This history of the Pohl family of Marquette County, Wisconsin, begins in 1858 at the port of Bremen, Germany, when Josef Pohl boarded a ship to emigrate to the United States of America. The ship Albertarrived at the port of New York on 24 May 1858. The ship’s manifest listed Josef Pohl as resident of “Schlesien.” The German word “Schlesien” translates as “Silesia”, a province in eastern Prussia. I have been unable to learn any other details of Josef Pohl’s life in Europe. His birthplace, the names of his parents, and the names of his ancestors are unknown to me at this time.
In the 9th and 10th centuries AD the region of Silesia was controlled by the Moravians and the Bohemians. In 1241, the Mongols led by Orda Khan invaded the region and defeated Moravian, Polish and German forces. The Mongols withdrew to the east when Orda Khan died, which allowed a newly-formed Polish state to gain control of the territory. In the 1300s Silesia became a possession of the Bohemian Crown in the Holy Roman Empire. In 1526, most of the region of Silesia and Bohemia became part of the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy.
In 1742, Silesia was seized by Frederick the Great of Prussia, and thereafter remained a territory of Prussia. In 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Silesia became the Prussian province of Silesia. In 1871, Silesia became part of the unified German Empire under the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. In 1945, at the end of World War II, the German province of Silesia was divided into three parts by the provisions of the Potsdam Treaty. Nearly the entire province of Silesia became part of the Republic of Poland. Several small areas of Silesia became parts of the Czech Republic and Germany.
In the 1800s the Prussian province of Silesia was bordered by Poland to the east, Bohemia (part of the Austrian Empire) to the west, the Prussian province of Brandenburg to the north, and Austria to the south. A broad and flat plain dominated the landscape of central, western, and northwestern Silesia. The Oder River flowed across the Silesian plain from the Sudeten Mountains in the south to the northwest border of Silesia. From the Silesian border the Oder river continued on a northward course through the Prussian provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania to the Baltic Sea. Mountains extended along 3 borders of Silesia – the Sudeten Mountains in the south, the eastern Sudeten and the Golden Mountains in the east, and the Kaczawskie Mountains in the north. Seventy-five percent of the Silesian population lived south and west of the Oder River. These people spoke German and were Protestants, nearly all were Lutherans. Twenty-five percent of the population lived north and east of the Oder River. These people primarily spoke Polish and worshiped in Roman Catholic churches.
The surname Pohl ranks as the ninety-first most common surname in Germany. The Pohl surname does not rank in the top five-hundred common surnames of any other country in Europe or Scandinavia. Therefore Pohl is a German name. The word “pohl” in low-German means pool, which suggests that the surname Pohl originally identified a clan of people who lived near a pool of water. Josef Pohl likely lived west of the Oder river in Silesia, spoke German, followed German cultural traditions, and worshiped in the Lutheran church.
Was Silesia the ancestral homeland of the Pohl family? I have not found any German or U.S. records that document the ancestral homeland of the Pohl family. Since Pohl is a German surname, the Pohl ancestral homeland was likely located within a Germanic realm, but not necessarily in Silesia. To look into this issue further I studied a genealogical database of 26,235 individuals with the Pohl surname. I searched the database for people with the Pohl surname who lived in the 16th century, the 17th century, and the 18th century. Each search of this database generates a list of up to twelve locations with the largest n
