Start Packing Kids, It's Time To Move!
May 2019 move from Maineville, Ohio to Herriman, Utah
Family moves can be tough. Since graduating from college our family has moved to Idaho, Washington, Minnesota, Tennessee, Ohio, and Utah. A total of 8 moves in 23 years. My father told me early in my career to go wherever I needed to in order to support my family with a good paying job -- and I took his advice seriously. While it has given me fulfilling jobs in food manufacturing for five different companies, sadly, it has meant fewer opportunities for our children to spend time with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Not to mention leaving behind friends. After one move, it took my favorite teenage daughter a year to forgive me for separating her from her soccer teammates and friends.
While such migration is uncommon now, it was common in previous centuries. Economic downturns, weather events that devastated farmers, war, religious persecution, or the hope of better life all have driven families to move across states, across countries, and across oceans.
Theodore Barber Day
My Day family ancestors were in West Liberty, Kentucky in the early 1800s. By 1841, when my great-great grandfather was born, they had moved along with many other Kentucky families to Lancaster, Wisconsin. Following the Civil War, my great-great-grandfather moved to Iowa, then in 1880 was in Kansas. Finally, he traveled the Oregon Trail, and by 1900 was in Lost Prairie, Oregon.
Our Barnes ancestors made similar westward moves, beginning in Indiana in the 1820s, shortly after it became a state. By the 1850s, the extended Barnes family had settled in frontier Missouri. Then in the middle of the Civil War, with several brothers enlisted in the Union army, the Barnes family struck out on the Oregon Trail, first settling in Cove and Paradise, Oregon. Their final move was to Asotin, Washington, where Oliver Perry Barnes is buried in a beautiful cemetery on a hill overlooking the Snake River.
From a genealogical standpoint such moves can make it difficult for a family to track their ancestors. If major life events such as births, marriages, or deaths occur in each location it becomes easier. Land records, or being recorded in a census each decade can also anchor a family to a given location. .Perhaps references in a personal diary or journal bring out the details. For our family, life events captured in vital records only happened in Washington and Minnesota, and the census would have recorded us only in Washington and Tennessee.
Such genealogical difficulty came up recently as my daughter and I were researching my wife’s great-great-great grandfather, Anton Wolf. The Wolf family lived in Krummel, Germany in the early 1800s. Many of the Wolfs emigrated to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, showing up in population registers there starting in 1852. Yet someone had believed they had found Anton’s brother Peter Wolf, and his wife Anna Ferger in New York City in the 1870 United States Census.
Immigration records can be tricky. During RootsTech 2020, I attended a class specifically on “circular migration”, a phenomenon where individuals immigrate, then return to their home country. Sometimes multiple trips are made, with employment and family being the primary causes. During the class, I wondered if circular migration might be the solution for Peter and Anna Wolf, as the records we had in that timeframe seemed to show that their children were born in both New York City and Amsterdam.
Peter Wolf entries in the Amsterdam Immigration Registers
My daughter spent hours reviewing New York immigration records during the 1860s, and quickly found that there were too many Peter Wolfs to count, particularly not knowing if he came directly from Germany or Amsterdam where his family had moved. So she reversed her search, and looked into Amsterdam immigration records. After a short time, she was able to prove that Peter and Anna Wolf had immigrated from Germany to Amsterdam, but had appeared annually in Amsterdam’s Immigration Register from 1860 to 1879. In the absence of US immigration records, the attachment of a US Census record and all its resulting extended family, was likely in error. More research is needed before Peter Wolf and his family can reasonably be placed in New York.
Circular Migration did occur with the Wolf family in multiple generations, just not likely with Peter Wolf. Anton Wolf and his father Johann Peter Wolf lived in both Amsterdam and Krummel, Germany in the 1850s and 1860s, as evidenced by births, deaths, and immigration registers. In more recent times, my father-in-law moved with his family to the United States from Amsterdam in 1957. While he stayed in the US, his parents and siblings have lived in both countries in the years since.
Whether your family has lived in one place for generations, or moved to find a better life like the Days, Barnes, and Wolfs, make sure that you leave “footprints” behind. Life events, property records, and a census or two will do. If not, write about the great family events that have happened, and record your own migration story.