Part 8, Note 47

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Houston Daily Union, February 1, 1871; Colorado Citizen, February 2, 1871, October 5, 1871, October 19, 1871, November 16, 1871, January 18, 1872. Malsch wrote two reports of his activity for the Colorado Citizen. His reports give the names of two ships which carried his immigrants, the Erna and the Bremen. He gives the dates of three departures: March 13, October 1, and October 17; and the dates of two arrivals: May 21 and December 20. He stated that he had sponsored a total of 848 immigrants in 1871, and that 338 passengers were on the two boats which left in October. It is evident that these were the last of his immigrants to depart. The quarterly reports from the Port of Galveston from the first half of 1871 have survived, but the dates they provide do not match Malsch's. They list four arrivals: the Meteor on January 30 with 185 passengers, the Bremen on May 10 with 126 passengers, the Weser, on June 15 with 135 passengers, one of whom died, and the Galveston on June 19 with six passengers. Though the arrival dates do not match, we must presume that the last three of these ships were completely or largely filled with passengers sponsored by Malsch. Adding these 267 passengers to the 338 who apparently arrived in December leaves 243 of the 848 unaccounted for. These must have been the "some two hundred and fifty German and Bohemian immigrants" which the Colorado Citizen reported arrived in Columbus on October 13. Leo Baca, in his study of Czech immigration to Texas, using a German immigration newspaper, the Deutsche Auswanderer Zeitung, identified four other immigrant arrivals at Galveston in 1871: the Texas, which embarked on August 29 with 94 passengers and arrived on October 23, the Iris, which embarked on September 4 with 120 passengers and arrived on November 7, the Bremen, which embarked on September 17 with 101 passengers and arrived on November 17, and the Erna, which embarked on October 18 with 291 passengers and arrived on December 23 (see Baca, Czech Immigration Passenger Lists, (Hallettsville: Old Homestead Publishing, 1983) vol. 1, pp. 37-38). Despite the discrepancies, we must presume that these were the voyages of the Erna and the Bremen which delivered the last 338 of Malsch's passengers. This leaves the 250 or so immigrants who arrived in Columbus on October 13 unaccounted for. Obviously, these immigrants could not have arrived on the Texas or the Iris, as neither vessel arrived in Galveston before October 13. We can only speculate that the missing 250 immigrants first sailed into another American port (perhaps New Orleans), or that some other voyages arrived in Galveston in 1871.