#8-PHOTO #52 Ancestors Grosskopf or Grosskop

Grosskop, Grosskopf, Grosscup.  Many different variations of spelling.

While thinking of photos for this week's challenge, this one immediately came to mind.  It is one of the few pictures/memorabilia from this family line.  My husband’s grandmother was Maria Barbara (Mabel) Grosskop. It is a picture that invokes many questions.  

Grosskopf Family

Back row:  A cousin

Middle Row:  Maria Barbara (Mabel), Katherine with baby Katharine, Konrad,  and Konrad’s brother and his wife.

Front row:  Conrad, Carl (Shorty), Fred, John and the children of the brother-a boy, baby girl and girl.

The family were, Germans, living in Russia in the colony of Frank.  Frank was a Volga German colony founded 16 May 1767 by families from Mecklenburg, Pfalz, Saony and Dermstadt-Isenburg regions of president-day Germany.  The Russian name is Medvyeditskii Krestovyi Buyerak.

The information I have found on Ancestry passenger lists state that  Konrad and Katherine Grosskop, (which are my husband's great grandparents) and family left Liverpool, England on 5 April 1911 on the passenger ship “Friesland”.  They arrived in Philadelphia on 16 April 1911.  They had $120 when they arrived in the United States.  When they arrived in Philadelphia, the family included a toddler,  Alex, age 2..   Maria Barbara (Mabel), Leroy's grandmother, would have been 14.   They were going to a brother-in-law, Johann (John) Reinick in Lincoln, Nebraska.  The passenger list states that Katherine was pregnant.  Katherine had a baby boy, Jacob, on 9 September 1911 in Ballantine, Montana. 

I question if this picture was taken on the dock in Odessa.  Obviously Alex is not in the picture.  And Mabel doesn’t look 14.  Katherine was born in 1906 and in this picture appears to be less than a year old.  Estimating the picture from age of children, I think the picture is about 1907.  How did they get from Frank, Russia to Odessa, Ukraine/Russian on the Black Sea and then to Liverpool, England?  Maybe there is a passenger list, so far I haven’t found one.   

And how did Konrad have $120 when he arrived in Philadelphia?

Why did I use this picture in the challenge?  

I hope that someone can help in identifying and providing more information on this trip.  I wonder if this picture is the possession of other family members (other than the immediate family).  Does the brother’s family have the picture with more information? Can anyone identify the man in the back row?

And does anyone know of the travel or passenger lists from Odessa, Russia to Liverpool?

Maybe somehow, someday there will be answers to the questions! And a family story will be retold and mystery solved.