How did Latvians travel to America in the 1880s? Why did they emigrate? What challenges did they face? How long was the journey? Read about it in the memoirs of Jānis Sirms, a member of the Philadelphia Society of the Free Letts.
This week, I was researching the biography of a member of the Philadelphia Society of the Free Letts. The society was established in 1892 by Latvians (mainly from Kurzeme) who had emigrated to the United States in the 1880s.
The Latvian State Archives holds the collection of the society's chairman, Roberts Līdums. Among the documents, my attention was drawn to the memoirs of Jānis Sirms. In them, he describes his journey from Kurzeme to America and his later life there.
I would like to republish excerpts from the memoirs specifically about the journey itself. The memoirs detail just how difficult and complicated the journey to America was at that time. After reading them, it becomes clear why it is nearly impossible to find records of such travelers in archival documents:
The people from Kurzeme traveled to Germany by land – first by horse and later by train.
Such emigration was often illegal and involved forged documents and false names.
The journey could take weeks, even months or years, if money ran out and one had to stay somewhere longer to earn enough for a ship ticket.
The original text is in Latvian. It is not possible to fully convey the linguistic peculiarities of that time in translation. The text has been shortened in some places. (Source: 1981-1v-6, LNA LVA)
"Living with my parents, I realized that I couldn't stay there for long. First of all, I would never earn anything, and secondly, it was almost shameful to work an ordinary job, because in Kurzeme, there is a prejudice that those who have attended school, even a little, should not do a farmer's work. I couldn't hope for a suitable position because I had no recommendations.
In 1887, around Christmas, I heard that our neighbor's son, B. Biederman was having trouble with his engagement and other issues and that he wanted to escape to America because of it. One Sunday, I went to see him and said that I too had decided to leave my homeland. (...)
When we left Ratnieki (farm – AL), it was already past noon. The road was so bad that we only reached Talsi in the evening with great effort. We arrived at the Bučiņi tavern, where Biederman had asked the innkeeper to tailor clothes for him. We also planned to discuss how to get to Kuldīga. We agreed to continue with the same horse to Kuldīga. The Bučiņi innkeeper sent his boy along, who was supposed to bring the horse back.
That same evening, on February 22, we left Talsi. We traveled through the night and reached the Grauzupe tavern, where Biederman knew the innkeeper. There, we unhitched the horse and laid down to sleep for about 5-6 hours. Then, around 8:00 AM, we left and arrived in Kuldīga around noon.
At Lapinsky's, we met a Jew, Heiman, who would help us cross the border. He said that we could only leave Kuldīga in the evening. (...)
At 6:00 PM on February 23, we left Kuldīga. We still had to travel with our own horse to the nearest tavern. There, we gave the horse to the boy to return, and we got into the Jew's sleigh. There was a third passenger – a Jewish boy from Sasmaka (modern-day Valdemārpils, Latvia - AL), who was traveling to England. That night, we traveled about 4-5 miles and slept at a tavern overnight.
The next day, on the evening of February 24, we arrived in Liepāja. The weather had been terrible the entire time, with snow and blizzards, and it was freezing cold. The Jew barely avoided freezing to death. In Liepāja, he took us to a Jewish inn where we stayed the night. In the morning, we looked around Liepāja. We had time for that because the Jew only wanted to leave after lunch. After leaving Liepāja, we traveled a couple of miles along the seashore. Then we turned into the forest. After traveling a few more miles, we stopped at Pūce's tavern to sleep overnight.
In the morning, at 7:00 AM, we left and arrived in Palanga (Lithuania - AL) around 10:00 AM. The Jew taught us how to answer the police in Palanga. There we would first have to explain why we wanted to travel abroad. Biederman had to pretend to be a farmer from Ārlava (civil parish in Latvia - AL) who was going to Germany to buy a new threshing machine. I had to pretend to be a machinist accompanying him to help with the purchase. We could have kept our real names, but the Jew had written our surnames on forged border cards. So I had to call myself Johan Biederman, and he – Bertold Sirms.
In Palanga, we had to wait about 4-5 hours while the Jew dealt with our papers. After that, we had to go to the police office, where they only asked our names and why we were traveling to Germany. Beyond Palanga, about a verst away, was the Russian-German border with border guards. There, the Jew gave the border official the papers stamped by the Palanga police, asking him to approve them and let us cross the border. The official himself came out of the guardhouse and handed us the papers back. Moreover, he said that we weren’t going to Germany, but escaping to America, and even wished us a good journey, laughing.
About 200-300 steps beyond the Russian border were the German customs guards. There we had to stop and show our packages to prove we weren’t smuggling anything. Of course, we had no such items and happily crossed the border. A couple of versts beyond the border, there was a tavern where we went inside, had a bite to eat, and drank a little schnapps. Then we continued our journey.
In the evening of the same day, we arrived in Memel (modern-day Klaipėda, Lithuania – AL) and stayed overnight at the "Schwarzer Adler" hotel. That evening, the Jew took us to another Jew, where we exchanged our Russian money for German currency. We only got 160 pfennigs per ruble. We were also scammed with the ship tickets there. Each of us paid 15 marks for them. Since the exchange rate for Russian money was so poor, we had very little money left. After calculating the cost of the ship and the train fare, only 8 marks remained for the two of us.
We left Memel by train at 6:00 in the morning. We bought tickets to Berlin for 26 marks each. On the day when we crossed the border, the German Emperor Wilhelm I died (March 9, 1888 – AL). In Memel, when we arrived there, mourning flags were raised on almost all the buildings. This was also the reason why we got so few German marks for our Russian rubles. Many were expecting that the new German Emperor Wilhelm II would soon start a conflict with Russia.
The railway from Memel went to Tilsit (modern-day Sovetsk, Russia – AL), from there to Insterburg (modern-day Chernyakhovsk, Russia – AL). There we had to change to another carriage. In Königsberg (modern-day Kaliningrad, Russia – AL), we stopped for only half an hour, so we didn’t get out of the carriage.
We arrived in Dirschau (modern-day Tczew, Poland – AL) at 6:00 PM. There we had to wait until 9:00 PM to continue our journey. At midnight, we arrived in Schneidemühle (modern-day Piła, Poland – AL). There we had to sleep in the station until 8:00 in the morning, when we could continue traveling.
We arrived in Berlin around 1:00 PM on Sunday at Friedrichstraße station. We paid 50 pfennigs to a porter who took us to Lehrter Bahnhof station. There we found out that we could only leave Berlin for Hamburg at midnight."
(Continuation to follow next week)
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