to their amazement and dismay Grandsteiner laid the hand of the law upon
them and told them they were "redemptioners." A redemptioner was an
emigrant whose services for a certain period were liable to be sold to the
highest bidder for the payment of his passage to America. It seems that in
fact a large number of those on board the _Johanna_ had in some way really
become so liable; but it is equally certain that of others, the Kropps,
the Schultzheimers, the Koelhoffers, the Müllers, and so on, the
transportation had been paid for in advance, once by themselves and again
by the Government of Holland. Yet Daniel Müller and his children were
among those held for their passage money.

Some influential German residents heard of these troubles and came to the
rescue. Suits were brought against Grandsteiner, the emigrants remaining
meanwhile on the ships. Mr. Grymes was secured as counsel in their cause;
but on some account not now remembered by survivors scarce a week had
passed before they were being sold as redemptioners. At least many were,
including Daniel Müller and his children.

Then the dispersion began. The people were bound out before notaries and
justices of the peace, singly and in groups, some to one, some to two
years' service, according to age. "They were scattered,"--so testified
Frank Schuber twenty-five years afterwards,--"scattered about like young
birds leaving a nest, without knowing anything of each other." They were
"taken from the ships," says, the jungfrau Hemin, "and went here and
there so that one scarcely knew where the other went."

Many went no farther than New Orleans or its suburbs, but settled, some in
and about the old rue Chartres--the Thomas family, for example; others in
the then new faubourg Marigny, where Eva Kropp's daughter, Salome's young
cousin Eva, for one, seems to have gone into domestic service. Others,