Emigration of the Triebswetter Domelles to the Mid-West

I know I know, is there a more boring title for a non-genealogy person to see?  It sounds like a dry thesis or something but guess what I don't care!  :-D

So anyway, I've made a lot of progress gathering info on my Domelle side in the last couple years, not the least of which has happened quite recently what with connecting with several wonderful cousins on facebook and other social media.  Say what you will about the evils and annoyances of facebook, but I love it for how it has connected me to cousins I would NEVER have had relationships with like I do now.

What I want to share today is details on the emigration of my Domelle ancestors.  These are specifically the Domelle's that source from Triebswetter of the Austro-Hungarian empire.  The town is also known as Nagyősz and Tomnatic, depending on what historical time period and what language you are speaking.  Since the Domelle's were German, I'll stick with the German name of Triebswetter for today.

I put the information together into a spreadsheet because as much as I hate to admit it, spreadsheets are pretty handy!!

So here are my people, listed in the order they arrived: (Click on the image to see it bigger)

So John and Mary Domele came first, looks like her sister was here before them.

Single 18-yr old Nick followed, saying he was going to his cousin John in Evanston, IL, but he ended up living in Philadelphia and marrying there.  Nick's older brother William was just a few months behind Nick, though he went to Bethlehem/Allentown for some reason and not Chicago or Philly!

Once the sisters started arriving, everyone was out in Chicago before later dispersing to Michigan and Indiana.


And I thought it was nice that William went back to go get his sister Lena and bring her over.  I simply can't imagine the fear that families back in the old country felt as they sent their sons and daughters to an unknown land so far away.  No cellphones, no email, you had to wait weeks/months before you got a letter saying how things worked out with the journey.  We have no idea now of what it means to have patience I think.  It looks like sister Anna was with a family from her hometown most of the way to Chicago so she wasn't alone.

There are 2 other living girls in the Domelle family - one did not emigrate as far as I know, she married and stayed in the old country.  The youngest daughter Mary I think came over, but I don't have any documentation to prove that yet, no can I find her in census records here in the US.  It may be a name-spelling issue, we'll have to wait and see.