Still No Sign of Magdalena, but Pay Dirt on Jacob and George

I've searched using a variety of strategies and sources, but still can find no trace of big sister Magdalena Orth, born 1829 (in Retschwiller), landed in New York from Le Havre on a ship named The Virginia—July 2, 1849. I searched marriage records in the USA (assuming that Magdalena most likely marries, and thinking that marriage records might be the one place where her maiden name would appear). I searched the death records. I searched US naturalization records (apparently only men became citizens). I searched every Magdalena (no matter what her last name) who came from France and is recorded on the 1860 US Federal Census (there are 21). I searched the ship's manifest, for names that coincided with this list, thinking that she might have married a fellow passenger, however the ship's manifest is an incredibly illegible document. I searched for any records I could find of each of those 21 Magdalenas, and was able to eliminate many—others simply yielded no clues.

Unproductive as my search for Magdalena was, it yielded the wonderful surprise of the petitions for naturalized citizenship filed by both Jacob Orth and George Orth—the brothers. Their petitions were each filed in the Western District of Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh. Jacob's was filed and granted on 5 April 1858—at the age of 21.  George's petition was filed and granted on 20 March 1860—also at the age of 21. (They both have beautiful, if shaky, penmanship.)

George fights in the Civil War

Brother George did not join Jacob in his search for gold. The Boucher account said that Georg served in the Civil War.  So, I searched through the U.S. Civil War Collection and found that George (yes, he added the "e" to the spelling of his name) fought as a Union soldier, at Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, under Captain Williams. He enlisted 5 Nov 1861 in Pittsburgh, PA at age 23 and was discharged 5 Nov 1864—reason listed was "expiration of service." He served as a corporal in the 19th Infantry C.

Imagine, a boy arriving in America at age 10.  Then a little more than 12 years later, at age 23, he enlists to fight on the side of the Union. George clearly felt a sense of allegiance and/or duty to his new country. One has to infer that his intelligence and/or leadership skills distinguished him enough to become a corporal. The different life choices of these two brothers might also point to tempermental differences between the two.

The Boucher account says that George subsequently died from the effects of a wound received while in the Civil War. But this does not occur for many years (sometime after 1880 and probably before 1890). More later about George's life after his service in the Civil War.

George was described as having gray eyes, brown hair, fair complexion and standing 5'7" tall. I saw his signature!

Jacob chases gold

"Jacob went west during the Pike's Peak gold excitement in 1859, remained there for about four or five years and then returned to Pittsburgh." Source: the 1908 Boucher account, which undoubtedly derives from an interview with Jacob's son, Frank Jacob Orth, about whom the Boucher account focuses. Given the other errors in the account, it's clear that the author's recounting of information provided by Frank, based on his father's memory of events in the past is a far from perfect record. It's worth emphasizing, however, that without this account recorded by Boucher, the mysteries of the Orth family's early years in America would be much harder to solve.

We know that Jacob was married in Pittsburgh on 4 May 1865 just short of age 29.  If the Boucher account is correct, then Jacob left in search of gold in 1859 at age 23 and returns in 1863 or 1864 at the age of 27 or 28. The Pike's Peak Gold Rush began in July 1858 in what was then part of the western Kansas Territory. It culminated by Feb 1861 about the time of the establishment of the Colorado Territory. It would seem that Jacob entered the Gold Rush 1-2 years from its start and returned to Pittsburgh 1-2 years after what was considered to be the boom. I know of no information about Jacob's success in finding gold, but we can probably assume that he was not wildly successful, given he returns to Pittsburgh to his vocation of glass-blower.

Thinking about those dates with respect to the American Civil War (1861-1865), it raises some interesting questions and complications. If Jacob Orth left for Pike's Peak in 1859, presumably he was in the mountains panning for gold before Abraham Lincoln was elected president in November 1860, and the outbreak of war in April 1861.  Only two months prior to the start of the Civil War, Colorado was pronounced as a territory. Slavery was illegal in Colorado Territory, it was largely pro-Union and its soldiers fought on the Union side. While geographically isolated from the major battle areas in the East, apparently there were numerous small-scale military actions in the Western territories.

This was an incredibly dangerous time, especially for males, with 8% of all the (white) males in the entire country losing their lives between 1860-1865. Give that the Pike's Peak Gold Rush was mostly over by the start of the war in 1861, we can speculate that Jacob either continued to search for gold (it is only in hindsight that we know that the rush was over) and/or that he delayed his travel back to Pittsburgh given the war-torn state of the country.  Whatever his decisions, he clearly did not enlist as a soldier. Who knows if he witnessed any military action. Apparently the Colorado soldiers were engaged in some battles against Confederates (mostly in New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas) but were frequently engaged in battles against Indians in Colorado.  Whether in or out of the military, it must have been a very wild time.

New Jersey to Pittsburgh

From the Boucher account, we know that at some point Georg and Jacob went to New Jersey where they learned the glass-blowing trade.  Presumably, they went to Southern New Jersey, where there was a very active glass-blowing industry, due to the geological presence of silica there. At this point, we don't know if they went to New Jersey directly from their landing in New York, why they chose New Jersey, where in New Jersey they lived, why they left, and when.

At some point both Georg and Jacob relocated from New Jersey to Pittsburgh, which like Southern New Jersey was also a main center of the glass industry. Evidence for this includes:

—The 1908 Boucher account says: "(Jacob) also (like his brother George) became very expert in this avocation (glass-blowing), and migrating to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, commenced work at his trade."

—In 1861, we have the record of Georg Orth's enlistment as a soldier for the union army in the Civil War from Pittsburgh. His occupation was listed as glass-blower and his residence at Pittsburgh, PA.

—Census records beginning in 1870 show both Jacob and Georg living in Pittsburgh.

By inference based on a mention in the Boucher account of Jacob departing from Pittsburgh to Colorado for a few years in 1859, the time in New Jersey presumably spanned a maximum of 9 years from 1849 (if they went there immediately after arriving from France in New York) to 1858 at the latest. And it may well have been less than these 9 years (Jacob aged 12-21; Georg aged 10-19).

And always there's the question of where's big sister Magdalena Orth? Given that Magdalena was aged 19-28 during this period, it is easy to imagine that she would have married and taken on a new (and unknown to us) last name, making her difficult to trace. I think the best possibility of finding her would be to systematically search census records in Southern Jersey communities. Inferring that young Jacob and Georg may well have lived with her, their presence would be the "tell."

Destination: Family, Neighbors, or...?

Even though I found no evidence that the three orphaned Orth children (Magdelena-19, Jacob-12, and Georg-10) went to their Aunt Eve and Uncle Georg in Philadelphia, it's quite possible they did.  One might imagine that their father would have been headed to join his sister, and the children may have been set on following Plan A.  However, given that Eve Orth and Georg Bechtel (plus kids) emigrated 10 years earlier, only Magdalena would have had a memory of them (at age 9).  Jacob and Georg would have been too young to remember. Or perhaps the stronger pull for these three children was to connect with neighbors from the small village of Retschwiller who had recently emigrated to America, whom they would have known, and perhaps even journeyed with when they crossed the Atlantic.

This led me to search the emigration records to find others from Alsace that emigrated around 1849.  The two books entitled, the Alsace Emigration Book, Volume I (1989) and Volume II (1991), compiled by Cornelia Schrader-Muggenthaler provide a source of tens of thousands of names of Alsatian emigrants.  In the ten years before 1849, there is a record of 13 registered emigrants from "Retschwiller," "Retzwiller," "Ratzwiller," and "Richwiller." I searched each one of these individuals to look for obvious connections or at least patterns of destination.  New York seems to be the initial common destination for many of these Alsatian individuals, as the standard point of entry.  There were no obvious New Jersey connections from what I was able to find, however these two Schrader-Muggenthaler books are not comprehensive.  I also checked the Orth family's ship's passenger manifest to see if there were other Alsatians on board. Perhaps they were invited to accompany fellow Alsatians, who witnessed the death of their father, and subsequent illness and death of their mother.

The question is still unanswered: where did those three kids go once they landed in New York?

Picking up the trail

A few months short of turning 29 years old, my great grandfather Jacob Orth married Margaret C. Lauffer on 4 May 1865, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But where had he been since July 1849, when he and his newly orphaned siblings arrived in New York?  And where did his sister and brother end up? Imagine a teenage girl (age 19) and her two brothers (ages 12 and 10) alone in New York city, after having just lost their parents. Where would they go? What would they do?

Information from John Newton Boucher's A century and a half of Pittsburgh and her people, Volume 3 (1908) indicates that the three siblings, Jacob, Georg, and Magdalena located somewhere in New Jersey, where Jacob and George became expert at glass-blowing. Why New Jersey? Were they headed to the home of a relative? To the home of someone from their village or its environs who had previously relocated to America? Or did they head for New Jersey, because it was one of the two key centers of the glass-blowing trade (in addition to Pittsburgh) and these Orth boys having come from a long line of blacksmiths followed what might have been their parents' plan—to transition from blacksmith to glass-blower?


This led me to a search for Orth relatives who had already emigrated to America.


My great grandfather Jacob Orth's father was:


Jacob Johann Orth
b: 2 Mar 1803
d: at sea taking his family to America 1849 


His parents were:
Johann Orth
b: 1764-1770 (in Rott, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France)
d: ??
and
Marie Elisabethe Erhardt
b: 27 Feb 1768 (in Retschwiller, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France)
d: 21 Jan 1839 (in Retschwiller, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France)


In addition to their son Jacob Johann, they had two other children:


Philipp Martin Orth
b: 26 Sep 1796 (in Retschwiller, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France)
d: ??
and
Eve Orth
b: Jan 1800 (in Retschwiller, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France)
d: 11 May 1857 (in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA)


Eve married a man named Georg Bechtel (b: 19 Oct 1803 in Leiterswiller, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France). They lived in Leiterswiller at the "Maison d'Ecole" (schoolhouse—Georg was the school teacher) between 1827 and 1835, where they had 5 children. In 1838, they left from Le Havre, France, on a ship called the Charlemagne, and arrived in New York on 11 Aug 1838 with several of their children (the survivors). The family can be traced to Philadelphia via the U.S. census, where they have an additional 5 children, though only a couple are survivors. What a hard life!


Thus, it's plausible that Jacob, Georg, and their big sister could have traveled from New York to Philadelphia, to join their aunt, uncle and cousins.  However, I find no record of this in the 1850 census (taken less than a year after the kids' arrival in New York).


There's more investigation to be done, but for now—dead-end.

When Jacob Orth came to America

With leads from fellow searchers, I uncovered the following:

In John Newton Boucher’s, A century and a half of Pittsburgh and her people, Volume 3, there is a biographical sketch of Frank Jacob Orth (son of my great grandfather Jacob Orth)—first direct Orth ancestor born in the US. It says this:

“Johann Orth, grandfather of Frank Jacob Orth, was a blacksmith in a village in Alsace-Lorraine, which was at that time a French possession, and was also the Lutheran minister of the district in which he resided. He left his home in France for America in 1848, taking with him his family, consisting of his wife and three children—two boys and one girl. On the voyage toward his new home he died and was buried at sea. The mother landed in New York with her children and died two weeks after her arrival here. The sons were: Jacob, of whom see forward, and George, who with his sister and brother located somewhere in New Jersey.”

Later in the piece, it says this: “Jacob Orth, son of the minister, was born in Alsace-Lorraine July 4, 1836, and was but twelve years of age when he arrived in this country. He was the youngest of the children, and with his brother George learned the trade of glass-blowing.”

This account is wrong in several ways for sure, which is not surprising, given it is a third-hand narrative account. According to the birth records in the Archives in Strasbourg, France, (whose reliability is high), Jacob’s family was as follows:

Parents:

Jacob (Johann) ORTH

b: 2 Mar 1803

Magdalena Schneider ORTH

b: 14 Jul 1801

Children:

Magdalena ORTH

b: 1829

Elizabethe ORTH

b: 1831

Salomea ORTH

b: 1834

d: 1839

Jacob ORTH

b: 4 Jul 1836

Georg ORTH

b: 1838

Inconsistencies between the narrative account and the birth records:

—Georg Orth was Jacob’s younger brother, not his older brother as it says in the narrative piece. 

—Jacob and George were two years apart in age, which would have made them 12 and 10 years (respectively) in 1848 (not 12 and 8 as it states in the narrative piece.

—It also means that only one of the three daughters would have come to America—this is a reasonable assumption since Salomea died at age 5 and Elizabethe would have been marriageable age in 1848 (17 years old) and very likely could have stayed behind.

Searching through the New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957, I found no groups of Orths that arrived in 1848 and fit the profile of our Orth family. However, there is a record on 2 Jul 1849 that shows the following 5 people traveling together from Germany, on a ship named the Virginia, master: Salisbury, route Le Havre, France to New York:

J. Orth, age 47

Mg. Orth, age 48

Magd. Orth, age 17

Jacob Orth age 12

Georg Orth age 8

This could be consistent with both the birth records (which we know to be true) and the narrative account in Boucher’s book in several ways:

— Jacob Johann and Magdelena, the parents, would both have been that age in 1849.

— The names and birth order of the children are correct (assuming that Elizabethe either was married or deceased and did not come).

— Jacob was 12. Jacob is likely to have provided the information in the narrative to his son Frank, who was likely interviewed for the narrative account. Jacob’s own age is likely the be one of the more memorable and therefore correct details in the story.

Inconsistent with the birth records:

—   Georg would have been 10 not 8 years old.

—   Magdelena would have been 19 not 17. (Elisabethe would have been 17)

Inconsistent with the narrative account are the following:

—This would indicate that they arrived in 1849 not 1848.

— J. Orth (the father) was not listed as having died on the voyage. This is a standard column on these ship manifests. However it should be noted that this particular ship’s manifest was messily written and had many empty fields. So this could have been omitted.

I have also now found a census report where Jacob Orth lists his date of emigration as 1849.

All of this leads me to the conclusion that my great grandfather, Jacob Orth, landed in New York on 2 Jul 1849, at the age of 12, with his two siblings (older sister, Magdalena age 19 and younger brother, Georg age 10).  His father died on the voyage; his mother died shortly after.

While there is reference to Jacob and Georg learning the glass blowing trade in New Jersey (later in the Boucher piece), there is no mention of where their sister Magdalena went, and of how the three children managed to make their way in a new country, on their own.