Sunday, June 5, 2011

DOMELLE Immigration Trail

I thought I'd map out some immigration trails in my family tree. I'll start with the DOMELLE surname since it's an unusual name.

Here is the Immigration Trail of my direct line of DOMELLE ancestors going as far back as I know, and ending with the birthplace and childhood home of my grandfather:

Tomnatic, Timis County, Romania-->>(via port of Bremen, Germany and Ellis Island, NY)-->>Northampton Co., Pennsylvania-->>Cook Co., Illinois-->>Jasper Co., Indian-->>Newton Co., Indiana

I can trace my DOMELLE's to the village of Tomnatic in Timis County, modern-day Romania. At the time of immigration, it was known in Hungarian as Nagy Osz and was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However, my ancestors spoke German mainly, along with Hungarian. Family lore states that the family came from the Alsace-Lorraine region. The village also had a German name, as did most towns in the region; it was Treibswetter.

My ancestor traveled to Bremen in Germany and took the ship SS Kronprinz Wilhelm to Ellis Island.


On his passenger list he stated he was going to Allentown, PA to a relative, in other naturalization papers, he stated Bethelehm, PA. For today's posting, I used Northampton County in PA, but I could have also used Lehigh County. I'm not exactly sure yet which place he did go to.


After Bethlehem (or Allentown), my ancestor, along with his brothers and at least one cousin ended up in Chicago. I don't know why they moved there yet - whether there was other family or they heard of good working opportunities or what.

Once there though, they made friends with a man that owned a lot of farmland in Indiana. I'm not quite sure yet if they agreed to live on and work the farmland, or did they buy the land from the man. But I know that to work that land is why my ancestor and his brothers then moved from Chicago to northeastern Indiana.


And voila, that's the trail for today! My grandfather was born on that flat fertile farmland in northeastern Indiana.