the 1840s
“Revolt in Silesia:1844: 3000 frustrated handloom weavers attack
bookkeepers and destroy the property of factory owners. The Prussian government
sends military to crush protests.
“1845-47: crop failures, bad harvests and mass poverty, food
prices rise dramatically, private organizations and the churches try to help
the starving population, governments do little
“1846: 50-60% of the Prussian population lives on the edge of
starvation”
German Immigration
http://www.ushistory.org/us/25f.asp
“In the middle
half of the nineteenth century, more than one-half of the population of Ireland emigrated to the United
States. So did an equal number of Germans.
Most of them came because of civil unrest, severe unemployment or almost
inconceivable hardships at home. This wave of immigration affected almost every
city and almost every person in America. From 1820 to 1870, over seven and a
half million immigrants came to the United States — more than the entire
population of the country in 1810. Nearly all of them came from northern and
western Europe — about a third from Ireland and almost a third from Germany.
Burgeoning companies were able to absorb all that wanted to work. Immigrants
built canals and constructed railroads. They became involved in almost every
labor-intensive endeavor in the country. Much of the country was built on their
backs.”
The Order of the Sons of Hermann, also
known as Hermann Sons and by its
German name as der Orden der Hermann's
Soehne or Hermannssöhne,
was formed as a mutual protection society for German immigrants in New
York City on July 20,
1840.
The order
provides low-cost insurance and mutual aid and has historically promoted the
preservation of German language and traditions.
Review of Petaluma
Hermann Sons
KENT W.
Hidden Valley Lake, CA
5/23/2010
The Hermann Sons Hall in Petaluma is the cultural center and
heart of the German speaking community of Sonoma County.
The
Hall is large and was built by German immigrants in the early 1930's when a
fairly large number of Germans lived and worked nearby on the many local egg
and chicken ranches located around the town of Pataluma. A fairly good number
of these families were from the island of Foehr which is one of the North
Frisian Islands located off the western coast of Schleswig-Holstein in the far
north of Germany.
The Hermann Sons are a cultural and fraternal organization
that helps to preserve the German language and culture in Northern California.
They also offer fraternal life insurance to their members. They were originally
a national organization founded as a mutual protection society in New York in
1840. By 1895 the organization had 30,000 members and had its national
headquarters in Milwaukee, WI. In 1870 a Lodge was established in San Francisco
and within a few years there were 70 Lodges across California.
Today
10 Lodges remain and two, Petaluma and Nicolaus, CA (outside Sacramento) have
their own halls. Since the last large wave of German immigration took place in
the mid 1950's the membership has become older, but it is still very active and
a strong loyalty exists between its members and Lodges. A monthly newspaper is
still printed. Meetings are held in the German language - an important part of
the preservation aspect of the organization. The Petaluma Lodge (#26) holds
several events and dances each year at the hall. For info call Mr. Slubik at:
707-763-8928
The Oktoberfest, Christkindlmarkt (Christmas Market) and New
Years Eve events are the most popular. For Oktoberfest and New Years check
their web site, you will need reservations to get in, it is always a sell out.
The hall has a large wooden dance floor and stage, in the back of the hall is
a meeting room with a kitchen and a small bar. There is also a large meeting
room upstairs as well as the Hermann Sons Museum that documents the history of
the organization in California.
There
is also still a very large fraternal life insurance organization in Texas known
as the Texas Hermann Sons - no longer connected to the California organization.
A number of different groups rent the hall for their events and the
"Accordion Club of the Redwoods" has its meetings here every third
Monday of the month at 7:30PM. They also have their dances here in the Spring
and at Christmas time.
Food served at Hermann Sons events is prepared by its members.
"Saags" sausages, potato salad, sauerkraut and rye bread are typical
for Oktoberfest and are always good and fresh. Spaten and other German beers on
tap as well as shots of Jaegermeister are a taste of the old
"Heimat".
Background
Information Germans in Northern California and Sonoma County
Gaye LeBaron in her book Santa
Rosa A 19th Century Town notes that “Irish and the Germans were
the earliest European immigrant groups in Sonoma County”. Most Germans were
merchant class, thrifty and had a good dose of the Protestant work ethic.
German imigrants, she says, were “the early cultural and social arbiters of
Santa Rosa’; they were the “first to organize socially”. Local churches had
services in German.
“By turn of the century there was Hermann Sons Lodge active
enough to entertain eminent German scientists when they came in 1903 to visit
Luther Burbank”. G.T. Pauli was an early leader of the German community in
Santa Rosa, as well as Sonoma.
Santa Rosa A 19th Century Town
Gaye LeBaron et al
1985 Historia , Ltd, Santa Rosa, CA
pp. 78-79
Building a Civil
Society in San Francisco: The German Contribution from 1850 to WW1
Monica Clyde
‘The Argonaut’ Journal of the San Francisco Museum and Historical
Society. Volume 24 No 2 ;Winter 2013 Pages4-25
Paraphrased by Fred Allebach 2/27/14
-Thanks to Patricia Cullinan for the article
German speakers were an influential immigrant group in post
Gold Rush CA until WW1. WW1 and WW2 put a damper on recognizing the substance
of German contributions to state and regional history.
In 1841 the first German speaking settlers came to Sutter’s
Fort in Sacramento, New Helvetia. German speakers were the third largest Gold
Rush immigrant group to come and stay in California after British/Irish and
Chinese. Johann Sutter’s activities were published in European German language
papers, beckoning immigrants, along with the attraction of the Gold Rush.
In 1848 there was no ‘Germany’; the region was a federation
of 38 states ruled by princes. Prussia and Bavaria were the most powerful
states. Some wanted to unify the federation but these democratic
revolutionaries failed; these activists and idealists were then oppressed. The
oppression of revolutionaries was one reason for emigration. Compulsory
military service to the various German ‘states’, threat if war between Prussia
and Austria and a failing regional economy were other forces behind emigration.
Since ‘Germany’ did not exist, immigrants came as citizens
of independent states. A Friedrich Wedekind came to SF in 1848. This may or may
not be of the same Wedekind line known in Sonoma.
The Gold Rush did not pan out for many Germans and they
turned to business and farming. Many were professionals, in crafts and trades,
cultivated, educated, idealistic and proud of their culture. Germans started
the Bohemian Club. They had the Protestant work ethic, a cultural synergy of
the Enlightenment, religion and capitalism, and were recognized for their
diligence and perseverance. As Richard Henry Dana noted : “what an enterprising
people could do with this land.”
Germans had great influence and by 1853 there were 5000 in
San Francisco including many German Jews who were mainly from Bavaria. The
Germans had cultural associations that reinforced their ethnic identity, social
clubs, mutual assistance groups, singing groups and beer gardens. The Germans
had cultural trouble with Sunday blue laws of the Anglo population.
Jacob Gundlach was a Bavarian, possibly emigrating to avoid
oppression for his liberal political views. Julius Dresel was a close friend.
Gundlach opened a brewery in San Francisco and in 1857 married Eva. In 1857 Jacob also got land in Sonoma Valley
where he started a vineyard named Rhinefarm.
Charles Bundschu was born in Mannheim in 1842 and arrived in
SF in 1862 where he married the eldest daughter of Jacob and Eva Gundlach. He
became a vineyard/ business partner with his father in law. Much material on
the Gundlach Bundschu tribe can be found in their current historical archives.
Second generation German speakers had less zeal for the
cultural affiliation of the original immigrants. Group unity started to die
off. The 1906 earthquake shook things up for Germans settling into SF, they
lost momentum and institutional presence. In 1914 WW1 began a rising
anti-German sentiment that lasted until well past WW2. A combination of factors
took a lot of ethnic pride and identity away; Germans were forced to
assimilate. In 1916 the Know Nothing anti-immigrant movement put Germans on the
defensive. In 1917 the US joined WW1, bringing hostilities towards
German-Americans and creating conflicting loyalties within the German-American
community. This was the end of the Gold Rush to WW1 era. German heritage was
then suppressed; names were Anglicized,
and history swept under the rug. The German Hospital changed its name
and ended up later being CPMC Davies Campus.
To a large extent the above changes coincided with the end
of the frontier era in CA. The upshot, German speakers were an important group
of immigrants who had strong impacts locally and in California state history,
from John Sutter to Jacob Gundlach and Charles Bundschu.
References
(1) Neiderweis:
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