Your German Migrant Ancestor
By Jean Wilcox Hibben, PhD. If your ancestor was an auswanderer – one who left the area now called Germany – with a group of other like-minded individuals, he/she was an emigrant and might be found in any number of locations. You are probably already familiar with the phenomenon of “push-pull” when it comes to emigration/immigration. North America was hardly the only option for those seeking a better life. For some, it was a “stop along the way,” giving them a chance to perhaps make some money or reunite with family before traveling on to Canada and Nova Scotia, South and Central America, the West Indies, Asia, and even Africa. All of which eventually had German settlements. Possibly, after coming to North America, some of your ancestors elected to return to one of the ports of call along the way on their initial trip. But, of course, large numbers of German immigrants populated the big cities in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc. And full colonies of Germans began to populate the Southern states, such as the Carolinas and Georgia, and throughout the Appalachian territory.[1] In 1822, a German encyclopedia explained German emigration as follows (giving us a perspective of how this phenomenon was viewed in the first quarter of the 19th Century): It was not overpopulation alone which was the essential cause of emigration, but rather the hopelessness that conditions would ever improve, the fear that still more adversity was approaching, and the total lack of trust in the…