This book follows an immigrant family through three generations. It describes what it was like as an immigrant to live and work in the United States in the mid- to late-19th Century. True personal stories and anecdotes of immigrants are woven into the tapestry of historical events that shaped post-industrialized America from the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the politics of New York to the struggling evolution of agriculture in the Midwest.
Beginning in the countryside of the Kingdom of Hanover, Germany, in 1846, the Kastendieck family--four brothers and two sisters, along with their mother--immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, when South Brooklyn was a scarcely populated wetland. They built businesses, raised families, and experienced the ups and downs of a young nation, overcoming hardships and personal tragedy. After many years in Brooklyn and the deaths of three of his wives and five infant children, John Herman Kastendieck and his brother Dietrich left Brooklyn for the frontier of southwest Missouri.