Another thoughtful piece from my friend, and fellow businessman, Tom Fiske:
Every family has members that no one talks about. In my case it was my great-grandfather Adam Sebastian. He worked hard, succeeded, and died young. The problem was that he was a low class emigrant from Bavaria. People like that just did not fit into Southern society, so everyone kept quiet about Adam as though he had been a bank robber. To this day he is not a popular topic in my family’s circle of friends and cousins.
But Adam always had a certain appeal for me. I am a B (Business) school graduate, and he was a heck of an entrepreneurial businessman. With hardly any English at all, Adam emigrated from Whoknowswhere, Bavaria to Louisville, KY about 1856. I am sure that the Ohio River Valley area reminded him and many other Germans of the Rhine River Valley. That’s why there were so many of them in an area that stretched from Cincinnati, Ohio down to Paducah, Kentucky along the Ohio River.
After doing his market research (he looked around and saw a huge horde of hungry and homesick German-speaking people) the twenty-six year-old Adam saw a great business opportunity. He found productive land on the outskirts of Louisville and set up a farm. On the edge of the farm beside a large road, Adam purchased a house whose lower floor could be used for a retail store. He set up a supply line from existing farms and went into the grocery business. Business license information shows that Adam obtained a permit to sell alcoholic beverages. He supplied German-speaking people with food and other items they wanted, with a warm German touch. Adam was a full-fledged entrepreneur in the finest of American traditions.
He quickly became an American citizen, which meant he had a good grasp of the English language.
All this time Adam was raising a family of four children with his wife, Teresa. Then tragedy struck. Teresa died. But Adam labored on, working night and day to make his small business succeed. He was successful until a few days before Christmas, 1874. Having worked too hard, he suffered a massive stroke which took his life at age forty-four. This could also be in the American tradition.
Adam Sebastian was my hero. Coming from another country, he went into business and made a success of it. But some of my family would rather not discuss this low born immigrant who did not fit into the social scale, even at the bottom. Truly, one cousin’s meat is another cousin’s poison.
The Rhine River does not flow through Bavaria.
I am sorry. I did not mean to say that all Germans in Louisville were from the Rhine River Valley, just that some who stayed in the Louisville area likened it to home.
Borders in the 1856 era were nebulous. For example, Alsace and Lorraine changed hands several times. Further, and people were not well educated about their geography.
Tom
Thank you for writting this ! Adam also may be an hero but he also gave genetic’s ,so it could be inherited . Anti German and anti Immigrants wasn’t just down south. Also silence was in family if one married a Lutheran and your family was Roman Catholic,though grandparents loved their daughter and grandchildren-the cold treatment was dealt with son inlaw with lots of French spoken being he didn’t know language.
Tom,
I think your (Johann) Adam Sebastian fits nicely among the following children of Johann Valentin Sebastian and Maria Barbara Emig.
Catharina, bapt 30 March 1823
Anna Margaretha, bapt. 29 Jan 1826
Caroline, bapt. 21 Sep 1828
Adam, bapt 21 Mar 1831
Catharina, bapt 6 Jan 1833
Elisabetha, bapt 30 Mar 1834
Barbara, bapt 22 Jan 1837
Charlotte, bapt 30 Sep 1838
I think Adam bapt 21 Mar 1831 is probably the one you list as born
about 1830. All those sisters! It looks as though the first Catharina probably died between 1828 and 1833, so the next girl was given the name of the older deceased sister. I got all these from FamilySearch except Adam, who is in the new FamilySearch beta
(fsbeta.familysearch.org)
All these records are from Marnheim, which was in the Rhine Palatinate, which incidentally did belong to Bavaria between 1815 and World War II, so it was not inaccurate to mention the hills of the Rhine after all. I live in another Ohio River valley community, Marietta, Ohio, and the same has been said about my area. The hills do remind people from that area of Germany of home, and vice versa. There were a lot of people from Marnheim who came here to Washington County, Ohio, to the Lowell, Ohio, area.
Ernie Thode
Marietta, OH
.
Mr. Sebastian is my kind of hero he saw what he needed to do and he did it. I have so many such stories in my family and never wrote about them because they didn’t seem important now I know they are and maybe now I will.
Hi Mr. Fiske,
I hope this comment reaches you! I was just doing some intense family research on the internet, I was brought to this page and your article from 2010 about Adam Sebastian. Your blog is so poignant for so many reasons! I am searching for more info on my GGG Grandmother Catherine Sebastian (Cook). She is my hero, so much so that I named my only son after her with a middle name “Edwin Sebastian Haugh.” Back in the 1950’s, my late father wrote a college paper on his geneology through his maternal grandmother’s line going back a century to his hometown of Delaware City, Delaware. His great aunts handed down oral history as they had heard it from their grandmother (the above mentioned Catherine Sebastian). Here are my Dad’s notes:
“Catherine Sebastian Cook (b. 1832 d. 1913)
Wife of Wilhelm Koch. With her mother, brother and father, escaped the Alsace-Lorraine (now France) during political upheaval. She and her sister, disguised as boys, drove her father and uncle out of the country hidden in a wagon. They became separated, and Catherine, her brother, and sister came to America in search of her father and uncle. On arriving in New York, she headed for Fort Delaware, where she had heard many Germans were working on the construction. Her brother went west, and her sister remained in New York. At Fort Delaware(on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River), she met German immigrant Wilhelm Koch (a carpenter) and they were married. She is said to have lived on the island and did work as a cook and laundress. Following her husband’s death of smallpox in April 1862, she was a storekeeper and midwife.
Catherine gave birth to the following:
Adam B. Koch(Cook) Dec 18, 1857
John T. Koch (Cook) Sept 28, 1859
Elizabeth A. Koch (Cook) June 29, 1862 (just two months after Wilhelms death)
All three children were baptized in the Catholic Church after Wilhelm’s death as he was Presbyterian. I found through research that she bought her own property/home in 1873. Pretty good for a female immigrant, mother of three who never remarried.
Ironically Catherine’s first son Adam Basil Cook would die at age 48 in 1905. My GG Grandfather John T. Cook died in 1911 at age 52. He was widowed in 1901 as his wife Emma came down with whooping cough. Not only did Catherine raise her own three children into adulthood after her husband’s premature death, She would do the same for her son John (who had six) when Emma died. As my Dad’s notes read, Catherine ran a general store in the front parlor of her home and was a midwife. She bought her own property on her own as well. So as you can see, she was just as impressive as your ancestor Adam.
So I have been trying to sleuth her off and on for years. Renewed interest has followed as I took my 7 year old son to Fort Delaware last weekend. This was a major Union fortress and prison camp during the Civil War. It sits off Delaware City, my Dad’s family home. I felt so proud to have ancestors who helped build the fort, now a popular state park.
Up to this point all I have found is what I feel to be Catherine’s immigration in July 1852 under the name Madeleine Sebastian. A later census records confirms her immigration in that year. I have found other family references to her name as M. Catherine Sebastian so this aided me. The passenger list record of the ship named Rome of July 12, 1852 says she had arrived with a male named Carl Sebastian (b.abt1802), Cathrine Sebastian (b abt1812), Joseph Sebastian (b. abt 1833), Anna Sebastian (b. abt 1828) and another Anna Sebastian (b. abt 1846) Just a few weeks later I found a Susan Sebastian (b. abt 1836) who arrived in NY. They all departed from LeHavre and Bavaria is listed as place of origin. In addition (Bavaria and Bayern) would be used by my Catherine in later census records. With the timeline of marriage, I figure she met Wilhelm in 1855-early 1857 based on the birth of son Adam. The family story is that she was searching for her brother(name unknown) and thought he was working at the fort at the time. Supposedly, family lore says that he had worked there but had left already, heading west.
So my most recent thought is that her “missing” brother could possibly be named Adam since she named her first son this. I also know that Wilhelm had multiple brothers and a father NOT named Adam. Starting in 2006, I kept being led to your Louisville Adam with Ancestry searches which continued again this week so I decided to do general web searches on him and landed here. My error was was expecting him to be listed on census records as a mechanic of sort (carpenter/brickmason) not a retail grocer becaus ehe worked on the fort. However your blog reminded me of something I completely overlooked…my Catherine was a merchant too, operating a store out of her home! Coincidence, or did they learn this as a family trade from a father,mother or uncle. As for Manheim as home, this is the first Im hearing it. This fact has been vague as Bavaria, and France/Germany (Alsace Lorraine) have always been cited with Sebastian origin. One relative told me Thann(France) was what he thought he recalled his grandmother (and Catherine’s granddaughter)said as her native town. Interestingly she was named Catherine and had a sister Marie(Maria on birth certificate) and my GG Grandmother Zitta (who named her daughters Elizabeth and Margaret). With Ernie Thode’s info above,and many common names, I am possibly thinking that I have hit a goldmine thanks to your blog! Anyway, I hope this gets to you(and Ernie and others too). Thank you very much as I’d be happy to compare more notes and pictures as well.
Most Sincerely,
Chris Haugh
Frederick, Maryland
Dear Folks,
(please note that my new web address is http://www.fiskefamily.com/)
Thank you for your comments and research. Emil, I got my Marnheim information from you via Leland Meitzler. Were I younger, I would have been there and back.
It appears that I will have to do more research. I found the missing children in Cincinnati, Ohio and have been discussing them with a descendant of theirs who, thankfully, did quite a bit of research on his own. I was able to add information he didn’t have about AS, and his other ancestor, Adam’s first wife.
I will let you know what I find.
Tom Fiske