A photograph-- the dream of every genealogist, the holy grail of family research. Through them, ancestors that we could only imagine, come alive as we look across the centuries into their eyes. One of my most cherished possessions is a tintype of my great-great-grandmother Anna Ryan, born in 1831 in Tipperary, Ireland. A close second would have to be personal letters. I haven't had as much luck in that department, but that changed recently.
While looking at my German ancestors a short time ago, I noticed a new hint for the Clements family, a book titled, "Palatine German Immigration to Ireland and U.S.", by Hank Z. Jones. As I quickly skimmed through it, I came across this note from the author-
Well, that's nice for someone I thought, wish it was my Clements family. Then I read the note and preceding paragraphs more closely... Johannes Clements? I am a direct descendant of Johannes, it WAS my family! Now I needed to find those letters! A Google search was disappointing, but it found a book containing the translated letters, "The Iskenius Letters: From Germany to New York 1726-1737". Unfortunately, it's currently out of print and the closest copy is in a library sixty miles away. Google did, however, point me to one of my favorite sites, JSTOR which I wrote about in a blog ten years ago. https://elliesancestors.blogspot.com/2014/02/irish-articles-on-jstor-free.html
On the JSTOR site I searched for the Iskenius Letters and was rewarded with an in-depth article written by F.J. Sypher, (also author of the book in the distant library), titled, "Voices in the Wilderness: Letters to Colonial New York From Germany". The article didn't print the letters in full, but it did include several long excerpts talking about events in Germany and family news, just the sort of thing family historians love. The very title of the article is from the closing lines of a letter sent from Germany in which the writer laments the lack of response from New York and likens his letters to an unheard voice vainly calling into the wilderness of the new world.
The article and excerpts contained a good deal of information about 18th century Germany as the family knew it, the family address, (Flammersfeld), along with the names of Johannes Clements' parents which I did not have before-- Johann Huprecht Clements and Catharina Elizabeth Iskenius. This was the first time I ever saw the surname Iskenius. I find German research harder than Irish. The main problem being I don't speak or read German, let alone old German. It was wonderful to find a primary source already translated by someone who did, but I wanted all of the letters.
As they say, where there's a will there's a way and in this case, the way was an interlibrary loan. In just under a week the letters were in my hands, and just as I had hoped, there was even more to be learned from them than appeared in the excerpts. Family names, deaths, addresses, and chilling descriptions of the threat of looming war in the Rhineland.
Catharina was a widow well into her fifties when she undertook the arduous voyage to an unseen, unknowable place with her eldest son Moritz. The letters make clear Catharina's brother Georg facilitated her and Moritz's immigration, but not why. At the time, her son Johannes was already living at Philipsburg Manor on the Hudson River, where Catharina and Moritz joined him in 1826. There were two other sons, Phillipus and Johannes Huprecht as well as a daughter named Christina. Christina died at age five, but I'm unsure about the boys. They do not appear in records in America, and they are not mentioned in the book of German Palatine immigrants. Nor are they named in any of the letters, all of which do inquire about Moritz and Johannes in America and talk extensively about family members still in Germany. It suggests they may have died as well, for surely if they were still living Georg would have spoken of them to their mother.
Not all the letters are intact, some of them are faded or torn, others are discolored from the tape used for repairs at some point and unreadable. While I am thrilled to have them, I can't help but wish that some of the letters from America to Germany had survived.
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