In the New World A Family in Two Centuries

Finding home moving forward and looking back.

In 1869 the Peters family makes the difficult decision to leave their village home in Germany and start a new life in America. Leaving their friends and family was hard, but scratching out a living in the increasingly strained economy drove many Germans to the U.S. to take advantage of the Homestead Act.

Turning their frontier homestead into a working farm was a lot of work for the Peters family, but through many hardships they persevered, and the farm thrived for generations. The twenty-first century Peters family still lives on the same farm and in the same house near New Steinberg, Nebraska. Over the years they added acreage, equipment, and help. The old photo of the original Peters family, in front of their village home in Germany, still hangs over the fireplace in Nebraska.

Like so many Americans, today's Peters family wants to discover their roots. On a trip to Germany to see if they can locate their family's original village, they find their ancestors’ cottage and they touch their history.

Gerda Raidt’s illustrations nod to German folk art and are full of many details that show a family—then and now, changed and similar.