I’ve just republished my Johanna design, named for my maternal great, great, grandmother – prompting my customary pause to get to know her, my knit pattern namesake. Always a welcomed offshoot of my knitwear enterprise, off I go to research physical and online family records, and reveal her story.

In July of 1858 Johanna was born to George Stepat and Anna Puttenat in Speyer, Prussia (now Germany) – a city on the left bank of the Rhine River, near France. Quite the older sister, when she was thirteen her brother Otto was born (1866), and at nineteen brother Julius joined the family (1872).

Johanna married Albert Stieg in 1874, and together they had one son (Oscar 1876) and seven daughters (Martha 1877, Louise 1878, (Annie 1879 and Annie 1880, both of whom died in infancy), Emma 1881, Bertha 1882, and Augusta (Gussie) 1886). Soon after Gussie’s birth, Johanna, then 28, and Albert 33 moved their young family to the United States and settled in South Boston. Her parents, George and Anna, and her brothers, moved with them (my great, great, great, grandparents, and uncles). Once they settled in, two more daughters (Harriet (Hattie) 1888 and Florence (Flossie) 1891) were born. Of them all I knew only Hattie, my knitting mentor, who lived a good long life – overlapping, in fact, with the birth of my daughter Juliet. With no obvious unrest that I could find during that time in German history, it’s likely their migration was motivated more simply by a search for new opportunity. On October 28th, 1886, President Grover Cleveland oversaw the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in front of thousands of spectators. Immigrants were welcomed into our country back then, they are less so now.

Census records provide a window into the family’s whereabouts. By 1900 they’re renting an apartment at 633 Seventh Street – to my delight and by way of Google street view, in a house that is identical to my own current residence. Occupations on the form list Albert’s as cigar maker, Johanna’s none implies homemaker, and Bertha’s as making paper boxes. The remaining children, Gussie, Hattie, and Flossie, are at school. Fourteen years after their arrival the 1910 census finds them at the same residence with fewer children at home. Hattie and Flossie have joined their father at the cigar factory. By then, sadly, Bertha has died and Oscar probably has too since only five children are listed as number now living. (They lost Emma at age three before leaving Germany.)

By 1920 they’ve moved to 25 Hallam Street, a house I once drove by on an idle Sunday afternoon just to see and feel it, though I imagine it’s quite different these days from how it had been 100 years earlier. The Spanish Flu epidemic that ravaged Boston in 1918 seems to have left the family intact. It’s an experience I can identify with now. I wonder if they were afraid.

In 1930 I was surprised to find Johanna and Albert living in Chicago with daughter Gussie (listed curiously by her middle name Elizabetha) and her son, named (funnily to me) August, after her – almost a Jr., close enough. When Johanna died in 1934 at the age of 76, Albert moved back to Boston, and lived out his remaining days with daughter Flossie and her family. He died six years later.

A few family photos follow, from the archives, shown in estimated chronological order based on scrutiny and a bunch of educated guesses.