Todejmi was listed as (residence) of my mother on the manifest of ship
she came to USA from germany in 1910. Can not find this place listed anywhere.

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Request for Question Clarification by scriptor-ga on 01 Oct 2002 15:26 PDT

Dear cob,

This is a tough nut to crack. "Todejmi" is definitely no German place
name; it has no meaning at all, and a native German would not even be
able to pronounce it. I see two possibilities:
1. The name has been written wrongly by someone who just heard the
town name, but did not know German.
2. The place was located in parts of former Prussia that belong now to
Poland or Russia. In that case, it would be the corrupted form of an
old Slavic name, and the place might be called completely different
today.
Do you have any idea what German region your mother came from,
roughly?

Regards,
Scriptor

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Clarification of Question by cob-ga on 01 Oct 2002 18:52 PDT

1. My mother always said she cam from Stettin,Germany
2. This name (Todejmi) showed up on the manifest of the at Ellis Island records.
3. Her name was Charlotte Palmroth,arrived in 1910, at age 4years.
4. She came over on the George Washington

Dear cob,

I have solved the mystery, thanks to your hint that your mother
originally came from Stettin. Let me explain what I found out:

I managed to get an old road atlas of the German Reich, dating from
1923. The place names in the Stettin area had not yet changed by then,
so it was what I needed.

I studied the map of Stettin and its surroundings very carefully.
While I did not find "Todejmi", I came across a village named
"Podejuch". This is, of course, resembling the term Todejmi only very
roughly. But it was the only one looking at least a bit like it, so I
continued doing research on Podejuch.

Then I remembered something very important: In rural areas of
pre-WWI-Germany, personal documents were normally filled by the
officials in handwriting, not with typewriters. And the style of
handwriting commonly used in Germany in that time was very different
from what we know today. It was called "Sütterlin", a very chiselled
kind of script which hardly anyone can read anymore these days.

So I asked my grandmother, who has still learned to write the
Sütterlin cursive in school, to write the place name "Podejuch" for me
- and I experienced quite a Surprise: The "P" looks more like a "T",
while "o" and "d" are easily cognizable. The "e" is a bit unfamiliar,
the "j" again is identifiable without any problems. "u" and "c" look
together like an "m", and the slim, stretched "h" at the end could
also be an "i" if one did not know this kind of script.

"Podejuch" looks like "Todejmi"! Obviously, someone who had to copy
the content of your mothers personal documents, was not very familiar
with German Sütterlin script and got the place of residence completely
wrong.

So this is the answer to your question: Your mother came from
Podejuch, a village approximately 10 kilometers south-east of Stettin,
on the eastern shore of the Oder river.
The bad news is that Stettin belongs to Poland since 1945, together
with the area surrounding the city, including Podejuch. It might prove
a problem to get additional information there since the local archives
have most likely not survived the chaos of the last days of World War
II. However, you might want to try contacting the local authorities in
Podejuch (today Podjuchy) by first establishing contact with the town
administration:

Rada Osiedla Podjuchy
ul. Metalowa 51
70-900 Szczecin Podjuchy
Polska / Poland
Phone: (091)460 92 25

Sources:

Szczecin Podjuchy
http://www.infoludek.pl/podjuchy/

JRO-Straßenatlas Deutsches Reich, Jro-Verlag München, 1923

Polish Postal Codes, by Radek
http://www.ppcor.org.pl/kody/index.html

Search terms used:
podejuch:
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=podejuch&meta=
Podjuchy:
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=Podjuchy&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=
poland "zip codes":
://www.google.de/search?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&q=poland+%22zip+codes%22&meta=

Hope this helps!
Regards,
Scriptor

Have been looking for a answer for years,with many people working on it.
Thanks a lot Jack

The US National Imaging and Mapping Agency lists the following places
beginning with "Tode" in Germany:

Todesfelde, Schleswig-Holstein

Todenwarth, Thuringen

Todenroth, Rheinland-Pfalz

Todenmann, Niedersachsen

Todenhausen, Hessen

Todenhagener Holz, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Todenhagen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Todenfeld, Nordrhein-Westfalen

Todendorf, Schleswig-Holstein

Todendorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Todenbuttel, Schleswig-Holstein