In this tremendous milestone year of the 250th Anniversary of the United States, we are grateful to our ancestors who had the courage and fortitude to come to the USA. It is hard to imagine leaving a small town or village in Germany in a horse drawn wagon, arrive in a port city and find passage on a sailing ship. Once passage was booked and paid for the wait for the ship to depart could be a few days to months. Sailing ships that carried 800 to 1000 immigrants were 200 to 300 foot in length and took an average of six weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean. With bad weather and high winds a ship could be blown off course, and take 90 days to make the journey. If that happened, passengers would disembark at a different entry port than expected.

In spite of so many challenges, our Padberg ancestors began immigrating in the 1840s. Those who travelled between 1840 and 1870 would have experienced the worst of the ocean voyage conditions. Sailing ships were overcrowded, packed with immigrants, unsanitary, and with poor nutrition. Diseases like typhus and cholera were common and easily spread. Many immigrants died at sea. This happened with Branch H, Heinrich Pattberg (1796-1853) who immigrated in 1853 with his oldest son, Heinrich Jacob Pattberg (b. 1840). Heinrich died at sea. Heinrich Jacob survived the voyage and settled in Jersey City, New Jersey. Heinrich’s wife and other children successfully immigrated to New Jersey several years later to join Heinrich Jacob.

Branch D also experienced a tragedy in their travel to the US. Johann Joseph Padberg (1825-1897) immigrated with his wife, Maria Anna Limberg (1832-1875) and their four children in 1867. Their ship was bound for New York but was blown off course. Seventy days later, the ship arrived in Baltimore with no food or water left on board. Their youngest child, Maria Franziska, had died of smallpox on board the ship and was buried at sea.

In 1847, Branch I, Caspar Hermann Heinrich Patberg (1827-1901), a farm hand on an estate, did not have much in the way of savings but he was determined to get to the US. He stowed away on a sailing ship and was found when the ship was far out to sea. He was required to work on the ship to pay for his passage. He eventually made his way to Cincinnati. In the meantime, Katharina Friedericke Surkamp, a woman who worked with Casper on the estate in Germany, followed him in 1848. She left on a ship bound for New York but it was blown off course and landed at New Orleans. Katharina managed to find passage on a river steamboat and arrived in Cincinnati. Caspar and Katharina were married soon after.

By the 1870s steam ships had replaced most of the sailing ships. The trip from Germany to the US took 15 to 18 days on a steam ship. Trains were making travel from one town to another much easier. By the late 1800s travel by train and steamship made immigrating much safer with better travelling conditions and much shorter travel time.

The immigration of Padberg family members has been broken down into four waves. All branches with are listed with known immigration year. Twenty-three Padberg immigrants, a little over two-thirds of the majority of the 34 branches, came to the US before 1899.

First Wave: 1841-1848 Branches: L (1841), B (1847) and I (1847)

Second Wave: 1850-1874 Branches: X (1853-1854), C (1853), H (1853), Q (1853), A (1855), AD (1850s), AE(1850s), O(1865), P(1865), W(1865), D(1867), E(1872), AG(1872), M(1874), AF(1870s)

Third Wave: 1875-1899 Branches: F (1875), R (1880s), V (1880s), AH (1880s), U (1881), N (1896)

Fourth Wave: 1900 – 2000 Branches: Y (early 1900s), G (1907), J (1923), K (1923), S (1924), AC (1924), AB (1959), T (1962) Z (1970s)

There is no specific immigration date for Branch AA. For more detailed branch information see branches. If you have information about your branch that could be added to Branches, please see the contact page.