Speak German? If so, quick question.

Hi,

Yes, I do. To say your name in German, the "e" before the "t" is pronounced as a long "a"...as the "a" in rate.

Are you trying to introduce yourself? Just use the same pronunciation you normally do. The German form of the name generally has an unstressed vowel sound at the end, like "Margarethe" or "Margareta".

R's are not silent in German. In Hochdeutsche, it's pronounced with a roll in the back of the throat, similar to French. In the Austrio-Bavarian dialects, it's often with a trill of the tongue, like in Italian and Spanish.

Thank you both.

I wish it were as simple as just wanting to know how to introduce myself. But, we have been doing an exhaustive search trying to find my great grandmother's ship record for her immigration to the US thru Ellis Island. Based on census info once she was in the US (sister located additional information thru the Mormon Center in Salt Lake City (which was incredible, I'm told) while on a recent trip there, we find a last name ship passenger listing with a match with her approximate birthdate and immigration date, but we cannot get an exact match on the first name........and we've been thru every single person in the ship records with her last name.

Her first name on the ship record is shown as Magda, so we are hypothesizing that since she was a teenager in steerage, it is very likely the person entering her name into the manifest could not understand what she was saying..........or she changed her name once she got to the US.....or someone changed it for her. We understand she spoke no English and did not read/write when she arrived.

I was hoping what I found on one YouTube video for German pronunciations was correct in staying that behind vowels the r's are silent......but I've also found what you both have said.

Likely we will never know for certain if that's her ship record, but based on process of elimination, it HAS to be (age, last name, date of immigration, and country from which she sailed all match up.)

........and of course, generations later, we are left to wonder just how bad her life was that she decided to get on a ship and go to a strange land by herself at such a young age. My aunt tells me she would never talk about her past, other than to say where the ship sailed from and that she was in steerage.

.....and, yes, I was named after her :)

Hi,

In terms of the process of elimination which you mention, what about her home town or village? Did you find evidence of that?

When you start doing geneology research, one of the first things you learn is that names can have many variations and spellings, for a lot of different reasons. You aren't likely to find an exact match on every fact. Birthdates can be written down incorrectly, too. If I were you, I would assume that the record you have is the right person, and go on from there.

Fred,
Oddly in the hand-written ship manifest there is no record of her residency or place where she last lived (and most entries for others have that recorded). So, that also makes me think the person entering the info could not understand what she was saying....or they were rushing so that accuracy was not sought. The Ellis Island transcribed record shows N/A for her re: residency or place last lived. So odd, but given her age and traveling alone in steerage, I doubt family was there hugging her and waving bye as she boarded the ship. I can only begin to imagine what she was 'escaping.'

My aunt has no recollection of her ever stating a town, village, etc (just Germany)....and no mention of siblings, parents, etc. We find perfect matches (husband, children, burrow in NY, original nationality) on the various US census records, and it is only from those that we learned her year of immigration.

Nancy,
So very right you are! Even the census info says approx on some ages and dates., and we have found names spelled with slight variations from one census to the next, even with the same address remaining constant.

I am totally convinced (well, 99.9%) that it's her.

If the R's were silent, then I could rationalize more the confusion on the name......but, like you say, I'm just going to accept this is her. And, what's odd, the handwritten 'a' in her name has a " mark under it. Further down in the manifest there is what appears to be an abbreviated Margaret (Marga with the " under the 'a').....so in haste, maybe the recorder just put the wrong name in for my great grandmother, while they were entering an abbreviation (if that's what the " mark indicates.). I can only guess it was a mass of humanity entering the ship all at once, and likely lots of language barriers........process them quickly and get them down to steerage so the ship could sail. More time was probably taken with the folks on the upper decks.

Thank you all for your help and kindness.

Magdalena was a common first name in Germany (have at least one German ancestor by that name), so it could be Magda, for short. Maybe she changed it to Margaret to "fit in".

I think that the -ret would be pronounced to rhyme with bet. Only if it were Margarete or Margareta, would the 'e' sound like a long a.

My Duden Ausspachewörterbuch (pronunciation dictionary) does not show a silent r for the German pronunciation of either Margarete or Margareta. It does, however, give only an engl pronunciation for Margaret, as Ma:gret (with e inverted, so pronounced like eh).

One thing that I have noticed doing genealogical research for my family and my husband's family, a lot of the members went by what we considered their middle name/second middle name. Which when they hit the States those other names seemed to dissappear. Now I don't know if it is a fluke with our families, or what.

Perhaps the handwriting was translated strangely too. Here is a site I found interesting. It would also explain a lot.
http://www.suetterlinschrift.de/Englisch/Sutterlin.htm
https://script.byu.edu/Pages/German/en/alphabet.aspx

Good luck!!!

I don't think Margaret is a German name. She probably changed it.

Try to find her application for US citizenship. That should have a statement of where in Germany she came from (she had do disavow any loyalty to her former ruler). The Family History Center might be able to help. Looks like there is one in Madison, one in Franklin.

Then go to the records at the FHC from that German state and find her parents' emigration requests (hint: the link to Sutterlin will be helpful). Requests for emigration have birth names and a brief genealogy. This works better for emigration before 1873, so if she came to Ellis Island, it was probably later and might not work.

My wife's German aunt was named Marguerite. I'm not positive there's a u in there, and she didn't pronounce the e at the end, so Marg(hard g)-err-eat. She went by Marg. Her family history is Catholic, from the southern area of the German/Polish border (but lived near Koln).

Thanks Lee, Susan and Brad.
The more research we continue to do, the more the mystery deepens. So, it's probably a case of 'we'll never really know for sure' if we have found the right ship record or not. And, Lee, yes she did come thru Ellis Island when the process seemed a bit 'easier.' The only 'hint' of where in Germany she had lived was from an aunt who recalls her saying 'on a canal in Hamburg.' But, we will never know if that is a fact.
Thank you all for your help.

.........and there is also the somewhat unlikely situation that she may have been a stowaway or posing as a wife/child of another passenger....we'll just never know. She was obviously escaping something, and what that was we'll never know. The more I have researched about the conditions in steerage (especially for young women), it's hard to believe what she likely endured to come to America and what her life was like upon arrival.

Not to confuse things too much, but the word Magd in Germany means maid and perhaps that got entered as her name rather than her occupation? I have pondered on this all week, thinking this may be where the wrench gets thrown into the works.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magd

Margaret is used in Germany, though not common.

Jo,
Eureka....you may have just solved the mystery!!

She earned her living as a janitor when she raised my father/aunt (her grandchildren), so it is very likely she tired to explain she would be working as a maid.....and likely she was being brought in to the US to work for someone as a maid (which would explain 'who' may have met her when she arrived in the US). I understand unmarried women immigrating needed to be met by someone in the US in order to come in (thank goodness times have changed and we are now considered 'whole' people, but I digress :)

Thank you for thinking about this, and thank you for sharing your thought. I really think that is highly likely what happened.

"Mar-greht".

Andreas, that made me laugh!

My family is Irish and English primarily (plus Danish, Dutch, Welsh and Scottish). Some relatives came through Ellis Island, but most were here long before that.

My relatives who do family history tell me, that Ellis Island records often list the point of embarkation as where a person is from - so many Irish think their ancestors are from Cork, for example, when Cork was simply where they boarded the boat that brought them to America. In your case, a canal in Hamburg could have been a place where she lived but could also have been the place she boarded her ship.

Hello, Margaret - followed your link with interest and would like to speculate on your great-grandmother's reason for leaving home at such a young age. Perhaps she was adventurous and not exactly running away from a terrible situation. She could have been a "Kindermaedchen" - a young girl helping with the children of a family (perhaps even relatives with a different last name) that was moving to the U.S. (Amerika, as the Germans say). Perhaps they offered her the opportunity to come with them and she accepted. This would explain how she could afford the trip; her employers paid her fare. As a servant, she would have traveled steerage. In Germany, the common abbreviation for Margaret is Grete or Gretel or Gretchen and there would have been regional variations in the pronunciation of Margaret. The more common version of the name used to be Margarethe. As someone said, Magda could have been her middle name. Perhaps her employer's wife or one of the children was also named Margaret, so they called her by her middle name. Also, there is a "Historisches Museum" in Bremerhaven, Germany, The German Emigration Center. They have passenger lists that had to be submitted to American immigration authorities. If you google immigration museum in Bremerhaven you will find more than one website. By the way, I'm a native German speaker.....

Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions.

I'll also check the German museum to see if we can find anything else there.

My aunt (who, along with my father, was raised by my great-grandmother) was just in town for a visit, and I was hoping that she may have remembered hearing more as a child or as an adult (my grandmother lived with her until she died in her 90s). But, she was never able to learn anything more than what she had already shared with us. Evidently my great grandmother never wanted to talk about her past and maintained no connections with other family/friends (if there were any)......she basically just worked hard every day and devoted herself to raising her grandchildren with what very little means she scraped together. My aunt also shared that my great grandmother was not one to show emotion or affection....no hugs, etc. But, obviously, love/dedication was shown by taking in the twins as infants when their mother (who was married to my grandfather..also now deceased) died at childbirth.

Likely we will just have to accept that we know about as much as we will ever know. I only had the opportunity to meet her once when I was a very young child, and I have no memories of it....only a photo.

Again, sincere thanks to all who have offered help/suggestions.

Anna, thank you also for the 'happy version' of possibilities......yes, that could have been likely. One of my great-grandmother's children was named Anna :)