Bourgeois Immigration Tangle

When I first started looking for the Bushu immigrant ancestors, I went to the local library and searched all the volumes (20+) of PILI, Tepper's Passenger and Immigrant Lists Index. I found exactly one family that bore any resemblance to the family I knew had settled in Somerset Ohio in late 1827. There were, and are, multitudinous problems with the record.

First, the name is spelled Boursioe. That doesn't seem improbable now, given our knowledge of the correct name, but at the time I was looking, none of the 40+ spelling variations in the various US records included anything like this. Lester was adamant it wasn't our family. He was the expert and while I argued, I had to admit he knew lots more than I did. Still, the names and ages of the family members had enough similarity to ours that I didn't let go. And ultimately we determined that, imperfect as the record was, it was our family.

But Oh! those imperfections! They leave too many questions unanswered.

• Tepper's PILI is an index to passenger lists. In this case, however, the list's origin is a transcription of a passenger list, not from the original, which appears to be gone. 
• This list of passengers, available now on FamilySearch, was built from cards, one per passenger. Those cards are also on FamilySearch. But neither the list nor the cards provide information about departure port, or ship name. The cards are dated Sep 1, 1827, but I don't know if that's the arrival date or the date the card was completed. The list itself covers July 1 to Sept 30, 1827 and the Bourgeois family is on the 10th page of about 30 pages. If the list was compiled in order of arrival, the family arrived in late July, early August.
• The names and ages of the family members are garbled.

          Michael, 44, farmer and Anna M., 46 are fine.
          But Michael, 20, is wrong. Michael was 24 in 1827.
          Mary, 18, is also wrong. She was born in 1813, baptized Anne, and was 14 in 1827.
          Noma, 13 is probably Morand who in 1827 was 17.
          Anna M. 10, was born Marie Anne in 1819 so was 8 in 1827.
           Joseph, 9, was actually 12.

• These errors create some problems for us because one child is missing and it isn't clear who. The logical absent one is Meinrod (Myrod) who doesn't appear to be named here and who actually applied to emigrate with his family in France. That application doesn't give a departure date. 
• We assume that one of the sons left early and found land to buy; hence the extremely rapid trip from Baltimore to Somerset. (Michael Bourgeois bought land in Somerset Oct. 31, 1827.)
• In general, the oldest son would be the one to leave, in this case, Michael. Later family records suggest that Michael was challenged in some way, and if he suffered from something from childhood, departing on his own for the US would have been a bad idea. But we don't know what was wrong or when it started; we only know that he never married and needed some looking after. Given the inaccuracies of names and ages, perhaps Michael of the list was really Meinrad who was 21. [There is a Bourgeois male, 18,  who arrives in New Orleans on The Cecilia in 1822. Is this Michael, who then makes his way north, finds Somerset congenial, and sends for the family?] 
• I thought perhaps there was some advantage to mis-reporting ages, but there is no pattern to the age discrepencies: Joseph, Michael, and Morand's ages are too low while the girls are too high. It is the reported age for Mary that led Lester and I to consider that she was Meinrad's wife (in which case we'd be missing a little girl as well as an adult son). This is, of course, a possibility, although I'm reluctant to accept that somehow a little girl got missed. 
• There are 427 pages of images in this FamilySearch file. I would have to search all 427 to determine if one or two children from the family were listed elsewhere (or to determine if there were others from the Mertzen-Strueth area on board or to determine of Meinrad's wife -- future or otherwise -- was on the same ship).  I have searched from 273 to 317, covering April to September. I think it's unlikely anyone in the family came later, but earlier is a possibility. 

What I can say is that Meinrad Bourgeois applied to leave France with his family in 1827, destination "Sommerselle, near New York." I don't know why he applied rather than his father, but it does suggest he didn't leave before 1827. I can also say that seven of the eight (or nine, if you include a possible wife of Meinrad's) family members arrived in Baltimore, Maryland in the second half of 1827. Beyond that, it's all conjecture.