Family History Notes and Photos by Bob Mesenbrink

Wow. Did I just write that title? When Dad was a Hobo? My Dad, Russell Mesenbrink, was anything but a hobo. When I think of a hobo, I think of a bum, somebody traveling around, living off the handouts of others, but that certainly wasn't Dad. He worked his whole life. He did everything he could to make a living, even in the Great Depression. According to  Wikipedia , the term hobo originated in the late 1800s. A hobo is a migratory worker and is different from a tramp or a bum. A tramp is a migratory non -worker, and a bum neither travels nor works. One thought on the origin of the word is that it derives from "hoe boy" or farm worker. So when I think about that, it pretty well describes my Dad in the mid to late 1930s. He traveled west from Iowa, partially to see relatives who lived in Idaho and Montana, but also to work. He did this two or three times at least. But most significantly, he hopped trains to get there. A lot of people did it during the depression years,

Augusta Nipkow was my great grandmother, although she died long before I was born, and I never knew her. She was an immigrant from Germany, coming over as a child with her parents. She was born in Pomerania, which was a German speaking region, a part of Prussia at the time. The Potsdam agreement at the end of World War II gave Pomerania to Poland and expelled the Germans living there. So, if you look at a map of the area now, you will see Polish, not German, city names. Augusta was born in Butow, and it was a little tricky to find this place as there were a couple other larger Butows that don't really make sense to be her birthplace. I haven't found a birth record for her, but her family was in the area around Stargard, and there is a Butow about 25 miles east of there which I believe to be her birthplace. See  Finding the Nipkows . Her obituary states she was born February 2, 1865. Here is an 1872 passenger list showing her with her family. The top of the right side shows