From the Rhine to the Mississippi: My Family’s Journey to America
In this talk, J.D. Smith, PhD candidate and genealogist, will discuss his upcoming book, which traces the journey of his paternal Schmitt family from Rheinpfalz, Bavaria to the Ohio River Valley in the 1830s. Eight years in the making, this project explores one family’s place in a chain migration from the Pfalz that shaped the American Midwest, especially Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, where millions of southern and central Germans settled between 1830 and 1870.
