Back to Family Story outcomes, S22
by Matheus M. S. Abreu
My name is Matheus and I was born in São Paulo, Brazil. Before taking MSE 2212, I knew for a fact that I descended from Portuguese immigrants on my paternal side and Italian immigrants on both maternal and paternal sides of my family. It was believed in my mother’s family, that we descended also from German immigrants. This belief came from stories about the family passed down through oral tradition. We knew that my ancestors spoke German and had German names (Altheman). However, as I dove into researching my family story, I discovered that they actually came from Switzerland and that they came from a German speaking region of Switzerland called “Glarus.” I discovered the names of my 3rd and 4th great-grandparents that immigrated to Brazil in 1855. They left in a ship called America from Hamburg, Germany. This information came from documents found in familysearch.com and ancestry.com.
Later on, I discovered a website (glarusfamilytree.com) that talks about the region’s history and migration to several places in the 19th century, including Brazil. In this website, I discovered why people were leaving that region and how the migration process “worked.” It says people were leaving the country because of a famine catastrophe that started in 1814. In addition, the Empire of Brazil was in need of free/cheap labor in the coffee plantations, because England was threatening to stop the slave trade. Therefore, Brazil implemented “a half-lease system in which European emigrants would be advanced the crossing costs and the necessary equipment for the plantation work. In return, however, the emigrants had to work on the coffee plantations until all debts were paid off, which sounded very tempting to many Swiss communities.”
Furthermore, the website provided me with an article that lists all the emigrants from that region. Through this article, I discovered what farms my ancestors went on to live and work on. On top that, I saw that my 3rd great grandmother Anna Stauffacher (1849-1939) had a brother Rudolf (1855-1855) who died on board the ship with less than 1 year of age. Her family went on to work on the “Boa Vista” farm in Amparo (town where my grandfather was born). Now, my 3rd great grandfather Fridolin “Frederico” Altheman (1849-1909) and his family went to the “Francisco Marianno Galvão” farm, also in Amparo.
Finally, another story that ran in my family was that the family back in Switzerland owned a railway/tramway company. Doing a little research, I found that the company was called “Sernftalbahn” and is now a museum.
The founder was called Leonhard Blumer and was from the same town (Engi) my direct ancestors were from. What surprised me is that the surname “Blumer” appears several times in my family tree. However, I was unable to find any connections in the tree to Leonhard. My next steps now would be to go further into the stories of my “Blumer” ancestors.
Sources
“Brazil.” Glarusfamilytree, https://www.glarusfamilytree.com/brazil
“Willkommen Im Sernftal.” Startseite, 28 May 2022, https://www.sernftalbahn.ch/