German Immigrants: Lists of Passengers Bound from Bremen to New York, 1868-1871, With Places of Origin; by Marion Wolfert; Paperback; 218 pp; Originally Published 1993, Reprinted 2006; ISBN:9780806313689: Item #:CF6583

Following the death of her collaborator, Gary Zimmerman, Marion Wolfert carried on with the German Immigrants series, providing us with the long awaited fourth volume, spanning the period 1868-1871.

The original lists of emigrants leaving Bremen were destroyed, first because of lack of space, and then by Allied bombing during World War II. This was a serious loss since Bremen was the most active of the German seaports and handled two to three times as many emigrants as Hamburg. The destruction of the Bremen records has been viewed as a genealogical disaster because most such records were thought to be irreplaceable. Information on hundreds of thousands of emigrants went up in smoke, and it was feared that much of this data was lost forever.

With this volume (the fourth in a series), however, a good many of the Bremen passenger records are effectively restored, for this is a partial reconstruction of the Bremen records, based on American, rather than German, sources--specifically, on passenger lists of vessels arriving at New York that are now in the custody of the National Archives. Not all Bremen passengers of the 1868-1871 period are included--only those for whom a specific place of origin is given, about 24,000 immigrants.(See also Items CF6580, CF6581, and CF6582).

For convenience the immigrants' names are arranged in alphabetical order, and family members are grouped together, usually under the head of household. Details concerning age, date of arrival, and the name of the ship are provided, as are specific citations to the original source material.