Sailing in Steerage and a Love Story for the Ages
Sailing in Steerage and a Love Story for the Ages
How a ship's manifest unlocked a secret to my family history — and allowed me to answer my mom's lifelong question — where are we from?
I had planned to reserve this article for paid subscribers but, after writing it, thought it best to share with everyone. To the subscribers who make it possible for me to share stories like this one, thank you! If you’d like to join the team, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
My mom has long been interested in her Polish ancestry and has dreamt of traveling to Poland to see where her ancestors called home.
The only problem was, we had no idea where those ancestors had come from — or, for that matter, who they were. A few years ago, I subscribed to Ancestry.com and took a DNA test in the hopes of unlocking the answer to my mom’s questions. The DNA test confirmed my English, Germanic and Eastern European lineage, and even connected me with distant relatives — second and third cousins who now reside all around the world. But the DNA test failed to answer the central question — who emigrated from Poland and where did they come from?
Ancestral research at the Genealogy Center
When I visited Fort Wayne, Indiana last week, I was eager to spend time at what is America’s largest publicly accessible Genealogy Center, located in the heart of downtown at the Allen County Public Library.
The $65 million state-of-the-art facility employs professional genealogists, each with a different area of expertise. There is no cost to visit the center, and staff are on hand to assist visitors with their research. Experts help search for answers utilizing the seven largest digital genealogical databases and what is among the largest physical collections of genealogical records in the world, organized by state.
When I sat down with genealogical expert John, I pointed to the roadblock in my family tree: I could trace no lineage beyond my maternal great grandfather, who died in 2013 just as I was beginning to take an interest in my family history. Though my grandfather is still alive, he could not provide many answers, telling us that he had never known his grandfather, who died before he was born.
The big break
The expert listened intently, jotting down notes while carefully reviewing the incomplete family tree I had already assembled. He quickly got to work, researching databases that I had never known existed and, within about 10 minutes, had a hit. “Here we go,” he exclaimed!
The document was a record from the 1920 United States Census, which listed my great great grandfather, the names of his wife and three children. He was 34 years old at the time, and was listed as a citizen of the United States. While I had reached higher in the tree than ever before, I still lacked an answer to my mom’s question — where are we from?
My expert’s eyes lit up upon finding the Census record, and he noted that the document would give us a lot to work with.
Uncovering the holy grail
Sure enough, within just a couple more minutes, he found my great great grandfather’s name and birth date on a document that for me proved to be the holy grail — the passenger manifest of a German ship, the SS Breslau, dated April 1903. The ship sailed from Bremen, Germany (Bremerhaven) to Baltimore, Maryland that month and, upon embarkation, all “aliens” were required to submit personal information that would be shared with the U.S. Commissioner of Immigration.
According to the manifest, my great great grandfather, 17 years old at the time, boarded the vessel with $1.30 to his name (adjusted for inflation, that’s about $46 in today’s dollars). His passage was paid by his older brother who, I later learned, had traveled to the United States 10 years earlier.
A brief aside on the SS Breslau, which itself has an interesting story. Built in 1901 in Bremen, Germany, she was a Köln-class ship with room for 66 cabin-class passengers and 1,660 in steerage (my great great grandfather traveled in steerage). Breslau weighed 7,524 tons, had a steel hull, and was powered by two steam engines which allowed the ship to travel at a pace of 12 knots (roughly 14 miles per hour). My great great grandfather’s journey of approximately 3,870 nautical miles across the Atlantic Ocean took 14 days.
On July 24, 1914, U.S. customs officials seized Breslau at the port of New Orleans after Germany declared war. After undergoing extensive repairs and being outfitted with armaments, the ship was commissioned on August 25, 1917 as the USS Bridgeport, a destroyer-tender in the U.S. Navy, which operated throughout the remainder of World War I in Europe.
During the Second World War, the Bridgeport was transferred to Jacksonville, Florida, where she underwent a modernization and conversion into a U.S. Army Hospital Ship. She was recommissioned as the USAHS Larkspur, and operated in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean throughout the war.
Following the war, the ship was reconfigured and renamed one last time — becoming a U.S. Army Transport Ship sailing under the name USAT Bridgeport. She ended her service with missions to transport war brides from Europe to the United States through 1947, and in 1948 was sold as scrap and dismantled in Mobile, Alabama.
Path to citizenship (and the renunciation of another)
Using the information in the passenger manifest, we were then able to locate my great great grandfather’s Declaration of Intention, which is a signed oath submitted to the Naturalization Service, then administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. The declaration was a mandatory step in the path to citizenship and, in it, he swore to the following:
It is my bona fide intention to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly to The Present Government of Russia, of whom I am now a subject.
Seeing my great great grandfather’s renunciation of Russian citizenship should not have been surprising, given the date of his declaration (February 1918), but it immediately caused me to think of my family history in an entirely new light. At university, I studied European history and, seeing this document, I immediately referred to my course in the history of East Central Europe Since 1815, where the changing geography of Poland was the primary topic.
I had not previously thought about how the power struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries might have impacted my own family, but now — with a name, a hometown, and documented evidence of it all, my mind became flooded with thoughts about their life circumstance.
Given that it seemed so easy for the genealogy expert to find these records, I wondered — why had my search been unsuccessful?
The answer, I’m afraid, is a sad one. My great great grandfather, shortly after earning his citizenship and just a few years after marrying and welcoming a son (my great grandfather) into the world, tragically died of sepsis. He took with him the knowledge of his family history, and records proved difficult to locate through traditional databases. The Genealogy Center’s access to larger libraries of information was critical to connecting the dots.
A love story for the ages
Although my great great grandfather did not have long to experience the joys of marriage and fatherhood, he was loved — in a way more special than most.
You see, the woman he married, Martha, had been born in the United States to German immigrants. She was a U.S. citizen from birth but, at the time of her marriage to my great great grandfather (who was not yet a citizen) in 1913, she was forced to surrender her citizenship under the terms of the Expatriation Act of 1907. The Act of the 59th Congress is a dark spot in American history, but one that was upheld by the Supreme Court.
The court’s ruling in the 1915 case Mackenzie v. Hare stated that, although involuntary revocation of American citizenship would be unconstitutional, the Expatriation Act “deals with a condition voluntarily entered into, with knowledge of the consequences.”
On April 13, 1913, at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Baltimore, my great great grandmother professed her love and devotion before God — and with a vow of “I do,” surrendered her U.S. citizenship.
As horrible a national policy as that was, I hope to one day find a love so profound, and to love someone the way my great great grandmother loved her husband.
What’s next
With the information uncovered at the Genealogy Center, I have been able to add two additional levels to my family tree: that of my great great grandfather, and his father also. How far people take their family trees, I don’t know, but the eastern European expert at the Genealogy Center told me that my next step should be to review church records in my ancestral hometown — Maków Mazowiecki, Poland.
The city of some 10,000 residents, located about 50 miles north of Warsaw, was decimated during the Second World War. Whether church records remain in Maków Mazowiecki is questionable, given the brutal Nazi invasion and destruction of the town. Maków later became a base of operations for the Nazis, while a concentration camp for sick and disabled people was established there.
It is clear that I have many threads to follow-up on and, in the near future, I hope to take my mom to Poland, where she can visit the town her ancestors called home and, with luck, learn more about the lives they led.
At the time of his death, my great great grandfather, Adolf Zaleski, was the owner of a saloon in Baltimore and so, in his honor, I raise a glass and say, “Na zdrowie!” (to health) and “Sto lat!” (a hundred years).
Thank you for allowing me to clutter your inboxes with this deeply personal story, and special thanks to my wonderful hosts at Visit Fort Wayne for introducing me to the Genealogy Center. My family is immensely grateful.
You may already have this link, but I'll pass it along anyway. https://archiwa.gov.pl/en/search-in-archives/genealogy/
Such a beautiful story. I just spent time at the National Archives in Waltham, MA, where they have extensive genealogy records, and it was fascinating. No cost and the people there were amazingly gracious and helpful. Kudos to you for all the detailed follow up for your family. How very special - and important!