MmePerdu

By "immigration" I include naturalization applications.

tower

right Mme...over the years I have been able to hunt down citizenship apps and associated documents for most of the aforementioned family immigrants. Most of these documents were available in the city hall of my hometown (Quincy, Massachusetts) and I saw to it that each family received copies of their parents, aunts and uncles papers. One of my cousins took over the responsibility for which I am grateful

Many of my friends and classmates from other ethnic groups looked to us as their councilors in tracing their own backgrounds (Finns, Italians, Irish and Jews). It was a pleasure and so much fun. I liberally used many of their names in two of my most recent books. Imagine the pride that blossomed forth in that respect.

tom_mn

I did similar recently, fortunately had the county seat so could find the exact villages easily.

The Bavarian govt has put a lot of the Bohemian census records online but that doesn't help you.

A lot of ships that sailed from Bremen went to Baltimore, Galveston, and New Orleans in the 19th century so don't limit yourself to New York ship manifests. The Czech society has put these ship records online.

Some of the German script is dreadful to try to read but by using scrabble tiles to try out different letter possibilities I was able to figure out a tough word (Israelite).

Church records will be in Latin.

tom_mn

FYI: The Austrian Empire did not release peasants from estate/manor service obligations until after the 1848 revolutions and allow emigration. Before that they were basically serfs. It would be interesting to see a map of Europe showing when peasants were free to emigrate. England was in the 1400s, German states 1700s (or so) then later as you move east till Russia was last.

tower

Not considered serfs nor manor crews, Jews and other "undesirables" were "free" to leave Russia as early as the early days of Alexander the 1st. Getting rid of approximately 4 million cyphers was enough to clear out the Pale of Settlement.....300,000 sq miles between the Baltic and the Black Sea. The spate of murderous pogroms after Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 hastened the exodus. Poland followed suit as did The Austro Hungarian Empire. Jews from Western Europe had few restrictions to emigrate.

Worldwide Jewish charities were instrumental in providing money for the emigres to leave. $40 paid for passage......but the cost of a train ride to the ports was just as much. A typical Pale family earned less than $100 a year. 1000's walked to the ports which will illuminate you as you read... The Wayfarers (The Lighthouse Press LLC, 2003)endorsed by Steven Spielberg.

tower

Tom, Montreal Norfolk Savannah were also used back then.

Cowboy1968

The problem with identifying the village without knowing the respective county is also the language issue.

If the village had been mostly German-speaking, the old name Petersdorf could have become Petrovice.

If it had been Czech, it would bear the official name Petrovice which should have become Petrowitz (less likely Petrovitz) in the old files of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Nevertheless, the colloquial name used by the villagers could have been Petersdorf (but this never in official files).

In addition, if your only reference is the three words "Petersdorf, Moravia, Austria" in English, it could also be that the location "Moravia" (or rather Mähren in German) is not precise.
Several "Petersdorf" or "Petrovice" are located in NE of what is now Czech Republic. That part had been Czech Silesia (or Tschechisch-Schlesien in German), not Moravia, but as it is only a small slice of present day Czech territory it could have been regarded as Moravia. Especially by someone not from the region as it is quite common to describe Czech during the Austro-Hungarian empire as Bohemia & Moravia. And forget about that piece of Silesia. Which is not to be confused with the much larger part of Silesia in Southern Poland. The latter had been German territory until 1945, the former part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and only later under German rule during the Nazi occupation as the rest of Czech.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A...rava_kraje.gif
Czech Silesia is the small orange part of the map. Moravia the blue area.

IF "Petersdorf, Moravia, Austria" was 100% correct, you would look:
> only for settlements which do NOT show up as Petrowitz/Petrovitz in old Austro-Hungarian records (but only as Petersdorf) and
> which are located exclusively in the blue area of the map.

Nevertheless, as already the combination of Moravia and Austria is incorrect (Moravia was never part of Austria, but only of the Austro-Hungarian empire, or short: Austria-Hungary), you should try - as PP suggested - to gather and verify more information at home.

MmePerdu

My advice would be to enjoy this trip as planned and use what you find in future research as the perfect excuse to return. I've found that genealogy trips must be planned for that purpose and one must go where the questions lead, rather than trying to fit the research into a vacation. Both are fun, but in wholly different ways.

MmePerdu

To Cowboy1968's points above, my great-grandmother said she was from "Austria" and by that she meant the Austro-Hungarian empire. Later, some family members simply replaced "Austria" with the only name they knew and said she was from Vienna, though the town she was from was actually in a far corner of Hungary. This is a very common problem, the human element confusing the geographic.

So we continue to gather documentary evidence and word-of-mouth until confirmed by primary documents, such as birth certificates that place child & parents reliably in a place & time. Death certificates, census records, etc. are less reliable because the information is often or never given by the person from the place in question.

Have a great trip, with or without your question answered!