On March 27, 1909, my great-grandfather, Hermann H. Jacoby, boarded the steamer, Barbarossa, with his wife, Jennie, and his daughter, Emily, beginning a journey to Europe to sightsee, visit relatives, and return to places that he and Jennie knew before their families came to America.

Hermann (nicknamed H.H.) was the president of Jacoby Art Glass in St. Louis, which he owned with his son, Charles. Throughout the seven-month trip, Hermann wrote to Charles, recounting the day’s adventures and encounters. It’s my understanding that a secretary in the office was the one who typed all Hermann’s letters, and it is those typed pages that survived to become this blog. Please bear with misspellings, especially of German words, and quirks in punctuation. English was not Hermann’s first language, and the secretary, no doubt, contributed some typos. I have cleaned up the text to some degree, but left much as it was. Many images are of postcards that the family sent home or collected as souvenirs along the way. My heartfelt thanks to Great-Aunt Emily for preserving the journal and two postcard albums. Without her, I never would have had the pleasure of getting to know Great-Grandfather Hermann.