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.