Emma Rose Trachsler (b. September 17, 1884, d. July 04, 1964)
Emma Rose Trachsler (daughter of Edward Trachsler and Barbara Schwengeler) was born September 17, 1884 in Veltheim, Switzerland, and died July 04, 1964 in Homestead, OK. She married Henry Bergman on November 10, 1909 in Burlington, OK.
Notes for Emma Rose Trachsler: From Switzerland to America
This story begins in the village of Veltheim, Switzerland, the home of various members of the Trachsler family. In 1894, Rudolf Trachsler, his wife Bertha Hunzicker, and their baby daughter Frieda moved to Zurich. Rudolf's widowed mother Barbara Schwengeler Trachsler and her daughter Emma moved with them. Shortly after their move Rudolf and Bertha had their first son Rudolf (Rudy).
Life was good in Zurich until they invested in an apartment house. They had planned for Rudolf to work at his trade (coppersmith), and his wife Bertha was to take care of the apartments. Grandma Barbara would help with the children, cook, and do some ironing to supplement their income.
All went well for a few years when they were told they did not have proper legal title to the apartment house, and they lost their investment. This is what prompted them to leave their families, and beautiful Switzerland, to come to America.
American immigration laws were complicated, strict, and time consuming. A sponsor and the guarantee of a job were just two of the first requirements. There were passports, health examinations, and smallpox vaccinations for all. An agency, H. Meiss, planned their trip from Zurich to Peoria. This agency was similar to a present day travel agent.
After several weeks of finalizing their affairs, legal and banking business, selling what was to be sold, getting the children's school records, and deciding what was to be packed in their trunks, they were ready. Grandma Barbara was to stay in Switzerland and make her home with one of her married daughters, Bertha Trachsler Helm. Emma was to go to America with her brother and his family. On March 5, 1903 they were on their way to a great adventure and a new way of life.
They took a train to the northern part of Germany. They rode all the next day, and the following night they checked into a hotel in Brenner. The next morning another train took them to Brennerhaven, their port of embarkation. Brennerhaven is a seaport located near the North Sea. On this day the wind was very cold, blowing off of the North Sea. It was now March 7th. Docked and getting ready was a German ship, a steamer named Grosser Kufhurst (translated The Great Elector).
Rudolf was now 37 years old. He was tall with dark hair and eyes, wearing a Van Dyke beard and a stern and worried expression. Bertha was 36 years old. Her hair was prematurely gray, and was arranged in a circle of braids. The children, Frieda 9, Rudy 6, and Emma 15, were tired, wide-eyed, and scared.
Each had a bag or bundle in his hands. One was a large basket to hold food that was to supplement the ship's food, which proved to be meager and unsavory. Their two trunks had already been taken aboard.
Soon the ship's horn sounded, the gangplank was in place, and slowly the passengers were boarding the ship, many on their way to Immigration Deck III.
Immigration Deck III had to be an unbelievable surprise and shock to all that were ticketed for that Deck. It was a vast open space. All their trunks had been brought there, and everyone was supposed to find their own luggage, and then find a space for the family using their trunks and other luggage as barriers and dividers.
Rudolf's wife Bertha was in despair so he went to the Captain and asked to buy a stateroom. The captain told him the ship was all booked up, but he would try to find something better for them. One of the officers gave up his quarters and moved in with the crew. Now although cramped for space they at least had privacy.
Rudolf and the three children spent a lot of time walking the decks, looking at the ocean, and doing a little exploring. Bertha was sick the whole trip. It might have been from the affect of her vaccinations. They were all troubled with their vaccinations, but Bertha's reactions were the worst.
Vaccinations were different then than they are today. Instead of one inoculation, eight were given, on the premise that at least one should take effect. Of course it proved if one did, they all did! Everyone in the family eventually had eight scars the size of a nickel lined up on their arms.
One day everyone was at the railings as the ship approached the New York Harbor, passing the Statue of Liberty, and then docking at Ellis Island where all of the passengers were to go through customs.
Following are the memories of Rudy concerning their time spent at Ellis Island.
The place was huge, noisy, hot, and smelled of humanity. There were hundreds of people milling around. It was very hot, no air-conditioning of course. They were moved around with the crowd, and were soon channeled into various lines. Bertha and the girls were in one line, and Rudolf and Rudy in another as they waited to have medical examinations. Eventually they were reunited, and Bertha told of their bad experience. During their examination the doctor discovered that both she and Frieda had teardrop shaped eye pupils instead of round ones. There was a consultation as to whether they could pass the admission test. Finally they approved their entrance.
With the directions given to them by their Swiss travel agent and help from the Travelers Aid counters that were available at all train stations, they were on their way to Peoria.
Bertha's three sisters, Louise, Marie and Lydia, were there to greet them, but there was bad news. The plant or foundry where Rudolf was to be given his first employment had burned down, and he didn't have a job. He later found work in a lighting plant.
They soon found a house and made a home for the family. The children went to school, and Emma found work as a live-in maid, or what Americans called a "hired girl."
Bertha's sister Louise had friends who wanted her to meet their brother, John Fankhauser, who had a wheat farm in Oklahoma. It is unknown how they met or whether it was to be a marriage of convenience. He needed a wife, and she was interested in security and a home of her own. Anyway, they got married, and Louise moved to Oklahoma which later proved to be an important link in the family's decision to move west.
Louise was happy in her new home on the farm. Perhaps she was kind of lonesome for her sister Bertha, and she also had concerns for them. She wrote to Bertha and Rudolf urging them to consider a move to the West where she thought there were many more opportunities than in the East. Five years in Peoria had been hard, and sometimes sad too, so in 1908 the family moved to Burlington, Oklahoma.
Emma and Frieda stayed in Peoria waiting for them to establish a home. They worked as maids or baby sitters and came to Burlington not long after the family moved there. Then they both worked as hired girls, mostly for farmer's wives who had large families with lots of cooking, washing, and children watching to do.
Soon Emma met and married Henry Bergman, a young man from Alsace-Lorraine France. When he came to America he went west and participated in the Cherokee Strip Homestead Act. His homesteaded farm was about fifty miles south of Burlington. There he and Emma made their home. Six daughters were born there and after 100 years the farm is still in the family. (It is now owned by Wally Sproul, one of Henry's grandsons.)
More About Emma Rose Trachsler: Burial: Unknown, Homestead Cemetery, Homestead, OK.
More About Emma Rose Trachsler and Henry Bergman: Marriage: November 10, 1909, Burlington, OK.
Children of Emma Rose Trachsler and Henry Bergman are:
Frieda Caroline Bergman, b. August 13, 1910, Homestead, OK, d. May 19, 1987, Oklahoma City, OK.
Lena Barbara Bergman, b. March 09, 1912, Homestead, OK, d. January 21, 2001, Okeene, OK.
+Lydia Mary Bergman, b. December 16, 1913, Homestead, OK, d. September 18, 1990, Oklahoma City, OK.
+Emma Rose Bergman, b. September 17, 1915, Homestead, OK, d. February 05, 2000, Okeene, OK.
Emma Rose Trachsler (b. September 17, 1884, d. July 04, 1964)
Notes for Emma Rose Trachsler: