Many of my mother's ancestors immigrated from Ireland during the height
of Irish immigration - the 1840s. Similarly, my great-grandmother on my
father's side immigrated from Germany during the height of German
immigration - the 1880s. Our Irish forebears left because of the potato
famine - why did she leave?
The name "Hatti" is very rare among German surnames, but the Old High
German spelling of Hatti, "Hesse" is common. Why she was "Hatti" and not
"Hesse" isn't clear, but to begin the story of our ancestor we begin with
the fall of Troy in 677. The Assyrians migrated out of Anatolia
northwest up the Danube into Europe. Roman annals within a few centuries
were filled with the name Chatti, or Hatti, which later was changed to
"Hesse". The people of Hatti were numerous in the current areas of
Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Kassel, and Hesse-Humburg, which happen to be in
southwest Germany, about 100 miles north of Baden-Baden, the reputed
birthplace of Amelia. Fifty years before Amelia's birth, an Anastasia
Hatti was baptized at the Gamshurst Catholic Church in Baden, Baden.
Could she be a great aunt of Amelia's? (See
here and
here. )
We don't know Amelia's parents birthdates, so they might've been
somewhere between young children or older teens when the German
Revolution hit Baden, not far from the romantic Black Forest and Rhine
River. It was the year 1848, and riots broke out in the streets and for
months 'the monarchies of central Europe looked as fragile as a house of
cards'. Poor harvests, which drove the price of bread sky high, was the
proximate cause. Germany was just a collection of states then and was
not yet a nation and Catholics were only about a quarter of the
population. The mighty Prussian state in the north of Germany began
exercising its power, and in the year Amelia was born Prussia and Austria
won a war against Denmark and gained the northern territories of
Schleswig-Holstein.
In 1866, when Amelia was two years old, Prussia looked south and declared
war on her state. Baden was quickly swallowed up in what was called the
"Six Weeks War". The German nation now existed in theory if not in fact;
that would come five years later when Wilhelm was crowned and Otto von
Bismarck was made the Prime Minister. Bismarck disliked the recently
formed Catholic political party known as the "Centre Party". "He
objected to the existence of a religious party because it seemed to stand
for allegiance to an authority other than the national state," said one
biographer, and considered Catholics a "separatist" group and, along with
social liberals & Jews, as 'enemies of the Reich'. He attempted to end
parochial education, expelled the Jesuit order and deported many clergy,
but ended up uniting Catholics even more strongly and by 1880 Bismarck
had had enough. The hatred of these laws (known as the "Kulturkampf")
was still felt over the nation, especially in the southern Catholic state
of Baden, when Amelia was sixteen and about to emigrate. The religious
situation didn't give many Catholics a reason to stay. And Germany's
economy at that time was weak at best. The reason most Germans immigrated
then was due to this economic situation, especially when compared to the
United States. It was made worse in part because of very high birthrates.
Germany was by far the youngest country in Europe, and there were too
many mouths to feed on most farms and not enough of an industrial base
yet. Southwest German inheritance laws forced parents to divide their
farms equally among their children, which quickly resulted in properties
too small to live on. America looked pretty attractive.
Amelia must not have been too hung up on her Germanness. Or maybe she
got tired of waiting for a Prince Wilhelm. Unlike most of her fellow
immigrants, she would marry outside her nationality - to an Englishman
(or Irishman?) named James H. Smith. Eleven long years passed in
America before she married at the age of 27, which at that time was very
long in the tooth. (I think it's far too young).
