Potomac Families

The Knieriems came to America in 1857, through the port of Baltimore, hailing from Hesse-Kassel, a state in western Germany.  William Knieriem (b. about 1826) and his wife Martha (Weidman) (b. about 1834) arrived in America with one son, George, who was only 3 years old when they made their journey.  They originally settled in Mount Savage, Maryland, but later moved to Cumberland, Maryland.  The 1870 U.S. Census, the earliest census showing William and Martha, indicates that they were born in Hesse-Kassel.

Hesse-Kassel

At the time of their birth, there was no Germany to speak of.  Hesse-Kassel was one of dozens of independent or quasi-independent German states, ruled by princes, the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire.  Situated in southwest Germany, this principality was marked by shifting allegiances among Prussia, Austria, and France.  In 1806, the region was part of the Confederation of the Rhine -- a loose alliance of states that sided with Napoleon and came under French influence and domination.  After Napoleon's defeat in Russia in 1812 and in Leipzig in 1813, the Confederation collapsed, and the French were expelled from Hesse-Kassel.  What followed for was a series of constitutional crises, sparked between the parliament, or diet, and a succession of ruling princes.  These domestic crises fueled diplomatic crises as well, as Prussia and Austria struggled for dominance over Hesse-Cassel. 

William Knieriem lived in Hesse-Kassel during a period of intense upheaval.  As one commentator has described it, "In the 1830s and 1840s, Hesse-Kassel was known chiefly for its poverty, its archaic agrarian structure, and its acrimonious constitutional politics."  The early 1800s were a time of dramatic socio-economic change throughout Europe.  Populations expanded.  Industrialization led to urbanization, as more and more peasants left the farms to work in the new city factories, creating a new working class.  Underpaid and mistreated, workers crowded into city centers were growing restless.  Meanwhile, the changing economy allowed the middle class to expand in number and power by leaps and bounds.  These "bourgoisie" began demanding a greater say in government.  The "government" was, in most countries, dominated by royalty or landed aristocracy, with only a token and powerless legislature.

Due to these large-scale and rapid societal changes, things were bound to come to a head.  The year 1848 was a revolutionary year across Europe, with a number of worker uprisings and liberal and middle-class demands for democratic reform of the monarchies.  Hesse-Kassel and the other German states were not immune.  Inspired by the uprising in Paris in February 1848, reformers in Hesse-Kassel called for greater freedom of assembly and of the press, as well as reforms to the justice system, including trials by jury.   Mass protests were held.  Streets were barricaded.  Troops fired upon crowds.  The aristocrats of Hesse-Kassel, hardly eager to reform themselves out of power, struggled to maintain their grip on the government and sought assistance from outside powers.  In 1851, Austrian and Bavarian troops entered the country at the behest of Hesse-Kassel's aristocratic administrator, hoping to cow his increasingly defiant legislature into submission.  It should be noted that, at the same time the struggle for democratic reform was taking place, a broader struggle to unify German was also unfolding, with Prussia seeking to bring all German states under its leadership.  Many principalities, including Hesse-Kassel, resisted Prussia's ambitions.  Of course, when Austria sent its troops to Hesse-Kassel, Prussia viewed the action as a threat and sent its own troops.  A standoff between the powers ensued.  After Russia gave a sign of support to Austria, Prussia, not ready for a full-scale military confrontation with a Russian-supported Austria, backed down and pulled its troops from Hesse-Kassel.  Thanks to Prussia's retreat and Austria's invited military presence, the hands of Hesse-Kassel's rulers were strengthened.  A new, regressive constitution was drawn up for Hesse-Kassel, limiting the powers of the diet and giving the country's elector a free hand to pursue his own policies of amassing money, restricting the construction of railroads and factories, and requiring a strict orthodoxy at schools and churches.  Nevertheless, throughout this period, reformers continued to agitate for greater freedoms and a more democratic government, eventually gaining a new constitution in 1857.  Oddly enough, the same reformers who sought a decentralized government in the principality also sought a unified German state with a national assembly.  The royalty of Hesse-Kassel, opposed to Prussian dominance, resisted this threat to their power, as they did not want to be governed by a national assembly at home or in Prussia's Berlin, and even went so far, as late as the 1860s, to side with Austria in its war with Prussia, to keep the Prussians' aspirations for unification at bay.  But with Prussia's victory in that war in 1866, Otto von Bismarck finally made the principality a permanent part of the Prussian Empire -- soon to be Germany.

It was in the midst of this political upheaval and economic struggle that the young Knieriem family opted to join masses of Germans for a new life in America.  The failures of the 1848 revolutions led to a great deal of frustration with the prospects for real political reform in Germany, leading many liberal-minded Germans to abandon their homeland.  It is not clear whether William and Martha Knieriem were among this set of politically-motivated immigrants or simply were motivated to leave Germany due to the country's dismal economy at the time.  In any event, they were undoubtedly on the boats with these frustrated reformers, headed to Baltimore.  As it turned out, thanks to the 1848 revolutions and their disappointing aftermath, the 1850s were a peak period for German immigration to the U.S., with almost 1 million Germans arriving at American ports during that decade.  Upon arrival, the German "Forty-Eighters," as they were called, often very quickly and eagerly became civically-involved with their new home.  They were principled, politically active, and very much anti-slavery, becoming a key voting bloc for Lincoln's 1860 election victory.  William and Martha Knieriem may or may not have been bona fide Forty-Eighters, but they were almost certainly influenced by them, as these new German-Americans took positions of leadership in the U.S., among the immigrant community and the population in general.  (For instance, Lincoln appointed a Forty-Eighter as his ambassador to Spain.)  The Forty-Eighters' sense of civic responsibility, love of country, and political involvement would certainly rub off on William and Martha's son Gustave.

William, Martha, and George Arrive in Baltimore

The trans-Atlantic journey from Germany to the Port of Baltimore in the mid-19th Century was not an easy one.  The ships were overcrowded and smelly.  By law, the boat was required to give each steerage passenger at least 14 square feet of space and a bed on a shelf, for which no bedding was supplied, measuring 6 by 1 1/2 feet.  The food during the journey was typically salted meat and fish, potatoes, rice, and bread.  The conditions were such that, by the 1850s, one out of every six steerage passengers either died or became dangerously ill during the trip.  It was no small miracle that 3-year-old George Knieriem survived the ordeal.

Baltimore was teeming with German and Irish immigrants at the time.  The growing city was not the safest of places.  Anti-immigrant, nativist gangs with names like the "Pug Uglies" and "Blood Tubs" engaged in street battles with German and Irish gangs.  As a result, the city's nickname was "Mob Town."  Needless to say, the young Knieriem family did not spend much time in Baltimore.  They headed west, perhaps on the B&O Railroad, to Mount Savage, Maryland.