John F Schlatter

Saint Gallen to Shaw John F Schlatter

The story of Swiss immigrants Adolph and Emma Schlatter who came to America in 1910 and settled in Shaw, Mississippi. On October 31, 1910, the steamship Lapland arrived at Ellis Island after crossing the Atlantic from Antwerp, Belgium. The Lapland, which could carry 2,536 passengers, was one of many ships that regularly plied the Atlantic, bringing immigrants to the Land of Opportunity. Among the passengers who disembarked that Halloween Day were Adolph and Emma Schlatter. They were married six weeks earlier in their hometown of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Adolph, a baker, was 47 and Emma 26. She was probably pregnant with their first child. It was Adolph's third trip to America, the first two in 1890 and 1897. He had been married before and had a daughter, a family secret not known to his grandchildren for more than 75 years after his death. His two brothers also came to America, and both died young of common ailments of the time, tuberculosis and yellow fever. Adolph and Emma settled in Shaw, Mississippi, a small town about 125 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. There Adolph operated a bakery and they reared three sons, John, Joseph, and Freddie, in a small apartment above the bakery. The family endured the Mississippi River flood of 1927 and the Great Depression, and all three sons served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Emma's brother, Louis Waldner, also a baker, came to America one year after Adolph and Emma. He settled in New York, but moved to Shaw around 1929 to help with the bakery after Adolph suffered a debilitating stroke. He returned to Switzerland in the early Fifties and died in 1954. They're all gone now. Adolph died in 1930 and Emma in 1948. Their son John passed away in 1960, Joseph in 2005, and Freddie in 2010. The bakery building is gone, too, demolished along with all the other buildings on the block. Adolph and Emma are two of more than 12 million immigrants who came through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954. They all have a story. This book is an effort to preserve their story for their descendants, and for anyone who might be interested in two people who came seeking a better life in America.
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