Rosa Brüesch was born in 1842 in the village of Schiers, nestled in Switzerland’s alpine Prättigau Valley. At around age 22, she married Heinrich Baumgärtner. The couple had two children before Heinrich passed away in 1871.
In 1884, Rosa and her two teenage children, Simon and Elizabeth, boarded the S.S. La Normandie and departed from Le Havre, France, bound for New York City, USA. La Normandie was then in its second year of service for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT, known as the “French Line”), and was the company’s largest passenger steamer at the time. Rosa’s brother, Jakob, sponsored their journey but did not immigrate with them; after their departure, the family never saw him again.
Among their belongings was Rosa’s trunk, made of stained pine with an arched top. The luggage shows signs of upcycling, with hand-forged or mismatched hardware. The box is held together with dovetail joints at the corners, wooden dowels on the curved top, and clinched rose head nails through vertical iron bands. Some nails pierce the wood without connecting it to other pieces. The chest also features two different fastening methods: a built-in lock (now missing) and a hasp and staple for an external padlock.
The Baumgärtners inscribed Rosa’s married name, her departure and arrival ports, and her final destination city, state, and country onto the trunk’s surface in German. This was a common practice among immigrants to ensure the safe transport of their belongings. The comma-like markings (⸗) after “New” in “New York” further support its origin; at that time, German speakers often hyphenated the city name with a double oblique hyphen. The trunk arrived in Dubuque, Iowa, and was passed down through the family from Rosa’s daughter, Elizabeth, to her granddaughter, Rosa, and so on until its donation to the River Museum in 2025.