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.