“I WILL SEND YOU TO MUCURY!”
(No one dies, while remembered)
“I will send you to Mucury!” Said the mother to her misbehaving child, in 1860; In terror, he promised he’d behave.
To the Colonia Militar of Urucú, today Carlos Chagas, MG, Brazil were send my Dutch relatives, Antonius Kaale, His wife Elizabeth Hoogendorp. Also, his Sister Cornelia. Married Marinus Wagomaker and a younger brother, My GGgrandfather, all from Brouwershaven, Zeeland and few survived.
Not too fairway from there, to the Colony of Nova Philadelphia, were sent our German family, the Pfuhls, Hoffmanns from Roeddenau, Hesse, then Prussia.
Very possibly they read an ad at the Leipzig Zeitung, published by “Scholobach & Mogenstern, agents of the Mucury Company in Leipzig. And the propaganda said: “Nach der deutschen Kolonie ‘SAXONIA’ bei Philadelphia, Provinz Minasgeraes in Brasilien”.
I don’t know if the prospect immigrants knew about “Minas Gerais State” or “Brazil”, but for sure this “near Philadelphia”, the second most immigrant bounded City in North America, after only to New York, they knew and many had relatives there. This propaganda was “catchy, - to avoid “tricky”.
And on May 29, 1857 the three-masted sailing ship SOPHIE. Under the Capt. A. Decker, left Hamburg to Rio. Five weeks later, they arrived sea-sick but animated by the gorgeous view of Guanabara Bay in Rio, but that wasn’t their destiny: They were sent to a smaller ship, Guarapary, from the Mucury Company and shipped North, to the Port of Porto Alegre, in Bahia State and from their they went up Mucury River by smaller boats to Santa Clara Falls, and from that point on they walked two more days to Arrive in a primitive road, and in awe the saw for the first time “time” Botocudo Indians, semi-naked, with their enlarged lips, indentured Chinese from Canton and Black Slaves, working to expand the road.
Nova Philadelphia was a dream of Theofilo Benedicto Ottoni, a Senator from the Empire of Brasil, a visionary man that wanted to create a “civilization” on his lands, his was honest, an illuminatus, but his enterprise was too big and he ran out of funds.
Philadelphia were in the boonies, in a place infested with endemic tropical diseases, wild animals and groups of ferocious Botocudos. It was the antithesis of Philadelphia, USA.
On the other hand, Urucú, nearby Santa Clara Falls was indeed the “heart of darkness”; In matter of months the 50% Zealanders was dead by tropical fevers. Some asked for help in Rio, the German consulate got involved, and many leave that place in the imperial War Steamer, “Duque de Caxias”, that send them to more civilized Colonies Suck as Joinville, Blumenau, Santo Angelo, etc., ran by the Monarchy, in the South of Brazil.
In 1858 when the German Chauvinist Naturalist Robert Ave-L’Allemand was visiting the German Colonies in the North of Brasil he saw and reported in details the misery of the desperate immigrants in that Conradian “ Heart of Darkness”, and in his book “Voyages Through the North of Brazil” he described the suffering and misery of the immigrants in such way that the German Immigration to Brasil and local mothers used the name “Mucury”, and obscure terrible place, to scare the “day light” of misbehaving children.
Well, we survived the place; the Kale, Hoffmann, Pfuhl families thrived in Brazil.
But, in this testimony I would like to pay some reverence to that list of immigrants (link below) that came to the Mucury and survived it.
Here is the list of the passenger of the SOPHIE, that left Hamburg in 1857 with a group of immigrants of Central Europe, and I proudly I say, they are me - and I am them.
And further, they are all alive, for we don’t forget them and we are thankful for the lives they gave us.
http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?_phsrc=xHT2&_phstart...
