Carl Louis Hagedorn grew up in northern Germany but left there at a very young age to work aboard ships making the crossing to America and back.  He apparently got off the ship in about 1847 in New Orleans and never went home again.  There he met and married Johanna Volke, a young woman from Hannover, Germany, who had also recently arrived in New Orleans.

This page will summarize my learnings about their origins and what I know of their descendants.  I have traveled to the home of Carl Louis Hagedorn in Germany but I do not yet know much about Johanna Volke.