Coming to America
Emmigrating from Poland to the United States was a journey that involved traveling by train from their village in Poland to Hamburg, Germany, and then crossing the Atlantic on a steamship. This map shows the route traveled. Castle Garden is the immigration station in New York.
Poland to Hamburg
The two Strauss families boarded a train at the train station (pictured above) in Janowiec, a town about one mile away from Posługowo. That train station still stands today.
The train, running on line 281 (shown above), took them to Warsaw. From Warsaw, they took a train to Berlin or Leipzig—then to Hamburg. This journey took two to three days.
Note: Citizens in the area are trying to get Line 281 reactivated to restore train service to the region.
Long-distance railways between Poland and Germany came into being around 1850. They used coal-burning steam locomotives. The average speed during the journey was likely about 25-30 mph even though the train could get up to 50 mph on a straight track.
Here's a video of what that train may have looked like. The engine in this video is a later model than the one that took the Strauss families to Hamburg, but the noise and smoke were similar.
Hamburg to New York
John and Mary took the same route to New York as Joseph, Katherine, and Michael. They boarded a steamship in Hamburg, Germany, stopped in Le Havre, France, before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Both families traveled in Steerage class.
The SS Lessing was a two-masted, single-screw, coal-powered steamship owned by the Hamburg-Amerika Linie (Hamburg-American Line in English). It was built by Alexander Stephen & Sons, Ltd., Linthouse, Glasgow in 1874. Tonnage: 3,527. Dimensions: 374 x 39 feet. It was in service from 1876 to 1888.
Note that the photo above is the SS Lessing in early 1882. Later that year, the ship was rebuilt and a second funnel was added. These are drawings of various parts of the ship.
Three years after Michael Strauss landed in New York, the SS Lessing was scrapped in 1897 in Marseilles, France.
They arrived in New York Harbor to see the Statue of Liberty under construction. John and Mary saw the statue one year earlier in its construction, perhaps without it's upper body as shown in the photo below. It was nearly completed when Joseph, Katherine, and Michael sailed into the harbor.
Their ship stopped at Castle Garden, Battery Park in Manhattan, New York.
When they arrived in New York, they had to have a physical to ensure they were in good health. Health authorities in the United States were concerned about the numerous cholera pandemics that occurred in the 1800s.
The Ellis Island immigration facility didn't open until 1892.
