It
will surprise absolutely no one who knows me that my heritage is
mostly German, with a touch of Dutch and a smidge of English, just to
keep it interesting. ;-)
My
paternal grandmother was named Margret Gertig.
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| Margret in the summer of 1913 |
She was born in 1894
in a small town called Kobyletz, near Posen, which at the time was
part of the German region of Prussia.
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| This is presumably Grandma's home in Germany She is on the far right. |
She emigrated to America in 1912 with a cousin, and
entered the country at Ellis Island. She eventually made her way to
Wyandotte, Michigan where she married my grandfather, John Boettner.
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| John and Margret's wedding picture Dec. 24, 1914 |
Sadly,
I have no memories of her, since she died when I was two, but have
always enjoyed the stories my parents and siblings told about her.
She didn't like talking about her life in Germany; it was a hard
life, and the family of six children was poor.
Apparently her father
wasn't a very good provider: in a rare moment of openness about her
background, Grandma said, “He was only good for making
babies.” As an adult she couldn't bear to eat potato soup, since
she had subsisted on it for much of her early life.
Margret
was a typical German lady of her generation: very thrifty,
no-nonsense, and a firm believer in calling it like she saw it.
She
would open the bills as soon as they arrived in the mail, then march
downtown with savage efficiency to pay them in person that very day.
To her, being on time meant being five minutes early.
My
Mom has told me how generous Grandma was: helping my Mom and Dad with
their (then) four kids, always bringing along some useful item like a
big pan of soup, and doing whatever needed to be done around the
house.
Other
fun stories about Margret include her quirky turns of phrase, some of
which entered our family lexicon. Upon discovering some marvel of
technology, she could be heard to say, “What they don't all make.”
Or, if one of the kids came to her with a boo-boo, she would comfort
them by saying, “Dat'll get better before you get married.”
Margret
married into the Boettner family, as I mentioned.
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| Newspaper photo of John and Margret honoring John's retirement from Wyandotte Chemical after 49 years |
For a very long
time, we didn't know where in Germany the Boettners came from, or
when they emigrated. Not long ago, my Mom handed me some old family
papers she had found, and one of them was an emigration document,
dated 1870. It was written in German in longhand script, and as such
nearly impossible to decipher.
But I
gave it my best shot, and managed to read a few things: a man named
Boettner and three of his children were leaving their hometown of
Bilzingsleben to emigrate to America. I was able to discern the name
of one of the children: Alvin, my great-grandfather.
Excited,
I raced to Google Maps to find Bilzingsleben. It's a tiny town
(current population 710!) in the German state of Thuringia, which I
thought was cool. Some pretty awesome people came from that area: one
of my favorite composers, Matthias Weckmann, and a whole musical
dynasty named Bach. Jim and I were just a stone's-throw from
Bilzingsleben when we visited Thuringia in 2009, but we weren't aware
of the family significance at that time.
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| Google Map of Bilzingsleben, showing the location of Hans Böttner Zimmerei (carpentry). Must be a relative! |
So
all this has me wondering what my ancestors would think if they knew
that one of their progeny decided to 'up sticks' and move back to
Germany. They would be intrigued to know, I think, that the country
they left to escape economic hardship is now one of the most prosperous in the world.
There's
no comparison between what Jim and I did to get here to Lübeck and
what my ancestors went through to escape a life of poverty. They
undertook a long, perilous, and emotionally fraught journey, knowing
they would never see their families again.
Grandma Margret made the crossing in November, 1912, about seven months after the Titanic sank. That must have added an extra
layer of anxiety. She probably wouldn't
understand leaving loved ones and a perfectly good and comfortable
life to move halfway across the world just because you want to.
On
the other hand, even though my ancestors learned English and
acculturated to life in America, in many ways they retained their
'Germanity' in spades, and passed those traits down to their
children. Perhaps they did retain some pride in their country of
origin, and would take pleasure in the fact that some part of them
is home again.
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| L-R John, Sara, Margret, Dad, Jan April, 1974 |
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| Sara in Thuringia March, 2009 |
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| Grandma's name on the Ellis Island Immigrant Wall of Honor |
