The Crossing

The only heirloom that remains to document my father’s paternal grandmother is a Lincoln rocker which sits in our living room. Dad gave it to me shortly after my first marriage. I don’t remember whether I asked for it or he offered it but the conversation certainly began with his recollection of his two grandmothers, both named Augusta. “I had the best grandmothers,” he recalled with great affection. Augusta Dorothea, his German grandmother, was the owner of the rocker, and a profound influence on her grandson in spite of her limited English and his limited German.

The rocker is an un-upholstered version of the chair Lincoln popularized during his Presidency and which flourished in the 1860s and 1870s. Rocking chairs were especially popular in the latter part of the 19th century in America and this caned model was Augusta’s favorite point of repose. Mahogany-colored and lacking the decorative arm-loops or engraved headboards, Augusta’s was utilitarian, if not ornate.

This heirloom, an artifact really, is the only one that documents the long and satisfying life of Augusta Dorothea Rathminder Maddaus. That we have so little to remember her by seems, in itself, incongruous. Dad loved to talk about her, to the exclusion of his parents and most other relatives. He had an abiding reverence for her and the life she led. His passing three years ago erased the memory, and we’re left with the chair, two photos and a few details that enable us to reconstruct her life.

Augusta was born in Riga, the capital of the modern-day Baltic Republic of Latvia, on September 12, 1850. Riga was part of the Russian Empire at the time of her birth, ruled by Tsar Nicholas I and later Tsar Alexander II, during the time of the Latvian national movement. Augusta’s Riga, though ruled by Russia and inhabited by Latvians, was an enclave of German merchants and she spoke German all her life and immersed herself in German culture. Her selection of names of two of her children, Ingo and Freida, trace directly to her love of the historical romance novels of Gustav Freytag.

Augusta’s parentage remains somewhat of a mystery. In a short manuscript written in Latvian, it is suggested her father was Andzs Rathminder, who for over 60 years was teacher in the Latvian village of Vecpiebalga, 100 kilometers east of Riga. A school teacher of high regard, longevity and influence in Latvian culture, Andzs is included in the Latvian Encyclopedia, published by Arveds Svabe in the 1950s. In the Kaudzitis museum in the rolling hills above Vecpiebalga, dedicated to the writers of the first Latvian-language novel in the mid-19th century, Rathminder is revered as a teacher of the Brothers Kaudzitis, and father of Lize Rathmindere Kaudzitis, wife of Matiss. Records there indicate 4 Rathminder daughters, but none with the name of Augusta. Could she be the daughter of Andzs’s brother Janis, who was a poet and teacher in Riga most of his life, or at the very least the granddaughter of Andzs Rathminder, (father of the revered schoolteacher) or the adopted daughter of Andzs himself? Her birthplace in Riga and German tongue cast doubt on her parentage.

It is known that she left Riga in the mid-1870s and traveled to New York City (more specifically Brooklyn) to marry Oscar Wilhelm Maddaus, the son of respected Riga portrait artist and art teacher Johann Karl Ludwig Maddaus. Oscar's emigration to the US preceeded Augusta by a number of years and his marriage to her was his second. His first wife Margaret, and three children Adelaide, Clara and Oscar were apparently victims of an influenza epidemic late in 1872 into 1873. All four were interred in the Green Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn in August of 1873, in what would become the family plot.

Documentation of Augusta’s initial arrival in America is not extant but it is clear she traveled from Riga with the express intent to marry Oscar, and by May of 1877 their first of seven children, Elsa, was born. Oscar worked at the time as a woodcut artist and had contracts with a number of companies including The India Rubber Comb Company in College Point NY and Remington Sewing Machine Company and Reed & Barton Flatware Company. In fact, his work for Reed & Barton may have been pivotal, as their discontent with his turn-around times and his lack of ability to produce human figures for work on their 1877 catolog, suggests a difficult period for his business. Whether it was his work or his father’s health (Johann retired his teaching position in July 1877) or both, they returned to Riga and by May of 1878 their second child and first son Oscar was born in Riga. Oscar W. was in Riga on his father’s death on August 1, 1878.

Four children followed, Ingo, Freida, Senta and Harold, nearly one a year through 1883 and, while is unclear as to when, Oscar returned to his work in Brooklyn ahead of his family. What followed had to be at once, a typical event in terms of trans-Atlantic immigration, and yet a heroic effort on the part of Augusta Dorothea Rathminder Maddaus.

Armed with a US Entry Visa in her name, dated October 22/Nov 3, 1882 and executed in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg, and with her six children’s names and birthdates listed (Harold added after his birth in 1883), Augusta traveled with her children and no other family members via Hamburg Germany and Le Harve France to New York City. All are included in the passenger list of the steamship Lessing, of the Hamburg-America Line. Built in 1874, the Lessing made frequent trips between New York and Hamburg from 1875 to 1888.

On October 16, 1883, Augusta arrived with her 6 children, infant to age 6, at Castle Garden at The Battery, the very southern tip of Manhattan, the receiving point for over 10 million immigrants between 1830 and the opening of Ellis Island in 1892. Her determination and fortitude in crossing the Atlantic with 6 children in tow is a testament to the reverence our family holds for her. She settled in Brooklyn, surrounded by her family whom she lived with through Oscar’s death in 1896 and until her own passing in 1937.

Augusta’s Lincoln Rocker will forever memorialize her crossing and one family’s foothold in America.