The Immigration of the Wilhelm Otto Family in 1884

Caroline Spitzer and Wilhelm Otto were my maternal great-grandparents, and this is the story that has been passed down in our family. My grandfather Hermann Otto (their third child) said that his father was practicing law, and in the spring of 1884, he was defending a Jewish man who was being sued by a Russian. When he won the case, he was informed by the local officials that he must leave by nightfall. He tied a little money around his waist, packed up his family (they had five children at home then), and they all went to Torun, Poland, where they spent the summer. Their daughter Regina was already married to a Russian named Jacob Spiegel, had one son, and was living in Kiev, and she stayed behind in Russia. Wilhelm had heard of the state of Texas, and he thought that would be a good place to live.

The Otto family sailed from Hamburg on the Polaria on September 7, 1884, and arrived in New York on September 25. After being processed at the immigration station at Castle Garden, they were approached by an agent of the Lincoln Land Company of Lincoln County, Kentucky. He persuaded them to go to Kentucky to buy land, instead of Texas, and that's how they ended up in Ottenheim, Kentucky. That may be the reason the Spitzers went there in 1892.