The Promise in the Morning Sky: An Immigrant's Story by Habermann, Robert Steven

The Promise in the Morning Sky is a classic tale of a grandfather telling his grandson the story of a German immigrant (my great-great-grandfather, Christopher Bogner) and the man's life and times in America during the Nineteenth Century. The story includes his early days in Bavaria, the journey to Liverpool, the forty-six-day crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, and his struggles to set up a new life in the New World. As a story-teller, I found it challenging to write a tale about a little-known person who has been deceased for well over one-hundred years. When I began researching this account about the life and times of my great-great-grandfather, I found that there was precious little in the historical record about him before 1846 - the year when he married Margaret Zeilmann. So, what makes up a man's life and times? I knew that it is indeed more than the few words engraved on his headstone, and more than those sentences recorded in an epitaph or placed on the pages of an obituary found in the local newspaper. Life is made up of years and months, and hours and minutes. Christopher Bogner lived to be seventy-five years old; that's well over twenty-seven-thousand days - when things happened to him, both good and bad. His life was made up of innumerable times of joy and pain; of fear and bravery; of disappointments and accomplishments; and of dreams which came true and hopes which were elusive. Life takes a lifetime, and it's gone in just a moment. Even with my subsequent research and the written and oral family traditions, I found that there were many gaping holes in the historical narrative regarding who Christopher Bogner was and what he believed. In filling in these unknowable details with my assumptions about his past, passions, and values, I've settled upon a curious, intelligent, and optimistic man who was thoroughly engaged in the life and times of the nineteenth century. This book is not just about one man and his family. It's about life in th