Luxembourg to America – 1855

Mary had been christened Marie Josephine Heuertz when she was born on April 3, 1842, to Johann M. and Stephania Marie Josephine (nee DeViche) Heuertz in Holzem, Luxembourg, a small farming community, seven miles due west from Luxembourg City.

By 1855, Luxemburg experienced a series of poor harvests while progress meant people were living longer. More people meant the precious resources they had were stretched too thin across the country that had once been part of the German Confederation. Since all of Europe was going through hard times, moving to another German-speaking country wasn’t feasible.

So, the Heuertz family joined the thousands of other Luxembourgers, including Stephania’s brother Constantine DeViche, who had already emigrated to America looking for a better life.

Besides Mary and her parents, the other travelers were her sisters, Johanna Jeannette, born in 1851 and Marie Louise, born in 1847. Her brother Eugene, just a year younger than her, had passed away the year before. Mary’s cousin on her father’s side, nineteen-year-old Catherine Heuertz, also joined them.

They sold their land and household goods to raise money for the voyage to America. Leaving their home in Holzem, they traveled to Le Havre, France—200 miles northwest of Paris—to buy passage aboard the ship Mary Bradford.

According to articles I found on this time period, travelling overseas was becoming easier. Previously, it had taken as long to go from Luxembourg to Paris as from there to America. 
The Heurtz family spoke German, and due to fluid borders, Luxembourg is also sometimes listed in records as “Belgium” or “Germany” depending on the year. 

After leaving port, they sailed across the English Channel to Southampton, England, 80 miles southwest of London, and picked up more passengers before sailing to America. I can imagine thirteen-year-old Mary and her sisters huddled against their mother in the dirty and foul-smelling steerage rooms below deck—the only accommodations her family could afford.

The ship was crowded, dark, and damp, with rats and illness a constant worry. The latter touched the Heurtz family when eight-year-old Marie Louise died halfway through the six-week voyage. It must have been hard for her grieving and staunchly Catholic parents to not only lose their daughter, but have to bury her at sea without a proper Catholic burial.

The Heurtz Family in America

After landing in New York, the Heuertz family made their way to Iowa, where Stephania’s brother, Constantine DeViche, had settled two years prior, so they had family to help them settle in. 

By late May of 1855, the Heuertz family was living on their own land, next door to Constantine’s farm in Clayton County, Iowa, near the Mississippi River. Shortly thereafter, they had another reason to celebrate—Johann Heuertz’s niece, Catherine, married Constantine in June, further entwining the Heuertz and DeViche families. 

Mary and her family’s days most likely fell into a peaceful routine of farming, visiting with the many fellow Luxembourgers who had immigrated to the area, walking to the nearby schoolhouse, and attending St. Mary’s, the German speaking church in Guttenberg.

Mary had just celebrated her fourteenth birthday, when her sister Angeline was born in April 1856.

Mary Heurtz and Herman Wellman

From here, I pieced together the Heuertz family in Iowa from official records and newspaper articles in the local newspapers of the time. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of information and I was crushed to find a huge blank space for information between the 1856 and 1870 Censuses, despite exhaustive online searches, including paid databases. 

What I do know is that in 1864, Mary is a schoolteacher either in Guttenberg, Iowa or a nearby town. And sometime in late 1863 or early to mid 1864, Herman Wellman, came from Ohio to Iowa.

The Civil War was still raging and I couldn’t find any answers for why Herman was in Iowa. My sister and I found a Herman Wellman from Ohio who had been mustered out on June 21, 1864, so maybe he was injured or had fulfilled his three-year commitment.

If he had been mustered out, he could have been using the Homestead Act to claim 160 acres of land and start farming. By that time, Ohio had been pretty much settled, but Iowa had more farmland available. I also found an IRS tax assessment in the name of Herman Wellman for some kind of stagecoach for Oct and Nov 1864 worth a total of $146, but there are several people with that name, so I can’t be sure it’s “my” Herman Wellman. It’s another one of those mysteries we may never solve.

Thanks to the wonderful ladies at the local Family History Center run by the Church of Latter Day Saints, I found scanned images of Mary’s original marriage record to Herman Wellman in their system. Finally, my proof that 22-year-old Mary Heurtz and Herman Wellman married on December 28, 1864 in Elkader, Iowa, about twenty miles northwest from Guttenberg, where they settled on a farm. Perhaps, Mary gave up her teaching job and kept house.

Their daughter, Elizabeth Jane—called Lizzie—was born on June 3, 1867. Josephine followed in 1868. Tragically, Herman died on November 19, 1868 in Guttenberg, leaving Mary with two children under the age of two years. Mary might have moved back in with family living nearby or stayed at her own place.

But the 1870 Census tells us that by then she is living with her two daughters and is teaching school. She has a personal estate of $600 but no real estate. But no other family is listed in the same household and I couldn’t find her parents in any census for 1870.

At least I have the definitive answer for the parents of Elizabeth Wellman who was living with Stephania Heurtz in the 1880 Census. But, the mystery of Katie Lorenz remained until I emailed the Archdiocese of Dubuque Iowa to see if they had any records for Mary Heurtz Wellman or her daughters that hadn’t been scanned.

I wasn’t expecting to get anything, so I was thrilled when Dan Burns, the extremely helpful historian at the Archdiocese of Dubuque found and copied the baptism record for a daughter of John and Mary Lorenz. So, Katie was Mary’s daughter–and Lizzie’s half-sister.

Now that I had a first and last name, I searched for their marriage record and found that on April 23, 1872 in Clayton County, Iowa, the Reverend Stephan Maasjost married Mary Heurtz Wellman and Johann Lorenz in front of friends and family at St. Mary’s parish in Guttenberg.

Lizzie and Josephine soon had a sister when Kathryn—called Katie—was born on September 6, 1874.  Sadly, another tragedy struck when Johann died on May 26, 1875 in Guttenberg, and was buried on May 28th.

 In an echo of her half sister, Elizabeth, Kathryn is left fatherless at just eight months old. Mary is left a widow once more at the age of thirty-three.

Those are the last records I have for Mary Heurtz Wellman Lorenz and Josephine Wellman. None of my intense searching came up with records for any of the Heurtz family again until five years later in the 1880 Census when Lizzie and Katie are living with their grandmother, Stephania DeViche, in Wisconsin with her second husband.

At least now I knew that Lizzie Wellman and Katie Lorenz were definitely sisters!

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Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxembourgian_Americans

Information about the “Mary Bradford” ship was second hand from the tree of another family member on Ancestry.com.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Luxembourg/History

1856 Iowa State Census

 The Homestead Act, enacted during the Civil War in 1862, provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. 

Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa