The Journey Begins

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Our Smith family heritage in America actually begins with the Schwab family. Mary Schwab was the only child and just 2 years old when her parents, Michael Schwab and Catherine Bihn, brought her to the United States in 1842.

 

William emigrated to the United States in 1854 at the age of 18 with his older brother Philip Schmidt, who was 20. Born to Johann Philip Schmidt & Catharina Weber, William was one of 4 children (Franziska, Philip, Wilhelm, and Elisabetha).  

 

The specific nature, reasons, and circumstances surrounding William and Mary leaving their homeland, family, and friends for the new world are currently unknown. However, much is written about the waves of German immigrants to America in the 1800s and one can speculate that he moved to avoid military enlistment, political freedom, economic opportunity, security, and/or religious freedom.

 

The knowledge of William’s family and crossing came thanks to cousin Patricia Petty, whose research of her ancestor Philip’s journey combined with DNA evidence pointed undisputedly at the link between our William Q. Smith and the missing Wilhelm Schmidt in her research. As of yet, no evidence has been found of any additional Schmidt relatives or friends having proceeded, accompanied, or followed William and Philip to the U.S. 

 

William anglicized his surname to Smith soon after arriving in the U.S., while Philip seems to have preferred to keep his Germanic surname Schmidt (Many of Philip’s children, however, assumed the name Smith). The motivation for an American immigrant to Anglicize or keep one’s ethnic surname is an interesting question. In the United States at that time, there were no rules about names so immigrants could alter their names, first or last, any way they wanted. 

 

William's motivations could have been simple. Maybe he simply wanted to assimilate into American culture and have his name ‘sound American.’ Maybe he thought it was easier to get employment. Or maybe his motivation was to avoid identification. Maybe he had a reason to want to break from his past? (Powell) 

 

Discrimination is an unlikely motivation for his name change. Although anti-German sentiment existed in the mid-1880s, this was rooted in a broader anti-immigrant sentiment that also included the Irish and others. It wasn’t until WWI some 50 years later that anti-German hysteria reached fever pitch, where German-Americans were targeted and anything remotely "German" became a stigma.

 

Surnames aside, what could have happened to cause the Schmidts and Schwabs to abandon the comfort of their families knowing they may never see them again? What must the journey across the Atlantic Ocean have been like? What conditions must they have endured? What would have caused them to give up all that was familiar to them to embark on a radically different life? Was there anyone waiting for them when they arrived? Might they have lived with a friend or family member of a different surname? How might they have paid for or re-paid the cost of their transatlantic passage to America? We might not ever really know.

 

Thanks to cousin Patricia Petty, we do have some information regarding the immigration of Philip and Wilhelm Schmidt. The two are listed together in Figure 4 as Philipp Schmidt and Wilhelm Schmidt on the passenger list for the ship “Progress,” which departed Liverpool in March or April, 1854 and arrived at the Port of New York on May 19, 1854. Philip is listed as a 20 year old and Wilhelm 18. It’s interesting however, that William reports his year of immigration as 1852 in one U.S. Federal Census and 1851 in another. In news clippings, he is reported as having been 14 years old when he immigrated. Why the inconsistencies? Did William forget the year of his immigration or how old he was? Did he deliberately want people to think he was younger? Did he not want people to know the real year he immigrated? Or was he simply mistaken when he recalled the dates in later years? Either way, we know 1854 is the correct immigration date from the passenger record and the DNA evidence explained in the following pages.