Eva Justina Dauch, my fourth-great grandmother, died April 13, 1877, and is buried in Greenfield Cemetery, Uniondale, Long Island, New York, in a plot bought by her grandson-in-law, Theodore Peterson Berg (my great-great grandfather). According to the headstone, she was 84 years, 3 months, and 7 days old.
I don't know much about her. I know her death was listed in the Queens County Sentinel, a now-defunct newspaper. I know that according to a ship passenger list, she arrived in New York harbor aboard the Leila on Sept. 22, 1845 from Le Havre, France with her husband Nicolas, 46, and three of their children - Andreas (Andrew), 19; Thomas, 16; and Marie (Mary), 9. They were all born in Bavaria according to the list. I know she and her family disappear for 25 years after that - I can't find her in the 1850 or the 1860 U.S. census - and when she reappears, her husband is dead and she is living near her son Thomas in Hempstead, Long Island, and with her daughter, now Mary Gasser, and she is listed in the census as "Christina Dowe" (The Justina in her name sometimes gets switched to Christina and the "Dauch" last name is actually pronounced "Dow" and so often got spelled that way...). I know that she is one of those Germans who had extra first names she probably didn't use - I think on her death certificate, she's listed as "Mary."
But for the most part, she's still a mystery to me. I don't know why she left Germany, and if one of my distant relatives is correct in his research, why she left some of her children behind when she did. I don't know where she went during those missing 25 years between her arrival in Manhattan and her appearance in the 1870 census.
Perhaps she returned to Germany
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