In 1922, a group of immigrant German sisters gathered their children and picnic baskets and hopped on the streetcar at East 14th Street and 71st Avenue in Oakland. Their destination was Lincoln Park in Alameda, a favorite spot for both adults and children to spend the day with extended family. Someone brought a camera, and the moment was captured.
Five sisters and one brother of the twelve-sibling Nutsch family had immigrated to Oakland from the Province of Silesia in Germany in the early 1900s. An uncle had settled in Oakland in 1892, and he paid the passage for his nieces and nephew to come to America. Upon arrival in Oakland, they got jobs and reimbursed their uncle’s generosity. Immigration was a gift they came to deeply appreciate as their family left in Germany endured two devastating wars. Through the years, letters and photos were exchanged but as the families resettled after the wars, subsequent generations of Nutsches lost contact.
I have a keen interest in genealogy, so this 1922 Lincoln Park photo has always intrigued me. My mother is one of the blond toddlers. All the faces are familiar because I grew up knowing my German “Tantes.” They gathered for birthdays and holidays at my grandmother’s home in Castro Valley and I loved listening to them chatter away in German. When my husband and I moved to Alameda in 2010 to become caregivers for our first grandchild, I realized the Lincoln Park in the photo was just around the corner from us. We were frequent visitors with our granddaughter. My 95-year-old mother was excited to hear that another generation of the Nutsch family line was playing in that park.
Fast forward to 2024 when an exchange of emails between Nutsch cousins in Montreal, Austria, and California led to an unexpected Thanksgiving gathering and another Nutsch photo in Lincoln Park. Genealogy can get complicated, so I will try to simplify. The cousin from Austria is a second cousin whom I had never met. His grandfather and my grandmother were siblings. His grandfather was one of the Nutsches who never left Germany and none of his descendants ever came to America—until now. My new cousin’s son and family are temporarily living in San Diego, where he is working. Father and son had no idea they had Nutsch relatives in California until the cousin in Montreal told them. They already had a trip to San Francisco planned over Thanksgiving week while the father from Austria was visiting the son in California. Still following?
As we arranged the Thanksgiving details by email, I gave them a brief history of the lives of the California Nutsches and mentioned Lincoln Park as a place I could show them, where the Nutsches gathered. When they expressed interest, my husband and I set out to try and determine the location of the 1922 photo. Enlisting the aid of local historians Dennis Evanosky and Patrick Russi, and with the enthusiastic help of some Liberty Avenue residents, we came to an agreement on the approximate location, based on rooflines and trees. Conveniently, there is a modern-day bench right where we needed it to be!
Going to Lincoln Park became a special part of our Thanksgiving Day. We all felt the significance that 102 years after the first photo, Nutsches representing those who never had the opportunity to come to America could sit where their Tantes and cousins sat in 1922 enjoying a very different kind of life from their family in Germany—and that Lincoln Park is still providing serenity and recreation for generations of adults and children.
