I think that the immigration route depended upon the circumstances and or the agents that arranged the trip, much like our modern air routings which do not always make sense except for the agent that booked the route. My ggrandfather KERN emigrated to the U.S. in 1872 at the age of 12 from Michelbach, a village now part of Alzenau, Bavaria. It was a prearranged trip paid for by his uncle in Bavaria. In a paper he wrote for my Mother, he told of the following trip. He took the train to Köln (Cologne), a river boat to Hanover, a steam ship to Le Harve, the same ship to New York, and a train to Kansas City, Missouri. He told of people joining the group along the way and of agents meeting them to take them to the hotel when they arrived in a transfer city. He told of getting lost twice along the way, once, when he wandered off from the group that did some site seeing in Köln and again when he accidentally got off the boat at a stop on the way to Hanover. Sounds like a 12 year old boy. The route did not make sense according to the discussion that has been going on, but an agent had arranged that particular route to benefit their costs, same as today. An individual might approach it in a more direct and easy manner, but they still look for the cheapest package. My Hesse families, FRANK, LANGS, and SACHS, emigrated in 1852 from Lindenfels, Hesse by the way of Liverpool England to New York. I have not been able to find out how they managed to get to Liverpool. It is varying routes like these that make it interesting. Jay -- Jay E. Frank

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jay Frank" > It is varying > routes like these that make it interesting. To make life interesing for me my grandfather somehow got himself to Bremen from Frankfurt am Main. In Bremen he got a job onboard a ship which made its way to Australia. In Australia he got off and never got back on. So there are no emigrant records anywhere. Thankfully we knew he was an illegal immigrant and how old he was when he arrived in Australia. We then went back to the newspapers for the time and searched for ships arriving from Germany. We then went to our state archives and poured through the original documents for those ships and found him listed as a crew member. We then had to track the ships dockings in Australia until we found him not listed as a crew member at one port (Melbourne). What remains a puzzle is why he was never listed as a deserter and he certainly isn't in the immigrant records. We can not change the wind. But we can change the sails. ~Ghandi~ Keep Looking For Rainbows!! _--_|\ /Karen \ \ _.--._ / v Karen http://members.optushome.com.au/karens