1870: Germany
On April 30, 1870, John Bigelow and his family left New York for Germany. They embarked on the Brooklyn steamer for Liverpool, England arriving a month later. The family took a room at the Waterloo Hotel and planned on staying for almost two weeks to visit friends. On May 12th, they took the train at 9:00 in the morning to London, switching trains to Berlin. John's interest in traveling to Germany was to conduct research on the French polymath Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. He ended staying in Berlin during the Franco-Prussian War and become friends with Otto von Bismarck, minister president and foreign minister of Prussia, a relationship that continutes well into the 1890s. Sadly, when Bigelow was in Gotha he learned of the death of Charles Dickens. The Bigelows also lived in Germany from around 1869-1847, with the children attending various schools in Bonn and Berlin. Jane's diaries between 1859-1873 describe experience of living in Germany, traveling around Europe, and going back and forth to the U.S. on vacations.
