A Torturous Voyage To Philadelphia On The Francis and Elizabeth

Our Yoder forebears crossed the Atlantic
in the voyage described in this historical
novel, available from Masthof Press. 

I just finished reading this book by a descendant of Frau Barbara Fridman, a 41-year-old widow who with her children, age 19, 15, 8 and 6, crossed the Atlantic on the Francis and Elizabeth in 1742 in a grueling voyage of over two months. Packed in this vessel were over 200 other immigrants, including my Amish ancestor, widower  Christian Yoder and his 20-year-old son Christian and 16-year-old Jacob. 

The ancestral home of the Yoders is Steffisburg in Switzerland, but we're not sure just where our immigrant ancestors lived when they left for the New World. The Fridman family were Lutherans from Massenbach, and made their trip on a series of barges up the Necker and Rhine Rivers to Rotterdam, a journey almost as long and trying as the trip across the ocean. The hardships they and their fellow immigrants endured before and during their ocean voyage, along with Mennonite, Amish and other migrants, are almost unimaginable. Think rats, seasickness, chronic illnesses, burials at sea, insufferable heat, unbelievable stench, and having to sleep in stacks of wooden bunks packed next to other passengers night after night.

I wonder if any of us would have been hardy enough, or desperate enough, to have considered taking this kind of risk, but reading this book certainly added to my appreciation of the sheer courage our forefathers and mothers demonstrated in doing so. 

Here's a link to another post about this voyage: https://harvyoder.blogspot.com/search?q=francis+and+Elizabeth