Looking for immigrant records can be monumentally frustrating, but it can also lead to amazing finds. I’ve had both in the past couple of weeks.
First, the helpful things I’ve found:
- Latvia: list of German exonyms for places in Latvia (Wikipedia)
- Latvia: Celmina’s blog. She’s doing a wonderful series on Latvian history and genealogy. Worth a look!
- Elizabeth River Parish, Virginia resources (FamilySearch) – helpful for my 1800-1840 William H Holmes search.
- Google Books search! This collection changes daily, and I’ve found stuff about several ancestors in multiple languages. If you’re not using it, it’s definitely worth a try.
It’s been a fruitful couple of weeks, genealogically.
First, I found a Google Books record of a pamphlet my great-uncle Jānis Iņķis may have authored later in life, reflecting on his adventures in the Brazilian forests with the Vārpa and Nova Odessa colony. It’s called Deewa prahts un zilwezigee maldi muhsu iszeloschanâ no Latwijas, which the wonderful Celmina graciously translated as “God’s mind and human delusions in our emigration from Latvia”. I hope some day to find the actual pamphlet.
Jānis was, like his father, a Latvian Baptist missionary; in the early 1920s Jānis inspired some 2000+ Latvian Baptists to pool their resources and head off to Brazil to found the Vārpa colony. Lituanus has an excellent article by Arnolds Karklis about the Vārpa colony and immigration movement. Jānis was the pastor at the St. Michael Latvian Baptist church in Riga, he was a poet and author of a hundred or so hymns, and published a newsletter that provided some rich details on life in the Brazilian colonies and helped Latvian Baptists in Canada, the United States and Brazil stay connected with folks in the home country. This whole family is fascinating, and I hope to one day be able to find more detailed family records and, dare I hope, perhaps even a monograph or biographical record for Jānis or his father Jekabs, one of the founders of the Latvian Baptist missionary movement.
On the Purweet side of my Latvian heritage, I confirmed the ship record for my great-grandmother Rosalie Purweet by locating her sister Emma Helsing and Emma’s 3 young children on the same ship. They all emigrated from Latvia in 1892. My mother’s records indicated that Rosalie came over with Emma to help as a child-minder, but it’s nice to get confirmation that this is Rosalie’s record by virtue of Emma’s passage on the same ship with her children.
On the other side of the family, I was also able to use a Shelby County, Illinois biographical dictionary entry for John Philip Heinz to add names and dates to my Heinz family line, including several back in Germany. I also found a number of their family graves at findagrave.com.
I remember my mother working with Shelby County records at the Newberry Library in Chicago; in fact that was my first introduction to the world of family history. I’m sure mom would be amazed at what’s been digitized and is now available across the Internet. Hooray for the World Wide Web!
- Birth and family info for William H. Holmes, b. about 1830 in Virginia. I have census records for 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 in Elizabeth River Parish and Tanner’s Creek, Norfolk, but can’t find anything earlier. Not sure how to get information about his birth and especially the names of his parents. Any ideas?
- Immigration records for Maria Christina Campanella and her parents Matteo and Maria Mattia. They settled in Pennsylvania in the late 19th century, but the census records show their arrival differently every decade; some say 1883, 1886 or 1887, 1890 or 1892. There were a lot of Campanellas coming over at the time.
My current goals are to:
- Identify who the immigrants were for direct ancestors where I haven’t yet gone back far enough. That includes the Holmes and Wells lines.
- William H. Holmes (1830, Virginia – ?)
- John Wells Jr. (1840, Chesterfield, Essex, NY – 1870)
- Identify and document the entry points for direct ancestors’ immigration. Unidentified immigrations:
- Oliva (Campanella), Maria Christina (ggm, Sicily)
- Campanella, Matteo (2nd ggf, Sicily)
- Campanella (Venuti), Maria Mattia (2nd ggm, Sicily)
- Iņķis, Gustav (ggf, Latvia)
- Boening, Philip Joseph (2nd ggf, Germany)
- Heinz, John Philip (3rd ggf, Germany)
- Heinz/Hyhn, Jacob (4th ggf, Germany)
- Heinz (Glaser), Anna Maria (4th ggm, Germany)
- Heinz (Douth), Dorothy (3rd ggm, Germany)
- Wells (Reed), Elizabeth (3rd ggm, Ireland)
- Manthei, Fredrick H (2nd ggf, Germany, 1869)
- Manthei (Gluth), Emily Anna (2nd ggm, Germany)
- Avildsen, Christen (2nd ggf, Denmark, 1873)
- Avildsen, Anna Christine (2nd ggm, Denmark, 1880)
- Avildsen, Jesse Peter (3rd ggf, Denmark)
- Avildsen (Lind), Anna Kirstine (3rd ggm, Denmark)
- Avildsen (Brock), Anna christine (3rd ggm, Denmark)
Lemon Hill Research 
One response to “Follow Friday (or Frustration Friday) – Finding Immigrants”
Yes! Google Books is a fabulous tool! I’ve found quite a few clues through that resource. Carolyn, I especially was fascinated with your story of your great-uncle and the Latvian colony in Brazil. I hope you do get a chance to find that pamphlet. It would be such an interesting read.