My name is Johan Heinrich Paul and this is my wife, Maria Sophia (formerly Olenburg) Paul, and we have a story to tell. I was born in Germany on March 4th, 1804.

   I was also born in Germany on October 13th, 1815. We grew up, met, and got married in Germany. We farmed the land there and also had our first two children – Dorothea and Fritz.

   In the late 1840's, when I was over 40 and Maria was in her mid 30's, we decided to come to America for a better life. With two young children in tow, we packed up and got on a boat to head west. We still have the record of our voyage. This document is titled "List or Manifest of all the Passengers taken on board the Bremen Ship Rebecca" and also says it was "from Bremen bound for New Orleans". You can see us listed as passengers 3, 4, 5, and 6 with a final intended destination of St. Louis.

   You may also see that we are listed under "Steerage Passengers", which means we were the lowest class of passengers on the ship, and barely treated better than cargo. Steerage passengers were crammed below deck into tight quarters where the only ventilation was provided by hatches to the upper decks, which were locked tight during rough seas and storms. Disease thrived in the squalid conditions, where rough weather would mean our only bathrooms were buckets that would easily overturn. Note that the last column on the passenger list is "Died on the voyage". In 1847, nearly 5000 people died from disease on ships bound for America. We arrived in New Orleans in November of 1848.

   By September of 1850, our family shows up on the United States Census in Warren County, farming our own land. Further records show that we are in Hickory Grove Township [show map] just west of the border between Warren and St. Charles Counties where there is a Paul Road about 4 miles west of where we are standing.

   We eventually had 4 more children. In our later years we even got our pictures taken! [show photos] Johan passed away in 1875 and I lived until 1881.

click on ship log to enlarge or printable version

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