August Seidat was born in Arnsdorf, Germany, on December 11, 1891.
On his 16th birthday, December 11, 1907, he set sail as a steerage passenger on the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, bound for America. Ten days later he arrived in New York City under the name August Seidelt (the misspelling is most likely due to clerical error). The ship's manifest shows his nationality to be Russian, but this is crossed out and "German" is written above. His last permanent residence is also shown as Russia and then replaced with "Germany." It is possible that he told the clerk he was "Prussian" and was misunderstood to have said "Russian." There is also some contradiction about his age. According to the manifest, his age is shown as 18; however, according to his birth date, he would have been 16 at the time. We speculate that he may have reported his age as 18 in order to be permitted to travel alone.
Interestingly, we have been unable to find any record of his brothers' passage. We know that August was older than at least one of his brothers, and may have been the oldest of the three. If so, his brothers may have found families willing to "adopt" them for the voyage, in which case there would be no record of the Seidat name (they would have used the families' surname). Alternatively, if the boys had used their own surname, the way the name was pronounced may have created a wide variety of spellings. The original pronunciation would be something similar to "sigh dot." This could have been spelled with a Z, followed by a wide variety of combinations of vowels.
According to these same records, August's final intended destination was the home of his brother, Gottfried in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, who had paid for August's passage. August arrived with $2.55 in his pocket.
We don't know if August ever made it to Rhinelander. However, we know positively that he was living on the south side of Chicago by 1918. Interestingly, by this time he had adopted the current spelling of the surname (Saidat). We are unsure why, but believe it was due to a decision made by an Immigrations officer upon his arrival. Perhaps it was felt that the original pronunciation would be retained by changing the spelling. To this day, however, the surname is often mispronounced, and rarely resembles the original "sigh dot."
By 1918, he was married to Bertha Neumann. August and Bertha eventually had two sons, Otto and Irv. Bertha died in about 1934, leaving August with two teenage sons to raise. Feeling hard-pressed to manage on his own, he married Justine to help with his boys. Justine had a daughter of her own (Ruth), but the families apparently did not merge as August had thought they might. August moved into Justine's home, while the boys lived in their father's house just a few blocks away.
Justine died in about 1960 or 1961. August was eventually married once more, to a woman named Mathilda (Tillie). She survived him, eventually passing in 1985.
August died in May 1979 in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.
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