The Bohnert Family
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Tiergarten - Renchen
Ortenaukreis, Baden - Württemberg
The following information was largely made available to us through the work of Patricia Liedtke and Faye Meyer and their exhaustive study of the Bohnert family. I'm very grateful for their work - it is what inspired me to begin my own genealogy research and create this website.
Renchen is located in the southwest German state of Baden-Wurttemberg in the County of Ortenau at the foot of the Black Forest. Approximately 8 miles east of the Rhine River, it is directly across from Strasbourg, France. This was the homeland of our ancestors.
Map of Baden - Renchen
Suffering destruction from the Thirty Years War (1618-1647), Renchen recovered only to be destroyed again in the Farmers' Rebellion of 1815. An estimated half of its approximately 400 citizens migrated to America during the 1800s, including our Bohnert ancestors.
Holy Cross Catholic Church in Renchen dates from 1650. It is this church where Melchior Bohnert, our 3X Great Grandfather, worshipped with his family, where his children were baptized, where some of them were married and, undoubtedly, where some of those who chose not to immigrate to America were buried.
Melchior Bohnert was not born in Renchen however, but in a little village called Tiergarten at the base of the Black Forest near what was once the medieval Ullenberg Castle. Tiergarten, which translates as "zoo" was originally a game enclosure which grew into a village to house the people who worked there. Tiergarten as a separate community no longer exists. It was combined with seven other villages to become the city of Oberkirch.
Why many families decided to risk everything they had, including their very lives, to immigrate to America is not difficult to understand. In the economy of the time, the lives of every individual were essentially determined by the social class into which they were born. Marriage between social classes was nearly impossible. The majority of the people in the area from which our ancestors came were common farmers, allowed to possess land but able to gain little more than a very modest standard of living. Another large percentage of the population were considered day-laborers who did not own their own land but worked for wages. Extremely poor, these individuals would have had little to no hope of improving their life's circumstances.
Social hierarchies, political unrest and failing crops were common at the time. Letters arriving from those relatives who had already immigrated to America, as well as recruitment efforts by American companies and cheap passage led many who were struggling to live day to day to dream of a life with more opportunity in America.
Many of our Bohnert ancestors traveled to the new world through the Port of Le Havre, France. They would have had a difficult crossing, primarily in steerage as most poor immigrants were forced to endure. Having reached America, they would have disembarked at the Port of New Orleans and traveled up the Mississippi River by riverboat to eventually arrive in their new home, Perry County, Missouri.
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