"I thought you might like to have this," she said. "Your mother said you were interested in family history."

I stared at the old sheet of paper, trying to read the handwriting and struggling to translate the language. Slowly I deciphered: age–forty-nine; build–medium; hair–dark brown; eyes–blue; nose–pointed; mouth–broad; Signature of Passport Holder; Approved in Grossherzogthum Baden.

I was holding in my hands a document that my great-great-grandfather no doubt had tightly grasped during his long journey to America. It was indeed his passport, which stipulated, "Valid for one passage to North America."

At first I thought this was the end of my quest for my ancestry, but I was mistaken. With this valuable and informative document, I was closer to the beginning than the end of my quest. But it started me out with a vehicle that soon hit many potholes and ultimately a brick wall–in the Atlantic Ocean.

Johann Meidinger and his family were among the numerous emigrants who left the German State of Baden, which was in the southwest region of what is Germany today.

The perpetual turbulence during the first half of the 1800s, caused by the continually colliding economic, social, and political forces, had dramatically diminished opportunities in the Old World, especially for poor farmers and artisans of the southwest region. Numerous families were forced to leave their homes and emigrate to find their future in the New World because they could no longer subsist on their land. They had read and heard of America’s promise through newspaper accounts and travel pamphlets about farmlands in the American midwest, especially Missouri and Illinois.

According to the passport, in 1844 my great-great-grandfather, his wife, and two children left their home among the farmlands of Baden, not far across the Rhine River from Strasbourg, France. The popular seaport of Le Havre could be reached from Baden within several weeks by heading west through Strasbourg to Paris by freight wagon, stage line, or family cart, and then by river barge or steamboat to Le Havre. Le Havre had become one of the main sluice gates through which the rising flood of continental emigration flowed. In the 1840s, this French seaport was popular among emigrants from the region of southwest Germany as an economical and convenient route to the farmlands in midwestern America.

From Le Havre, the emigrants embarked upon a voyage for six more weeks across the wide Atlantic Ocean to one of the East Coast or gulf ports of America. The American ships and captains, who dominated transatlantic trade with their nautical technology, were preferred for passage to America. Rather than a port on the Atlantic seaboard of America, New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico was preferred as a more convenient and less costly door to the farmland of the American midwest.

From New Orleans, emigrants could take a steamboat up the Mississippi River to Saint Louis, the famous "Gateway to the West." Johann Meidinger, after disembarking at New Orleans, reached the Midwest at Saint Louis and crossed the Mississippi River to Belleville, Illinois, where he quickly purchased land to start a new life for his family.

Like millions of other emigrants from Europe, the forces on this small family must have been intolerable in their homeland; so great as to cause them to make such a dramatic choice to leave home, family, and friends and embark on a long and dangerous voyage across the Atlantic to an unfamiliar country. Their adventure must have been characterized by hardships and remarkable endurance that was sustainable only by their hope for a better future.

With Johann Meidinger’s passport in hand, I began my personal journey into his life. I found a locally published article stated that my German ancestors had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1844 in a vessel called the Caglioni. As I sought further information about their long voyage across the ocean, my fascination grew. What was the Caglioni? Was it a wooden sailing ship or a small brig or a grand steamer? Who was the captain? What were the conditions onboard? Was this family in cabin or in the reputedly dreadful steerage? Is there a picture of the ship?

The passport and locally published article seemed to be consistent, so I visited the Library of Congress to find any reference that would describe a vessel named Caglioni. I consulted every relevant reference book I could find; I talked to research librarians. But to no avail.

There was no trace of a Caglioni vessel. There was no information available in the Library of Congress on even the mere existence of such a vessel. No one even recognized the name Caglioni. It appeared that I would advance no further with my research of the ship of my ancestors. I was dead in the water, so to speak, and may never know anything further about their transatlantic travails.

I returned to the original passport numerous times to seek additional clues, but each time I was presented with the same dilemma. It contained three languages. The original passport was written in German script of the 1800s. Notes were scribbled in French by the port authorities. And to this was added stylistic handwriting in English. All were difficult to decipher, even the latter. I needed to unlock the clues that were hidden within these three languages. The name of the vessel, in particular, was elusive. Maybe the name had been misinterpreted or misspelled. Maybe it was incorrectly recorded. Even more disappointing, maybe it didn’t exist.

Turning to my computer, I began a simple Internet search on variations of the vessel’s name. I labored through the alphabet, starting with a search on Aglioni. Thirteen hits. I searched Baglioni. One hit. Then Caglioni. Nineteen hits. And so on through the entire alphabet, one letter at a time. By the time I reached the end of the alphabet, the name that attracted my attention most was Taglioni with 524 hits. Could this be a breakthrough?

The lone hit on a Caglioni vessel turned out to be for a ship that purportedly carried a German emigrant from Le Havre to New Orleans; it resulted in another dead end. But this broad Internet search redirected my focus to possibilities other than the ghost vessel Caglioni.

As I sorted through the 524 hits on "Taglioni," I observed that nearly all of the hits referred to a famous Italian ballet family in the early 1800s, which roughly corresponded to when my ancestors crossed the Atlantic in 1844. I returned to the Library of Congress, where I discovered four vessels named Taglioni. It was a popular name in the early 1800s, perhaps because ships owners wished to compare the performance of their ships on the high seas to the performance of the Italian prima donna ballerina Marie Taglioni on the stage. Only one of these Taglioni vessels was an American sailing ship, which was registered in Boston in 1841. It was an exciting and promising find.

I paused in my research to more carefully scrutinize the name of the vessel as it was originally written on the passport by officials in New Orleans. Yes, recognizing now the range of uncertainties inherent in a foreign handwriting, I began to perceive how a proper name could be easily misspelled or mistranslated, and I began to understand the need for a researcher to carefully scrutinize each recorded word. Was there a translation or misreading error? Was the vessel in my family’s past the Taglioni and not the Caglioni after all?

To dispell some of the mystery in the name "Taglioni," I returned to the Library of Congress to seek assistance on German and French handwriting styles. After searching the Library of Congress catalog on the Internet, I found several readily available genealogical guides that were very helpful in deciphering the fanciful and highly stylized handwriting, particularly for distinguishing between Cs and Ts. The scripts for C and T were definitely confusing. Yes, it was understandable how Taglioni was mistakenly reported as Caglioni.

Although I had regained confidence, I still did not have a substantiated record of a vessel named Taglioni. Nor did I have any confirmation that my ancestors were on a vessel named Taglioni.

My next step was to search for records of a Taglioni vessel at the National Archives. Starting with my ancestor’s name, arrival date, and arrival port, I searched the "Passenger List Index for New Orleans Before 1900." No Johann Meidinger. I then searched the "Supplemental Passenger List Index for Gulf Coast Ports for 1820—1874." Still no Johann Meidinger.

Ignoring these indexes and using only the arrival date of 1844 and the arrival port of New Orleans, I searched the "Passenger Lists for Vessels Arriving at New Orleans During 1820—1902." Eureka!–sort of. What I found first, when scrolling through the microfilm, was a lead index card placed there by the original records archivist for a ship named Caglioni.

Not to be deterred, I scrolled to the next frame, which was the first page of the passenger list. This page contained the date, port, captain’s name, and ship name. The ship was named the Taglioni. This looked promising. I moved forward, anxiously scrolling the microfilm through the list, finally to my great-great-grandfather’s name Johann Meidinger with his wife and children. It was a match with his passport!

I next sought the expert guidance of a research archivist at the National Archives, where I subsequently searched the Boston Ship Register. Registration No. 49 was for the Taglioni, with the name of the captain and a description of the ship. The Taglioni was a three-masted ship sailed by Captain Geo. L. Rogers. A match with the passenger list!

Gaining momentum, I again returned to the Library of Congress, this time to search the New Orleans and Le Havre newspapers. I found announcements of Captain Rogers’ regular voyages of the Taglioni across the Atlantic Ocean between New Orleans and Le Havre between 1841 and 1848. He usually sailed to arrive in New Orleans in the spring and fall, thus avoiding delivering his passengers in the summer heat of New Orleans when deadly epidemics of cholera or yellow fever were most likely to be raging. But alas, the Taglioni experienced a relatively short life itself. It was reported shipwrecked in foul spring weather off the coast of Key West, Florida, in 1848.

Finally, I returned to the National Archives this time to search the records of U.S. Consul Dispatches from Le Havre, France, in the 1840s and the records of crew manifests, which included original correspondence of the U.S. Consul. Information in independent records and reports of the sailing ship Taglioni, its voyages, and the captain’s name were entirely consistent with the information in my ancestor’s passport. The Taglioni, indeed, must have been the ship that sailed on the high seas of the Atlantic to bring my ancestors safely to their destination and to bring my own destiny with their ship enjoyably to a close.

This chapter of research into my family history reminded me of the frequently read advice of professional genealogists. Caution and care are needed when using published or recorded facts for investigative research. In addition, while not the final word, creative and simple Internet searches can help us find new leads. And re-confirmation of information is essential, whether that information is found in original handwriting, published articles, or archived records. I’m now a believer. b

Return to the Ancestry Magazine November/December 2001 Table of Contents.