Migration to Buffalo, NY

               Prussia held Schleswig-Holstein and the City of Flensburg firmly in its iron grip. The Hansens were not Lutheran. The freedom of religion factor has always been cited as the sole reason for their immigration, but as Dorothea’s descendant, I think her qualms about her family’s remaining in Flensburg ran deeper than that.

There’s a school on the hill

Where the sons of dead fathers

Are led toward tempests and gales,

Where their God-given wings

Are clipped close to their bodies

And their eyes are bound ‘round with ships’ sails.

               These lyrics were composed by a Scottish folk singer, Andy M. Stewart, but they perfectly describe the situation in Flensburg. Dorothea didn’t want her sons to be forced into the seafaring life of their father.

               So in 1881 Dorothea put her sons Christian and Andrew Theodor on a ship and headed for Buffalo, N.Y. I’ve seen a photo of these boys leaning on the ship’s railing, gazing down at Mama. They tried to look nonchalant, but their eyes held both apprehension and excitement. They were 18 and 17, respectively.

Christian and Andrew Theodor were among the great wave of immigration that started around 1880. They probably passed through the newly opened Ellis Island. Source:  en.wikipedia.org.

               Evidently both boys worked very hard at the jobs they found on the East Coast; Christian made a specialty of creating interior hardwood finishings for the firm of Miller, Brown & Messmer. The young immigrants were able to send for Dorothea before too long. By the time he was 20, Christian felt he could afford a wife and family.

               Christian and Alma’s first child, Theodore Martin, was born in Buffalo, N.Y. ten months after his parents’ marriage. Their daughter Elsa Lydia followed two years later in 1885.