In the 19th century hundreds of thousand people emigrated from Europe to North America, in order to escape the poverty in their homelands and to find a better existence. Among these masses some dozens of German Bardelmeiers ventured the passage. Those who succeeded married (for the most part with compatriots) and founded families and, in a few cases, family trees.
Some American Bardelmeier families are incorporated within one of the German family trees their founders belonged to. These are to be found elsewhere on this website. However, two family trees are treated separately on the present and next pages:
1. The Michigan Bardelmeier family
This family has probably been founded by Ernst Jacob Bardelmeier, an immigrant from Lienen, Westphalia, Germany.
2. The families in Illinois/Missouri and California
All these families have been descended from one couple: Eberhard Jacob Bardelmeier and Marie Horstmeier from Lienen. Five of their children emigrated to America. Some of them founded extended families in Illinois and Missouri, and later California, making out the majority of the American Bardelmeiers.
3. Fragments and references
Families, whose founders could not be identified as members of the above family trees and the German families.
And links to the German founders of American families.