The SS Batavia - June 1875

The month was June....the year, 1875.....the place....Sulby Village, Isle of Man. This was the place of my great grandfather.....the old land of the Manx cats. You know, the ones' with no tails. That small island in the middle of the Irish Sea. A small island about 30 miles long. On the highest point.....you can see Ireland, Scottland, England and Wales. It was this place where my roots began. For hundreds of years did my ancestors inhabit that small island. Most were fishermen, a mix of Gaelic, Viking, English and Roman blood.

It was 4 years earlier that my great grandfather, Robert Henry Shimmin, was living with an aunt and uncle.....at the young age of 14. There was some falling out in his family...he hated his stepfather...and left to live with them in Sulby village. He eventually set out to seek his fortune in the US. He steamed out of Liverpool, England aboard the steamer ship, SS Batavia. This ship was typical of the steamers of the day....a cutter style hull, double mast and one coal fired steam engine. He set out alone....and it took 9 days to make the trip to the port of Boston. He had few possessions.....among them a small accordion. He arrived there the first week of July and promptly headed west...via train....to Carrol County, Illinois. This was just 1 year before Custer met his end at Little Bighorn. Upon arrival at Carrol County.....he lived and worked for another uncle and aunt.

He stayed there for about 10 years....until 1885....before he set out again. That same year....he married his girlfriend, Mattie Bell Waxler, in Cherokee County, Ohio. They made their way west again and in 1887....came to the small town of Tryon, Nebraska....in a covered wagon. They homesteaded a large parcel of land north of Tryon. There they raised cattle on what became a large ranch. They were among the first pioneers to settle there. The ranch is still in the family.....115 years later. My grandfather and my father were both born on that Nebraska ranch. My grandfather and his wife moved to Idaho in 1937.....and had a large farm near the city of Nampa. I was born in the nearby city of Caldwell.

As it was....I had the good fortune of visiting an aunt several years back and she gave me some papers, journals and documents she was going to throw out. I am glad she didn't because it just happened that one of the old small journals.....belonged to my great grandfather. Inside was his handwritten account of his trip from the old world......to the new....way back in 1875. What a loss that would have been. I still have those old documents....stored safely away......those memories of old. Those links to the past remind me of my heritage. Of the Manx of old. Though the language spoken, Manx gaelic, is now extinct.....my great grandfather spoke it with fluency.

Some day I will make it to that small island and see where we began. Though my family name is uncommon here.....there are many on that small island......a pure Manx name. It all began on that lonely trans-atlantic journey in 1875 on that steamer ship.....the SS Batavia.