6.  THE IMMIGRATION CENTER

The Fusts' first experience in America must have felt as though America is very regimented.  Maybe they wanted to turn around to the S. S. Gellert and return to Germany during their processing at Castle Garden, also known as Castle Clinton.

The Fusts wore numbered identity tags pinned to their clothing and joined the long lines separated by iron railings that made the large hall look like a maze.  There they were questioned and examined.  The first doctor looked for physical and mental abnormalities.  Some immigrants received a chalk mark on their right shoulder for further inspection:  L for lameness, H for heart, X for mental defects, and so on.  

The second doctor looked for contagious and infectious diseases, looking especially for infections of the scalp and at the eyelids for symptoms of trachoma, a blinding disease.  Because trachoma caused more than half of all detentions, this doctor was greatly feared.  He stood directly in front of each of our immigrant ancestors, and with a swift movement, he would grab the immigrant's eyelid, pull it up, and peer beneath it.  Thankfully, the Fusts passed all the exams and were not detained or sent back to Germany.

Then they moved on to the registration clerk who questioned them with the help of an interpreter:  What is your name?  Your nationality? Your occupation? Can you read and write?  Have you ever been in prison? How much money do you have with you? Where are you going?  This was most trying for these Germans who did not speak or understand English.  However, most immigrants passed through the processing center in about one day.  Then carrying all their worldly possessions, they finally left that examination hall.

Where did they go in their new land?

5.  AMERICA!

Were the Fusts welcomed by Miss Liberty?  A gift from France, the Statue of Liberty was shipped in 214 cases aboard a French ship in May 1885.  President Grover Cleveland dedicated the finished monument and unveiled it in October 1886.  While the Fusts and Bungers did not see the Statue of Liberty in 1882 when they reached America, our Grandma Bertha Carl Fust and her parents and most of her siblings did get to see her in 1889 when they immigrated.

While entering the New York Harbor, most likely the family, who were happy as last to at least leave the open sea, clustered together on the foredeck for fear of separation and looked with wonder on this miraculous land of their dreams.  Passengers all around them crowded against the rail.  The officers of the ship strode up and down the decks, shouting orders and directions and driving the immigrants before them, pushing and pulling them, herding them into separate groups as though they were animals.

Finally the ship came to the dock and the long, long journey was over.  But not quite!  Did they go through Ellis Island?  Again, no, because Ellis Island was not operational until 1892, ten years later.  So, all of our Fust, Bunger, Carl, and Albers ancestor immigrants were processed at Castle Garden, also known as Castle Clinton, at the southern tip of Manhattan.

How was their experience at the processing center?

4.  THE VOYAGE ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

Spelled "Fusz" on the ship list were Fritz Fust, 34, a farmer; his wife Maria, 31; and their children Wilhelm, 7, and Frieda, 3; along with Maria's brother, Johann Bunger, 25.  They set sail from Hamburg on November 1, 1882, on the German "S. S. Gellert" of the Hamburg American Line.

They were numbered 96 -- 100 on the ship manifest.  All five were listed as coming from Mecklenburg with the destination of Wisconsin.  Johann Bunger was in Cabin A with one piece of baggage.  Fritz was in Cabin BB C, while Maria and the children were in Cabin B.  At the end of Frieda's line, there are the numbers 23 and 20 noted in the columns for the Date and Cause of Death, but I am sure that a mistake was made. Probably the recorder meant those notes for the 18-year-old girl from Hungary who was listed on the next line as the one who died, because we all know that Grandpa's sister Frieda Fust grew up to marry John Piepgras.

Of the 972 passengers on this steamship, five babies were born at sea, 15 passengers died, 152 were cabin passengers, and the other 820 were in steerage. Most of these immigrants were poor but somehow managed to scrape together enough money to pay for their passage to America, mostly as steerage passengers who paid the lowest fare. 

The Fust family and Johann Bunger had it better than those in steerage.  The steerage lay deep down in the hold of the ship, and people were piled into dark, foul-smelling compartments.  They slept in narrow bunks stacked three high.  They had no showers, no lounges, and no dining rooms.  Food served from huge kettles was dished into dinner pails provided by the steamship company.  There was hardly enough food for everyone, especially toward the end of their journey.  Because steerage conditions were crowded, uncomfortable, and stinking, passengers spent as much time as possible up on deck.  The voyage was an ordeal, but it was worth it.  They were on their way to America!

After 32 days at sea, the "S. S. Gellert" finally pulled into New York Harbor on December 2, 1882.  Did they see the State of Liberty to welcome them?  What were their first experiences in America?   

3.  WHY THE FUSTS LEFT MECKLENBURG

Mecklenburg had the highest percentage of emigrants of any of the German states.  While conditions in other areas improved, Mecklenburg peasants had little reason to hope for a better future.  After living in grinding poverty with limited freedom and few opportunities, many like the Fritz Fust family saw immigration to America as a new chance at life.

GETTING READY TO LEAVE GERMANY

The immigrants had to go through several steps before the authorities would grant them permission to leave the country.  They had to prove that they had enough money to pay for their voyage and had a contract for the voyage plus 50 Thalers, that they had no debts, and that they had sold their houses and all other property.  The Fusts must have saved their money for years in order to afford to immigrate to America.  Also, the sons had to first complete their compulsory military service.

2.  THE LAST FUST FAMILY IN GERMANY

Fritz Johann Peter Heinrich Fust, my great-grandfather and the father of my Grandpa W. H. Fust, was born August 31, 1848, and baptised in the Evangelisch Lutheran Church in the village of Cambs, Schwaan District, Mecklenburg, Germany.  The son of a tagelhoner (day laborer) named Joachim Heinrich Fust and Maria Sophia Vick, Fritz grew to manhood there and married Miss Maria Sophia Dorothea Elisabeth Bunger on November 13, 1874.  The following year on September 5, 1875, my Grandpa Fust was born and named Wilhelm Hans Martin Theodore Fust.  Their first daughter, Frieda Maria Luise Joachime Fust, was born January 26, 1879.  The Fritz Fust family of four immigrated to America in 1882.

LIFE IN MECKLENBURG, GERMANY

Mecklenburg lies in Northern Germany along the Baltic Sea coastal plain.  It's a farming region with a mild climate, generally flat with some low hills, and dotted with numerous small lakes.

By the 1800's Mecklenburg was still a feudal state where most of the land was in vast estates held by powerful landowners.  The landowners controlled the economy and ruled their estates with absolute authority.  The peasants had few rights and found themselves at the mercy of the landowners.  The servant of a noble landlord was not even permitted to marry unless his master gave him permission and a place to live. 

In 1820 the peasants were freed from their obligations to the landowners, but this also worsened their condition, because the landowners were freed, at the same time, of any obligation under feudal law to provide their tenants with any means of supporting themselves, thus leaving them in even greater poverty.

So after 1820, most peasants were day workers (Tagelhoners or Arbeitsmen) living in griding poverty.  According to the church records that I have found of the Fusts, Bungers, Schoofs,  Huenemoerders, and others, all the males were Tagelhoners, or day laborers.  These day laborers were hired and paid one day at a time with no promise of having a job the next day.  They were deprived almost entirely of their earnings and were forced to work for a starvation wage on the Jungere states.  These were owned and managed by a young nobleman, country squire, or a Prussian army officer.  The day laborers traveled the countryside, moving from estate to estate as a landowner needed their labor for plowing, planting, and harvesting crops.  

Peasants moved constantly.  It was common for a man to be born in one place, get married in another to a woman who was born in yet another place.  Then each of their children might be born in different locales.

In 1871, Otto von Bismarck unified the various German states, while each state kept their autonomy and much of their distinct character.  This meant that Mecklenburg still was backward, and the conditions for the peasants there continued to lag behind those in the other German states.  To put this in the context of our Fust family history, our Grandpa W. H. Fust was born in 1875, shortly after the German Unification in 1871.

Next -- Why immigrate?  The preparations to leave.  The Atlantic voyage.

HOW I WAS INSPIRED TO CLIMB MY TREE

  1.  INSPIRATION FOR CLIMBING MY TREE

When I was a first-grader in a little Sargent County, North Dakota, country school of all eight grades, Kingston #1, commonly called the Fust School, I was naturally listening in on all the other grades' recitations with the teacher.  My ears perked up when the name John Fust was discussed by the sixth graders during their history lesson from the green textbook, The Past Lives On, by Edna McGuire.  Being that my name was Karen Fust (pronounced "Foost"), I wondered if somehow we Fusts were descended from this famous man in the 1400's who had lent money to John Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press.  I also knew that my grandparents Fust had come to America from Germany.  Could we somehow be related?

In 1976, the Bicentennial Year of our country, the year of the great miniseries called "Roots", and the wonderful Gauche-Curtis Family History book by Larry's Aunt Letty Gauche, I, then the mother of 4 sons from 1 to 12 years of age and a full-time 4th-grade teacher, was inspired to start researching our tree and find out if John Fust was an ancestor.

First, I went to the Klamath County Library and checked out a couple books on beginning the climb.  With that background information and rough-drawn copies of blank pedigree charts and family group sheets, I was all prepared to quiz my parents, Raymond William Fust and Catherine Margaret Keiser Fust, when they visited us that fall in Klamath Falls.

Based on their recollections of their parents and grandparents, I prepared a set of questions that I sent to my Fust and Keiser aunts and uncles.  I am greatly indebted to Aunt Marie, Aunt Rosa, Aunt Huldah, Aunt Loretta, Aunt Frances, Uncle Alfred, and Cousin Sylvia for all their suggestions and help.

Are we Fusts from North Dakota descended from the historic John Fust (about 1400-1466)?  Well, no, not directly by the Fust name line, for sure.  You see, Johann Fust had no sons but only one daughter, Christina, who married her father's partner, Peter Schoeffer, who had won the printing press and business from Gutenberg in a legal suit when Gutenberg couldn't repay Fust the money he owed.  Or maybe Johann's father is our direct ancestor who may have had another son, and the famous Johann Fust is a first-cousin 25 or more times removed.  Maybe we're related anyway through Christina Fust Schoeffer's descendants six centuries later!  Who knows?

In this blog I will happily share our Fust ancestors, reaching so far only to the 1760's.