John Baptist Bauer: Coming to America
A horrifying trip across the Atlantic in a coffin ship, typical transport for Irish and German immigrants in the 1840s.
John Baptist Bauer, also known as Johann Baptist Bauer, was born in 1819. He preferred to be called Baptist because Johaann (or John) was his baptismal name. When Baptist left Baden, he was thirty years old with a medium build, dark brown hair and gray eyes.
He was a poor man, more than likely the youngest son in a very large family. There was nothing left for him in Baden. Baptist’s greatest assets were his willingness to take a risk, ability to work, strength of character, religious devotion, and a strong healthy body. All would be necessary for him to survive the trip to America.
Imagine walking away from everything and everyone you know, never to see them again. Baptist did just that. Once he got on the ship to America, he would no longer be welcome in Germany and most likely if he did return he would face a prison sentence. In the meantime he slowly made his way north, working as a day laborer and earning money on his way there to cover the cost of the ticket. The cost of a ticket on a coffin ship to America was 16 American dollars in 1848, a large sum back then, equal to 632 American dollars today.
He traveled by foot to the port of Emden. He carried a small bag with him including one change of clothes, possibly a few tools, his Bible if he could read, and maybe a something little to remind him of his home village. No, people back then did not really have what we call toiletries today, and they rarely bathed.
St Marys was a closed community back then, a religious commune, so he needed a reference from a local priest just to gain entry. Johann Wilhelm Gausman, who preferred to be called Wilhelm, John Matthias Meyer, and Anton Evers were able to get their references from the German Catholic church in Philadelphia. John Matthias arrived in Philadelphia in 1840, Wilhelm Gausman arrived in Philadelphia in 1843, and Anton Evers was living in Philadelphia since the 1830s. Just like Baptist, they all arrived in America on coffin ships, full of disease and death. Finally, all of them, including Baptist, were naturalized and were legal immigrants. These men were determined to be patriotic Americans, who started their life in America with nothing and had the determination to be productive members of society.
Baptist made it to the port of Emden in Northwest Germany. Most German immigrants left through the port of Bremen (Bremerhaven) and eventually the port of Hamburg, when it opened in the 1850s. John Matthias, Anton, and Wilhelm all came through the port of Bremen. However, Baptist chose the smaller port of Emden to the west of Bremen. He obtained his ticket in Mozzelfeld. The dream of every poor German at that time was to own or lease enough farm land to raise his family without having to take on a second job working as a day laborer on another man’s farm. Baptist was tired of working for “the man” (the nobility and the wealthy landowners) and he wanted to practice Catholicism in peace without a prince telling him how to worship God. There were three to four hundred people waiting at the dock to get on the same ship he was about to board. After the ship, called the Agnes, unloaded its cargo, the crew prepared the ship for the Germans and themselves for the long trip to America. The Agnes was referred to as a coffin ship because many passengers died on the trip to America due to starvation and disease.
In July of 1849 Baptist boarded the Agnes for the forty three day or more trip to the New York harbor. He had a small five by five foot area or smaller and a tiny bunk. There was no toilet, just a few buckets in the corners of the hold, nowhere to bathe and no privacy. One the first day out on the water, most of these Germans became seasick. Baptist spent the first few days on deck vomiting profusely having never sailed on ship before. It was said that you could smell a coffin ship before you saw it. The reason is because everyone in steerage, where Baptist was, smelled like vomit, urine, human feces (poop), and the worst body odor you can imagine times three hundred. There was no ventilation so the stench remained with them and soaked into their clothing.
To top it off, at least fifty to a hundred of the passengers died on the trip across the Atlantic, so the odor and juices from the dead bodies permeated in their skin and their clothing. The bodies remained in the hold for hours or days , because of bad weather or the person’s family was too sick to carry their dead family members up on deck for a burial at sea. The crew eventually pulled the dead passengers out of the hold using the hooks they used to pull up the anchor. The true miracle of this story is that Baptist arrived in America alive.
Baptist had to cook all of his own food on deck and there was very little drinking water. Instead the passengers drank coffee and beer, because the water back then could kill due to the bacteria. The ship’s captain provided rations for everyone on board, but you had to cook it yourself. Most likely he had coffee, beer, hardtack (or ship’s bread), salted fish and pork, potatoes, cheese, beans, and an orange to prevent scurvy. He also received a small allotment of salt and sugar. In order to eat the hardtack, Baptist had to soak it in his coffee, water or beer because if you bit into it without soaking it, you would break your teath. Hopefully he had a little extra cash and could buy a few extra rations to take with him. In any case, he still had to cook his food over an open fire on deck.
Now, over fifty years later in 1902, a man named Quinitlio Gavazzi, born in 1873, sailed to the New York harbor from the Italian port of Genoa. His trip to America was much different from Baptist Bauer and the other German immigrants. The coffin ships were gone by then. Quintilio came over in steerage on a steamship. There was actual plumbing, toilets and sinks. He could bathe and use the toilet in privacy. There was ventilation, which kept the stench under control. There were crew members down below to keep the passenger area clean. The chef on board cooked them plain but decent, filling meals.
The best example of Quintilio’s trip to America can be found in the movie, Titanic, where the Irish immigrants were living below deck (before the sinking). It was luxurious compared to life on the coffin ships. They were able to bring trunks or large bags with them, so Quintilio had more than one change of clothes. The custom’s report says that he was going to Altoona or Cresson, Pennsylvania, but instead he made his home in Weedville, also in Elk County. He wss a coal miner, a noble profession, risking life and limb to keep America running. Coal Miners were the backbone of the industrial revolution. Without men like Quintilio, there would be no modern America. He died in 1940.
When the Agnes docked at Castle Garden in New York harbor, Baptist was examined for any disease and a report was written up explaining who he was, where he was from, and what his occupation was before he crossed the Atlantic. If Baptist was sick and contagious, the shipping company would have to transport him back to Germany, according to US and British law. Baptist could finally step off the ship and onto solid ground. The first thing he did was bend down and kiss the ground. He was never going to make a trip like that again. Baptist was malnourished, stinky, unwashed and his clothes were rotting off his body, but he made it, and he was alive. Baptist was finally a free man, standing in New York City, ready to begin a new life in America.
I have a post coming out next week that talks about a family that emigrated from the Emden area in the 1850s - and I suspect their journey might have looked a lot like Baptist's! Thank you for such a thorough and vivid picture.
This is quite the story! What our ancestors went through is truly incredible and the saga of the immigrant continues. I am an immigrant. The difference is the respect of what a new nation means. Going about it following the rules that have always been laid out for most of us. These men you wrote about went through hell and back and came knowing they'd go home if they didn't make it on their own. It's a different world, but I always quote that nothing is new under the sun. Well written piece of interesting history!