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.

A Danish Sea Captain

This is a painting of the Urania of Flensburg. Hans Hansen captained a ship very much like this one.
Source: www.schiffshistorisches-archiv.de. 

               Like almost every other man in Flensburg, Hans Hansen was involved in the rum trade. He must have started out as a lowly sailor, but eventually his abilities earned him the captainship of a vessel.
               He wasn’t home very often.  He typically left Flensburg at the beginning of March, sailed northwards around the tip of Jutland and through the North Sea, down the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay, slipped past Portugal and docked briefly at Madeira to obtain fresh water and foodstuffs for his crew.

               Doubtless he also took on barrels of the local wine. This wine was immediately fortified with a neutral brandy to help it not spoil during the long voyage. As the ship swayed, so did the barrels, so their contents were constantly mixed and agitated. Exposure to below-decks heat and salt air gave the Madeira its famous oxidized, salty, and nutty characteristics.

               Then Hans’s ship’s sails caught the trade winds and he reached the Danish West Indies by May or June. He unloaded his goods, restocked the vessel with raw materials, and rushed to leave port before the local autumn storms hit. Then he followed the North American coast northwards for a while, and finally cut back across the Atlantic. With a little luck, he was home before Christmas.

               This left his wife Dorothea as a more-or-less single parent to their four sons, Henry, Peter, Christian Martin, and Andrew Theodor. She was a tiny woman, but no clinging vine. When Hans died young, she “cared for and raised the children, preparing them for useful and honorable positions in the world”, according to an old Southern California history book. She arranged for her 15-year-old son Christian to be apprenticed to a Flensburg cabinetmaker, and three years later she decided it was time to send her younger boys to the United States.

Rum City

               Back in Buffalo, N.Y. Alma Hildegard had married a young Schleswig-born carpenter in December 1883. They were both 20.

               Christian Martin Hansen in later years described himself as German, because that was a simple explanation of a complex situation. His birthplace, Flensburg, was located on a fjord along the coast of the contentious province of Schleswig-Holstein. When he was born in 1863, the area was still part of Denmark, but after the German-Danish War of 1864, it became Prussian territory.

               Flensburg was a “Rum City” and had a fleet of 300 trading ships involved in the rum industry.  More than 200 local distilleries processed sugar cane juice into grog, and a plethora of refineries, oil mills, and soap and tobacco factories handled other raw goods the traders brought home. It was a given that nearly every man in town would be somehow involved in the West Indies trade. Food, building materials and coke were transported from Flensburg to Christiansted on St. Croix, and bartered for sugar cane, color wood and spices.

  

Flensburg harbor

             Christian’s father Hans was born in Naestved on Denmark’s big island of Zieland, and his mother Dorothea came from Angeln in Schleswig-Holstein. Both his parents were ethnic Danes, which causes difficulties for anyone trying to trace their origins. Before 1828, Denmark practiced the use of patronyms and matronyms. For instance his father Hans Hansen, born around 1835, was probably Hans, the son of another Hans. Hans Senior might have been named something like Hans Gunnarsen or Hans Eriksen.

Likewise, we know Christian’s mother as Dorothea Petersen (or Jensen; there’s some confusion here). But her father might have been baptized Peder Olesen or Jens Ottarsen…or? And her mother would have been identified as someone’s daughter, as in Elsa Einarsdatter. Later in this chronicle, I’ll be able to trace some of our family branches back over a thousand years. But as for anyone thinking they can march into Naestved or Angeln and trace our forebears to the Viking Age, I wish them luck.