Very often we know the place our ancestors came from but are unable to locate it. The church records show the parish but not the exact location. We read about the place in reference books of historical places for that very area, actually we read everything there is to know about this place. We looked at current maps and google earth. Just, that we are unable to find it. It simply ceased to exist.

This is what happened to me when I looked for the Holländerei (the dairyman’s house) in the Lindenberger Silge. According to the church records, the Lindenberger Silge belonged to the parish of Cumlosen, a village in the county of Prignitz, Brandenburg. It seemed to be very small, the entries were few. The only people living there were the holländer, the forester, the administrator and a few land workers. I knew so much about this place, I even knew when and how the house was built. But there was no sign of it on any current map. I even bought an old map showing the holländerei. Unfortunately this map had such a small scale that I could only guess where the houses might be situated today. It seemed that today it would have been in the middle of the forest of Gadow. I saw myself running through the forest for years, looking after some stone-fundament. How would I be able to find the exact location?

I did find it. I found it with the help of the Prussian Ur-Messtischblatt.

But what exactly is a Ur-Messtischblatt?

After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussia felt a need to establish a standardized cartography for its territory. The Generalstab (General Staff), being part of the Department of War, was appointed to fulfill this important (military) task. As cartography was part of an officer’s training, the Generalstab seemed to have a ready supply of qualified personnel. Under the command of the Generalmajor Freiherr von Müffling, young officers were assigned to do the mapping work. They used a Messtisch (a small table) with a compass, a water level and a so called Diopterlineal (alidade). The map itself was one sheet, called “Blatt”. And a Blatt on a Messtisch simply became a Messtischblatt, the plural form being Messtischblaetter. And as it was the very first map to be drawn, it was called “Ur-Messtischblatt” (Original Messtischblatt). The following link will give you an idea of how it was done (unfortunately it is in German only): http://www.ingenieurgeograph.de/Aufnehmen/Messtischaufnahme/messtischaufnahme.html .

However, the first Ur-Messtischblaetter never were published, the Generalstab simply wasn’t satisfied with the quality. After improving the officer’s skills and enhancing the technical requirements, the second phase started in 1830 and ended in 1865. This time, the maps, very detailed in a scale of 1:25,000, were considered good enough and finally released for military and governmental purposes only. Through the next years with the Prussian industry expanding and more roads and railroads needing to be built, there was a demand from the industry for detailed maps. Finally, in 1868, the decision was made to make the maps available to the public. After 1876, the third phase started with more and more maps being drawn and no longer called Ur-Messtischblaetter but simply Messtischblaetter or MTB (sometimes even MTBL). With the Ur-Messtischblaetter being colored, they were now drawn and printed in black and white. Originally only numbered, now the name of the town illustrated on the map was added. Today the Messtischblätter are called TK 25 meaning Topographische Karte (topographical map) and the scale (1:25,000).

But now back to the Lindenberger Silge. The Ur-Messtischblatt I needed was number 2936, drawn by Lieutenant von Blumenthal in 1843. And there it was: the Lindenberger Holländerei. As I now had the exact location, I asked the retired forester of Gadow for help. And he took me to the place my great-great-grandfather had been born in 1829. It turned out, that he himself had taken the stones to build streets after WWII and then planted Douglas firs. And even though the house was demolished such long time ago, I could still imagine an old half-timbered house standing there.

And it felt a little bit like coming home.

In Prussia, and even in other parts of Germany, sitting down at work was considered being a sign of laziness and undisciplined behavior. And that surely didn’t go along too well with the “Prussian virtues”, one of them being industriousness…… So, if you were a clerk, you needed to stand all day, six days a week. However, if you were the head of the department, you were allowed to sit at your desk. Obviously, they were beyond a shadow of a doubt…..

This is the Church Ruin of Flieth in the Uckermark in Brandenburg. The village of Flieth was first mentioned in 1269. Some sources say that there already was in church then, some say a church was first built around 1500. Before the Thirty Years’ War it was a prosperous village with 24 farms and 2(!) pubs. In the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)  the village was destroyed and deserted. It took many years for Flieth to recover,  it was not until 1713 that the church was restored, the tower, 36 m (121 feet) high, was finished in 1714, the three bells had been casted in Berlin in 1712. The alter from 1601 had survived the Thirty Years’ War.

Then, in 1945, after it’s bombing, only the walls and parts of the tower remained. Still, one more thing did survive, maybe as a sign of hope: one of the three church bells. It now hangs on a wooden bell tower on the graveyard, that still is in use.

Home, that was her farm in Delitz, it had been in her family for many generations. Her ancestors had worked day and night to buy themselves out of serfdom and fought hard to be able to hold this farm. Her father, Johann Friedrich Kahle, had been a good and well respected man, a member of the parish council and the accountant at the local Lutheran Church.  And after her three brothers died as infants, she was the only surviving child and heiress to a large and profitable farm. Her husband Friedrich Samuel Teichmann, who she had married in May 20, 1872, had been a farm administrator in Holleben and took over the farm after her father’s death in 1878.  God had blessed her and her husband with 14 wonderful children, 7 boys and 7 girls, born between 1873 and 1889. It had been tough, 14 children in 16 years, not to forget that she also worked on the farm. But her mother, Concordia Kahle, who also lived on the farm, had always helped her and in the end it did work out somehow. Only their eighth child, little Friedrich Otto Franz, had died, only 7 months old.  All the other children had grown up to be honest and hard working young men and women. Most of her children were married by now and she already had 19 grandchildren, most of them living close by. Unfortunately not all of them. Three grandchildren, Fritz, Frieda and Eda Teichmann, lived far away, in Roxbury, Delaware County, New York, America. Her son Albin and his wife Lilli owned a dairy farm in the catskills and an inn called Ironwood Post. Frieda and Eda even were born in New York City, she had never seen them. So, Emil was not the first son she lost to America. Albin, a cook, and his wife Lilli had left for New York City in 1906 and took their son Fritz with them. They had moved from Delitz a long time ago to live in Cologne, so they hadn’t met too often. Still, Cologne wasn’t as far as America! Albin sent letters home, telling them how great things were and had suggested for Emil to come. He would surely find work there, they were looking for good workers from Germany…. It had been easy to convince Emil and finally the day of his departure had come…..

But maybe it was the right thing for him to do. Her son Kurt was supposed to take over the farm, the other children had received their inheritance in cash. But what would Emil do in Germany? Work for his brother? That might not be the right thing to do. He did not seem to be ambitious, but there was something driving him away from home… Was he sick and tired of his family? Of not being treated seriously, he, who was child number 13? Concordia didn’t know, there was something she simply didn’t understand. How could you not love this land, this fertile soil that fed them so well? Leave your family and the community you were a part of, where you were related to nearly everyone. She did not know. All she knew that she had lost one more son to this strange country called America…..

Concordia died on March 9, 1922, 72 years old. Before she died she had lost another son, Kurt,  in WWI. The land remained in their family until East Germany’s forced collectivization in 1952. Parts of the family fled to West Germany and now a wall and not only an ocean separated the families.  Meanwhile all the family members had died and their descendants had moved from Delitz and today the name Teichmann is forgotten.

Emil never returned to Delitz, he remained in Roxbury for the rest of his life, working as a gardener and florist at the Sheppard Estate. In 1920 he married Pearl Fredenberg, a daughter of a local farmer of German descent, in 1925 their only child was born. Emil did not speak German with his daughter. He died on March 14, 1967 and was buried in Roxbury, close to his brother Albin.

Albin and Lilli continued to speak German with their children, their son Fritz even studied aviation in Dessau, not far from Delitz and visited the family as often as he could. Also two of Albin’s great-grandchildren studied in Germany. The families always stayed in touch, exchanging letters, visiting and today, communicating through facebook.

Albin died in 1955 and was buried on the Roxbury cemetery, with a view on a mountain named after him, Teichman Mountain, where he spent most of his life.

Most of the emigrants left voluntarily, getting away from poverty, hunger, exploitation and hopelessness, selling the little they had to buy the passage and have a little extra money for the time after their arrival. Some were sent away, the municipalities paying their passage, getting rid of the poor, saving a lot of money they would otherwise have to invest in welfare and the poorhouse. And sometimes parents even sent away their young children. Did they survive on their own?

497 pages, lists, names, numbers….lives.

My wife, Theodora, told you a lot about our life here in the Netzebruch before, when she talked about the day our King Frederick came for dinner.  Theodora died soon after and she was sadly missed by me and our beloved children. I couldn’t stay without a wife for too long, I needed someone to take care of the household and the children. But I also needed a wife to help me in the parish. I married Henriette Liften in 1777 and she has always been a good wife to me.

The day our King Frederick came was a good day. He was happy to see how things had developed and in a good mood. And I can assure you, that that didn’t happen too often. And then, after dinner, when smoking our pipes, I told him what I wanted more than anything in the world and he just nodded his head. I don’t think he understood exactly why this was of such in importance to me and Theodora, as he was such a loner…..

And indeed, he kept his promise. Before he died four years ago in 1786, he saw to it, that things came to be the way he had promised. What I had wished for? I wanted my three sons to become pastors in nearby parishes.

I had sent all three of them to a good Latin School in Stettin. Then they attended the Viadrina, the University of Frankfurt on the Oder to study theology. That was where my second born son, Karl Siegfried, met his wife. She was the daughter of the master baker Berliner in Frankfurt. From 1786 on he was the pastor of the parish in Guscht and I only hear good things about him. My third born son, Gottlob Eusebius, came to be the pastor in the parish of Hohenkarzig which is very close to Netzbruch. And my youngest son Nathanial Benjamin will take over after me.

But even better, my three daughters married and live close by as well. One married the forester Koch in Neu-Belitz, the other one the dairy farmer Sprenger and the third one, Gertrude Friederike, married the miller Schönrock from Lubiath.

My sons and daughters, sons and daughters in law and my wonderful grandchildren come by to visit as often as possible. This is when laughter fills the house. In the evenings we sit by the fireplace and tell stories. I am such a lucky and rich man. And all of this because the King kept his promise…

As a matter of fact, the King and my husband get along quite well, they do talk a lot and it seems to be such a pleasure for the King. You know, my husband is not the “head-in-the-cloud” kind of person, he is very down to earth. And he has such a broad general education, he seems to know everything, not only theology. He knows a lot about agriculture, economy and history as well. That is why they can talk about nearly anything. When they found prehistoric urns nearby, my husband sent one to the King and the King was so delighted that he sent us a tea set in return. That was very nice of him, don’t you think? Of course this is what we will use we will have tea tonight, wonder if he will remember that is was he who sent it to us. However, I guess he likes coffee better, but we cannot afford to buy coffee and I have heard that he doesn’t like normal people like us to have coffee. By the way, we will have roast mutton tonight with carrots and potatoes. The Kings wants us to plant potatoes and eat them, he says it’s good for us. Potatoes? This strange outlandish food….. Personally, I am not so fond of potatoes, but if our King tells us to do it we follow, of course. After all, we are Prussians and used to doing what we are told…..

Where was I? Yes, my husband. He was born in Küstrin in 1721, and studied theology at the University of Halle in 1739. At that time it was a reformed university and it was as modern as a university could get in those days. And did you know, that he even was a teacher at the famous school at the Frankesche Stiftungen in Halle? Yes, he taught at the German and Latin School from April 1740 to Mai 1742. He came to Netzbruch in 1750 and this is where we still live.

We went through a lot here, life hasn’t been easy for any of us. In 1756 the King occupied Silesia and of course the Austrian Empress Maria Theresia was not amused. After all, she was his godmother and always had taken his side when he was in need, especially when his father had his dear friend Katte executed and he was forced to watch. She even sent a letter to his father to help her godchild. But obviously Frederick had forgotten all about that. All of a sudden half of Europe was at war. What followed were 7 years of war, death, hunger and nothing but worries…… In July 1758 the Russians came and occupied this area. They burnt down houses and barns, we were even forced to leave our food to them and so we had to go hungry.  Oh, so many people were killed or died of hunger or typhus. My husband was working day and night, holding funerals and conveying comfort to the mourning. In the town of Driesen both pastors ran off, leaving their parish! My husband never would have thought about doing something like that! And when they finally returned, the people did not want to have them back. They really were angry. And right they were! So my husband was called and he managed to pour oil on troubled water, so they were allowed to come back after all. And there I was, in all that mess, pregnant with my hungry children crawling on the kitchen floor…..

But finally the war came to an end, but the land was devastated and depopulated. That was when Frederik started to move on with his  plans to drain the wetlands of the rivers Netze and Warthe. Many new colonists came from Poland, from Silesia, Mecklenburg, Swabia, Palatine and even from the Netherlands! They got a lot of things done and now we are safe from the flash floods and there is more food on the table. Life has been good to us the last years and we are so happy.

And now the King will be coming tonight! This time it will be something very special. Frederick told my husband that he may make a wish. He has done a lot of thinking and I am so very happy with his choice. So, tonight, he will tell the King what he wants most in life. I just hope the King will make our dream come true. Oh yes, I am very excited to see the King tonight….

- To be continued -

]]> http://www.rootseekers.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=617 0 http://www.rootseekers.com/blog/?p=605 http://www.rootseekers.com/blog/?p=605#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 14:50:39 +0000 Administrator http://www.rootseekers.com/blog/?p=605 Continue reading →]]> These are the five most read stories:
#1 – An Old House
#2 – No Time For Tears
#3 – A Family Bible Comes Home
#4 – The Last Baron
#5 – Two times Three

Which one did you like best?

This is one of these stories. It is the story of  a family bible that came home after more than 70 years, all the way from Estonia, through Sweden and Berlin and then to Lower Saxony.

It has been  nearly 20 years since I visited Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Even though it was the first of May it was cold and rainy. We walked through this magnificent town, fascinated by its beauty and it’s multicultural environment. We had visited the German Dom and the Russian Church and walked the narrow streets, when we came to the old city wall with it’s small shops. We noticed a second-hand book shop  that was stuffed with German books and figured that that might be the right place to warm our frozen fingers. When we entered, something strange happened. I turned to the right, walked straight to a bookshelf with old bibles, took one and thought “I just need to buy it, I have been looking for this book for a very long time.” Now, usually I am not the kind of person that does these kind of things, and I hadn’t really been looking for a bible either. But there was something that told me I’d better go to the desk and buy it. So I did, put it into my bag pack, carried it around for the rest of the day and finally took it back home to Stockholm. There I put it in my bookshelf and simply enjoyed looking at it. After some time I felt like taking a closer look and to my surprise I found a complete family chronicle on the first pages. And in that very moment I knew that this was not my bible and I had to bring it home. But where might “home” be?

I started with reading the chronicle: The bible had been a Christmas present for a young man called Kuno to remember his confirmation in 1886. His mother Cornelie Henriette kept the bible updated. In 1894 young Kuno got engaged and married a young girl from St. Petersburg called Alexandra. In 1896 their (only) daughter was born and named Nathalie Benita. Kuno died in 1927, his daughter Nathalie gave birth to a son in 1929.

At first it didn’t seem to be too hard to find, both Kuno, his mother and his wife Alexandra came from noble Baltic families. But I simply wasn’t able to trace Nathalie, who’s husband had a very common name. Had she lived in Tallinn or somewhere else? If she had stayed there, did she inherit the bible and had to leave it when running for her life in the last days of WWII? Did the family survive? I tried to lay it to rest but somehow I couldn’t really get it off my mind. Every once in a while I looked at it, with a bad conscience, that I still hadn’t carried out my duty.  I searched the internet, sent letters, I even called members of the noble families mentioned in the bible but no one could help.  Meanwhile I had moved to Berlin, still thinking about how to bring the bible back home. After 12 years, I figured I should give it one last try. I sent an email to the Baltische Ritterschaften (Association of the Baltic Noble Corporations), hoping for some kind of information. I had been in touch with them before, but had never received an answer to my letter. After having sent my request, I felt like doing a little research on the internet. I searched Nathalie’s name as I had done so many times before. But this time, I got lucky. Some student had written an essay on Nathalie’s married name in a certain area in Lower Saxony and posted it on the internet. And there she was, Nathalie Benita, her husband, her five children,  her grandson’s name and his place of residence. I had hardly recovered from this information when an email arrived from the Baltischen Ritterschaften, providing me with even more facts. I looked up the family’s phone number and called them right away. A women answered the phone and I told her that I wanted bring the family bible home to her.  It was silent at the other side of the line. Then she said: “Tomorrow we will celebrate our daughter’s confirmation.”

We all know the feeling of hitting a brick wall, having turned every single stone upside down, having looked everywhere and not knowing what the next step might be. But often the answer is very close, it is just that we are not aware of the hidden treasures in the records we have already found. Taking a closer look at baptismal records and investigating the godparents might enable us to overcome our brick walls. The godparents will lead us with their advice and support, just as they might have led our ancestors.

In former days, in Germany, the godparents were of utmost importance. Not only should they guarantee the child’s religious education, but they also should stand in if the parents were not able to provide food, shelter or education. For families at a certain financial level, the godparents also had to take care of legal and financial matters if the parents died. Therefore, the decision of which godparent to choose could be an essential one. Godparents were either close relatives like grandparents, aunt and uncle or cousins, or maybe neighbors, close friends or some influential person who would have been able to take care of things. Some of us might have found an ancestor who had a noble godparent, often the landlord. That was an honor the parents simply could not refuse…. (and did not mean that the landlord was the father of the child!).

Very often, you have a family who were landless farm workers or who had a so-called migrant occupation (“Unsteter Beruf”). Professions like miller, shepherd, hollaender, administrator and glassmakers are good examples. As they constantly changed their place of residence without leaving a trace, it is nearly impossible to keep track of them. If we get lucky, we might find something useful more or less by coincidence. However, if we are willing to adapt our search strategy, we may find that godparents can provide us with a bit of crucial information.

Let me tell you how I found out more about my ancestors, Friedrich and Maria Stange. They were hollaender, moving around a lot, taking care of the dairy business on big manorial farms. They never stayed put for long, and moved long distances when their contracts expired. I did not know where they came from, where they got married, or where three of their five children were born. I only knew where they had lived between 1796 and 1799 and then after 1824. I had spent years searching in almost 100 parishes and was close to giving up. Then, there suddenly was a tiny bit of information that helped me overcome my brick wall …

In 1826, one of Friedrich and Maria’s grandchildren was baptized in a small village in the Kingdom of Hanover. The godfather was Friedrich August Leiffheidt, a forester from Plattenburg in the parish of Gross Leppin in the Kingdom of Prussia. Three years later, the same Friedrich August Leiffheidt married Friedrich and Maria’s daughter Dorothea. Also, this young forester would be a godfather to more of their grandchildren. In fact, nearly all of them had Leiffheidt godparents. And I had absolutely no idea what kind of relationship these two families could have had, but I was struck by the idea, that the Leiffheidt’s and the Stange’s had known each other for quite a long time. Were they related or had they been friends or neighbors? I looked through the church records of Gross Leppin to follow the Leiffheidts back through several generations. Among their children was one born in 1810, who had a godmother I knew: it was Maria Stange, wife of the hollaender Stange, living in a small village close by. So, obviously the Stanges and the Leiffheidts had known each other much longer than I had thought. Probably their children had even grown up together. However, the confirmation records of the small village parishes showed no Stange or Leiffheidt children. Knowing that the Stanges and Leiffheidts belonged to the rural middle class, I reasoned that they might have been confirmed in the church in the next bigger town, instead. Sure enough, the town church book showed all of the Stange and Leiffheidt boys, with their dates of birth and their parents’ place of residence. The next church books I read were the ones cited in the confirmation records. Again, there was an interesting detail: the birth record of the Stange’s first-born son unexpectedly showed the place Maria Stange came from. In the next church book, I got lucky. I had found it, the place the marriage between Friedrich and Maria nee Hoeger had taken place. The record even told me that Friedrich was the son of a hollaender from Mecklenburg, who had just recently moved to Brandenburg. It also showed Maria’s complete family and even her grandparents, the local innkeeper and ferryman.

At last, I had solved the mystery and was able to find the whereabouts of my family from 1804 to 1824. All of that with the help of only one godparent!

So, whenever you come up against a brick wall, do not give up. Study the godparents you find in the baptismal records and try to find out more about them. Tracking the other family may be the key to solving your mystery…

Little Joachim Christoffer Paschen grows up, gets married and has kids of his own. But by then he uses the name Joachim Christopher Daniel (instead of Paschen) BUCHIN. His daughter Caroline gets married in 1825 bearing the name BUCHIN. When her kids are baptized she still is BUCHIN. But then why does her son spell her and her brother Friedrich’s surname BOCHIN? Find me confused…. The passenger list from Hamburg shows BUCHIN, the ship manifest from New York states BOCHIN. When the census-taker comes to their house in Babcocks Grove, Illinois, their name is even spelled BOOKEN. And when Friedrich dies he is back to BUCHIN again.

BOCHIN; BUCHIN; POCHIN; BOUCHIN; BOCHIEN; BOOKEN – obviously one family can go by six different names. Wonder if there are more ways to spell it? POUCHIEN, maybe? Or BOOCHEN? Or…..

On July 26, 1907 in the small village of Benkendorf, Rosa Gerhardt nee Teichmann gives birth to a son. Her husband, the forester Paul Gerhardt, is delighted! The child will be baptized by the name Karl Paul Kurt. And there will be one more child, Frieda Rosa Luise, born two years later. Needless to say, that Kurt will follow in his father’s footsteps and become a forester. Frieda gets married first; she marries another Kurt, Kurt Krause, a young police officer who later will become an officer in the German Army. Kurt Gerhardt waits with getting married until he finishes his education and finds a job as a forester. He is lucky, he soon gets a job as a forest officer in Lenzen. He is a civil servant now, the future lies clear ahead. He weds Erika Emma Henriette Pein from close by Köritz on January 15, 1938. It is a cold and windy day. And there are dark clouds over Europe already. Very soon Erika Gerhardt gives birth to their first child, Martin Paul Wilhelm on October 13, 1938, soon they become parents of a daughter, Erika Elisabeth, born February 2, 1940. But there is a war going on, Kurt is a soldier now, his brother in law Kurt Krause has fallen in the first days of war already. Their third child Meta is born on September 22, 1941 in Wittenberge, in the hospital, not like her siblings at home, in the forester’s house. In June 1944 Kurt comes home for rest and recuperation. He is stationed in Russia, looks exhausted and sad. They take pictures, a happy family. But Kurt has to go back to the front line. It will be his last visit, the last time the children see their father. Only a few weeks later, on July 12, 1944 he dies in the Ukraine. Erika is alone now; she stays were she is, in the forester’s house, outside of Lenzen, all by herself, in the forest. The Russian Army comes closer and in Mai 3, 1945 they have reached Lenzen and Erika and the children.

On Mai 4, 1945 around 9 a.m., Martin, 6 years old, Erika, 5 years old and Meta, 3 years old, were found dead next to the house. They had been shot by their mother. On May 7, 1945 around 3 p.m. their mother was found dead at the same place, she had committed suicide sometime between the evening of May 4 and May 7. What had happened? Of course we do not know for sure. But as for so many other women, she might have been severely traumatized after being raped by a group of Russian soldiers. And she was so alone.

They were all buried next to the house, no gravestone, nothing that could help remember the place they were laid to rest. Was there a pastor? I do not know. Their aunt Frieda did not talk about it, their cousins forgot their names. Only the pictures, taken in June 1944, still exist. Pictures of a happy family.

This is for you, Martin, Erika and Meta. You are not forgotten.

Read here what Gerald Perschbacher of the German Special Interest Group of the St. Louis Genealogical Society ( www.stlgs.org ) and the German American Heritage Society, St. Louis, Mo. (www.gahs-stlouis.org ) writes about this in his newsletter: Read >

The only thing I knew about my great-great-grandmother’s brother was what was told in the family; that he had been a gambler, was forced to leave the Prussian Army, and had left for America where he became an editor of a well-regarded German newspaper. I wondered if this story really was true. Gambler, well-regarded newspaper, all that seemed to be a bit exaggerated. It probably only was one of those stories…… For years and years I had been trying to verify this story. Then, finally, there he was, listed in the database of the German Genealogy Group. The Baron Franz von der Burg had died on December 21, 1904 in Brooklyn, New York.

It hadn’t been easy to find him. I had checked the ship manifest for “Franz von der Burg” but hadn’t found anything. I had looked through the 1880 census, some directories and other databases without any result. Finally, I realized that it might have been my German way of spelling his name that made him invisible to me. With the help of an American friend, I tried to think of other ways of spelling – and got lucky! Who would have thought, that Mr. Donderburg, whom I found indexed in familysearch, could be my Mr. von der Burg? Or that the farmer Franz Vanderburg, who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1881, was my former officer Franz von der Burg (although he was spelled Franz v.d. Burg in the original manifest)? The indexer of the German Genealogy Group had used the Vonderburg and VonDerburg version. And surprisingly enough I found him and later his widow in the Brooklyn directory, listed under “V” instead of “B” as in German directories. But even then I found one more way to spell his name: Van der Berg. But obviously the difficulties with spelling his name did not keep him from building up a new career in New York.

Who was the Baron? Born in the town of Naugard, Pomerania on June 26, 1846 to the Baron Albert Friedrich Eduard von der Burg and his wife Marie Louise nee Zierold, he was named Albert (after his father) Franz (after his maternal grandfather) and Georges (after his godfather, Captain Friedrich George von Kleist). He was their second child, his sister Marie-Louise Friederike was two years older. At that time Albert v.d. Burg was a captain at the Garrison in Naugard. He had joined the Army in 1819 in the age of 18 following his ancestor’s footsteps. Albert’s father, the Baron August Friedrich v.d. Burg, had come to Prussia from the Ducy of Saxe-Weimar in 1784, probably to advance in his military career. He was married to Johanna Charlotte Wilhelmine von Mansbach, a descendent of a very old noble family, whose ancestors were buried in their own church in the village of Mansbach in Hessia. As interesting as his paternal side might seem to be, it is very little compared to his mother’s ancestry. Marie-Louise Zierold, daughter of a local judge, came from an old line of pastors, starting with Adamus Ricardus, who first was a teacher and then became one of the early Lutheran pastors in 1553. And there was Guenther Heyler, a court chaplain and later the General Superintendent of Pomerania, a well-known Pietist, who died in 1707 and was said to have been one of the best preachers of his time. His son in law, Johann Wilhelm Zierold from Saxony, had been a well-known scolar, pastor and fundraiser in Stargard in Pomerania. Or there was Günther Heyler’s father in law, Johann Anselm Muench, the mint-master of Frankfurt on the Main and responsible for the coinage of many German coins before 1658. The little Baron Franz and the little baroness Marie were raised with these stories, well aware of their heritage. The family may have had a name and an ancestry to be proud of; what they did not have was a manorial farm, political influence or a lot of money. But there was enough to make a living and provide the children with a proper education. For Franz the future lay clear ahead: he was to join the same regiment his father had served in and after standing in the rank of a captain he would marry a girl from a good family with a certain dowry.

Franz must have attended a good school, maybe the “Höhere Knabenschule” in Naugard or even the ”Collegium Groeningianum” in Stargard, where his ancestor Johann Wilhelm Zierold once had been a professor. Or maybe he went to a cadet school? The fact, that he wasn’t confirmed in St. Marien in Naugard, speaks for a school outside of his hometown. Whatever school it was, he certainly learned Latin, French and English, mathematics, music, drawing and much more. But what was of utmost important were the so called Prussian Virtues as the sense of duty, subordination and obedience, toughness and bravery without sniveling, not to forget industriousness, punctuality and, very important, godliness.

We do not know exactly when and where Franz started his military career nor will we know exactly why he left the army. Nearly all the personal files stored in the Heeresarchiv in Potsdam were destroyed under a bomb attack in April 1945. However, what we do know is that on July 12, 1866 Franz v.d. Burg officially joined the Colbergischen Grenadier-Regiment Graf Gneisenau (2. Pommersches) No. 9 in the rank of a Sekondeleutnant, the lowest officer-rank; he was 20 years of age. Shortly before, the battle of Königsgrätz on July 3^rd 1866 between Prussia and Austria/Saxony had taken place. He probably participated in this battle, but maybe as a sergeant (and therefore not part of this list) or in a different regiment. And this probably was his last battle, except for the one against his father. When he was dismissed with legal reservation on March 9, 1869 he left his family. His obituary does not mention the fact that he had an army career. Did he never mention it or wasn’t it important enough to write about? The obit, however, gives information on his occupation; he had worked on different manorial farms in Pomerania and then moved to Bunzlau, Silesia, where things did not work out for him.

Was he disowned by his family? We can only guess. What we know is that he didn’t become the godfather of any of his sister’s children (and there were many).

On June 9, 1881 the Baron took the he boat Katie from Stettin to New York and arrived in Castlegarden on July 1, 1881, 35 years old. He traveled first class, his profession was stated as farmer. A farmer who traveled first class? Unfortunately, there aren’t any ship records from the harbor of Stettin for this very ship that might have told us more.

So what became of him in New York? Living in Berlin and trying to do research across the Atlantic Ocean, I only had the internet and a kind researcher from RAOGK to help me answer that question.

It seemed to me as if the young Baron settled in very fast; he must have found a job and met a girl. On December 4, 1882 he wedded Johanna Emma Müller from Thuringia, who had come to New York in 1880 with her father and brother. The marriage certificate of Manhattan states, that the groom was a bookkeeper and an editor, residing at 134 Wyckoff St. in Brooklyn. The bride, born in Koenigsberg, Prussia, lived at 91 South 2^nd St. Brooklyn. It was the first and only marriage for both of them.

Next thing I learned was that in June 1886 on the meeting of the Association of American-German Journalists he was elected secretary. In 1889, the directory listed him as an editor, living at 42, Division Ave. in Brooklyn. I wondered which newspaper he might have worked for. Was it the Herold, the Brooklyn Freie Presse, the Brooklyner Anzeiger , the Brooklyner Zeitung, or some other German-Speaking newspaper? I had checked the Brooklyn Daily Eagle without finding anything he had written; his obituary only states “was connected with German newspapers”.

On March 28, 1892, 11 years after his arrival, he was naturalized and from then on an American citizen, an American Baron, so to say….. On May 20, the same year, the National Association of German-American Journalists met again with Franz v.d. Burg being one of the participants. In 1897, according to the Brooklyn directory, he still was an editor, now residing in 105 Pulaski St. The census of 1900, however, showed him as a Clerk at the Barge office, not mentioning his former (?) occupation as an editor. What had happened? He was engaged in the newspaper business, still being the vice president of the German Presseclub in 1901. But his main profession seemed to be clerk and that was what he remained to do until his early death. On January 21, 1904 the Baron Franz von der Burg died of Cardiac Syncope, acute cystitis and acute nephrititis, only 57 years old. The next day, his obituary was published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, giving the readers an impression of what had happened: “Three weeks ago, when at the funeral of another journalist and Schlaraffia member, Rittmeister von Ladendorf, Mr. von der Burg, on behalf of the friends, said a last farewell at the Fresh Pond Crematory, the deceased contracted a heavy cold, and finally erysipelas set in, and the best care of the wife failed to avert death.” He was buried in Fresh Pond Cemetery three days later. His wife died on February 21, 1920. Were there any children? The 1900-census shows one child, but when Emma dies her sister Louise Müller inherits the little money that is left. I did not find a trace of a little American Baron or a little American Baroness.

Was the family story right after all? What did he do in Bunzlau and why did things did not work out for him? I do not know anything about gambling, but what I know is that he seemed to have been a well-respected citizen of his new American homeland. This is what the Brooklyn Eagle Daily wrote on January 26, 1904: “The funeral of Franz von der Burg, who died on Thursday last, was held from the late residence, 102 Pulaski street, Sunday afternoon. The services at the house were attended by many friends of the deceased from the German Press Club of New York, the Schlaraffia Brooklynia, Dora Kupfer Lodge no. 86, Knights and Ladies of the Golden Star, and of the Immigration office at Ellis Island. Chopin’s Funeral March, played by Alexander Riehm, opened the services, whereupon a high tribute was paid to the deceased by the Rev. Dr. Heischmann of the St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church and Dr. Joseph H. Senner of the Immigration office. Floral wreaths were sent by the above named organizations and the New Yorkia and Caesarea Schlaraffia. The remains were conveyed to the Fresh Pond crematory, where a last farewell was said on behalf of the Brooklynia Schlaraffia by Clemens Haenewinckell, one of the three presiding officers.”

And what did August W. Bostracy, Inspector of Immigration on Ellis Island, write about him in 1901? “Clerk, Mr. von der Burg, in the Bureau of Statistics, whom I consider to be a gentleman”. The old Baron would have been proud of him.

You can listen to the song here:
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And now, finally, here it is: the ultimate version of the “Letter from America“. Words from Albert Stange in 1854, read by the artist known as the rootseeker….

Listen… >

But see for yourself…..

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joseph-Schmerbach/278500262172128?sk=info

Marie became a housewife and had 4 children, Emma (b. 1866), Helene (b. 1868), Hugo (b. 1869) and Eduard (b. 1871). Her husband worked as an expressman and driver.  But life wasn’t too good to Marie. In 1894 her son Eduard died of tuberculosis, only 22 years of age, 1897 it was Hugo who died of the same disease, only 28 years old. In 1905 Heinrich died and only six years later her daughter Emma passed away of Graves Disease. Marie lived alone with her daughter Helene, who worked in a candy factory. In 1911 she died of Myocarditis in the age of 73, having outlived her brother Carl by fourteen years.

Carl’s granddaughter tried to find out more about Marie but did not succeed. Due to the internet and some help from a Chicago genealogist (Thank you!), his great-great-granddaughter managed to trace Marie and finally found and visited her grave at the Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago. Carl would have liked that!

My dear beloved brother,

I do not have to tell you how happy your last letter made me, because you know what great pleasure it gave me to hear from my beloved brothers. I therefore hurry to fulfill the request you had in that letter. Now it has been more than 3 years that we have been in America and it should have been more than right to give you more details about how I behaved in this country, earlier, but I know you will forgive me and I will try to tell you as detailed as possible. On August 27, I turned nineteen years old and since you have seen me for the last time I have grown much taller, I think if you would see me again which we all hope you will, you will not recognize me anymore. I am not at home, I am with Americans where it is very good for me, there I only have very easy work that is cooking, baking, ironing and mopping, they are good people, in February it will be a year that I have stayed there, I get one Thaler a week and in summer 1 ¼ Thaler because I have to work harder, they have 12 cows and in the Summer I have a lot to do with milking and preparing butter. I learned the English language very fast, it is very easy to learn. Now my English is nearly as good as my German. Also I have a lot of leisure time from my mastery and may go out every Sunday and visit Mom. Before I came to these people I had good work as well with Irish people, they speak English also, I had more work but received a bit more payment as well, first 1 Thaler then 1 ¼ Thaler. They were very good people especially the woman, that inspired me to all good and they seemed to like me a lot. I was with them 5 months only, they gave up their home and went to a town called Gallesburg, they would have liked to take me with them and I wouldn’t have said no if Father wouldn’t have been so ill and I couldn’t have come home as often and as easily as I can now. She gave me a rich present before she left, namely a pretty hat, a black silk mantilla, a golden brooch and other small things. I only have one friend, her name is Doris Bormann and she has no parents, her sister lives not far from us. But she isn’t with her sister but with other people and I meet her nearly every Sunday.

If you write to Justus please say hello from me many thousand times and remind him to write to me what he up to, as it is very painful for us, to hear from him so rarely, I would have thought that our father’s death might have softened his mind and would have brought him to write, which would have been a great relief for us.

I do not know what more to write but do want to tell you how Mother and Uncle live here. Albert built them a small house on some German’s land, ½ acres on which there is a house and just enough for a small garden as big as they need it. One acre is more than a German Morgen, they give 1 ½ Thaler a year for it. They leased two acres for themselves from an American and give 8 Thaler at whole and the man ploughs for them and they plant potatoes, food maize, and pumpkins. Food maize is like Turkish wheat. You must not think that they have to work like slaves, oh no, they work just as they please and with much pleasure. Here work is no disgrace. All rich Americans take up some work, whatever it might be and still are descent people.

Mother has two very pretty cows and a calf and two pigs, she makes so much butter from the cows that she can get what she needs out of it, there is a free feedlot close to our house, which is very comfortable for her and the hay she needs during the winter is very cheap.

Mother and Uncle and all of us feel very good here and do not long for Germany, if it wasn’t for you and Justus.

There we could not live as happy as we can here. Our only wish is and that is that we meet again, but that we want to keep to the one that is above us who will take care of it in the best manner. For this time I have to close. Mother and Uncle say hello and wish you happy New Year and hope that you can start it in good health and even end it that way.

Take care and write soon,

Your

Loving and sincere sister,

Marie

This week we butcher our pigs and make sausage and then my mastery will come and pick me up again, you have to excuse the many mistakes I made, but I haven’t been writing for a long time and this time quite hasty.

I first heard about you from Albert’s letter that he wrote to his parents back in October 1854, shortly after you both had come to America. At first, it seemed to me as if you were Albert’s brother. You two seemed to be so close. This is what Albert wrote about you: “He [Gustav] could not find a job in New York. So one day he went to the “Deutsche Gesellschaft”, where there was a farmer in order to get a farm-worker, which he will have written about more detailed in his letter. But how could you have thought that we had a quarrel; both of us are happy that we are together again, and we hope it will stay this way throughout the winter.”

You had come to America on the ship Donau, leaving from Hamburg on April 1, 1854, arriving in Castle Garden in New York on May 17, 1854. Then, obviously, you wanted to stay in New York and Albert left for Connecticut. But you seemed to stay in touch, exchanging letters on your whereabouts. And then, after three months, Albert decided to follow your path and come to New Paltz. I love the story of how you found each other there…. “I did not think about it for too long; the next morning I took the train to go back to New York and on to New Palz, where Gustav worked for a farmer and from whom I had received a letter. I arrived there on Sunday August 27, just on Marie’s and Ernestine’s birthday. But now I didn’t know where his Baass lived, as he had not told me his name; therefore I went to an inn first to have some breakfast because I was hungry, because on the steam boats that travel the rivers it is very expensive and it takes one night to get from New York to New Palz. As I sat there in the hotel, I thought about how I could find him. As I sit there, thinking and looking out of the window he happens to walk by. The first question I asked him was after a place to work and I was happy to hear that there were plenty of places; I found a place that same day, a good place where I will stay all winter. Gustav was just on his way to another farmer where he wanted to hire out, as his time with his master was running out in 8 days. Currently he works 12 English miles from where I am and has a better place than before. He came for a visit on Sunday, September 24, we had lunch together at my Baass, I will go to him in 14 days and take a look at his farm.”.

I searched for you and Albert in the passenger lists from Hamburg and there it said that both of you were 19 years old. So, were you twins? Or might you have been cousins? I then checked the church records for Albert and found him, but not you. So, the twin theory went up in smoke. If you were that close, might you have grown up together? Who were your parents? I figured that if Albert and you had grown up together, I only needed to find out more about Albert’s family to be able to find the information I needed. I would then find your birth record and everything would be clear. But that was easier said than done….

Through the years I found out more and more about Albert’s family and his uncle Carl, whom I supposed to be your father. They lived close by, and could have had a son of your age. It was just that I did not find a trace of YOU. If it hadn’t been for the passenger lists and Albert’s letter, I would have assumed that you were some kind of hoax. By the way, did you know that Albert’s uncle Carl died of pneumonia only three weeks after Albert’s family left for America in 1855? I wonder if you ever got to know about that. When Carl died, the church records stated that he left behind one adult child, meaning older than 21, and two minor children. The older one was Ernestine, one of the minor children was Minna. And the other one just had to be you, I was sure of that! But I simply couldn’t prove it. Then one day, I checked the confirmation records of Perleberg. Albert went to school there and I figured that you could have done the same. And there you were, Gustav August Stange, confirmed on April 1, 1849, 14 years and 11 months old. And your father was the holländer in Kuhwinkel, Carl Stange. I had found you, at last! Still, my search goes on, I want to find your place of birth. And I bet that you were not born in the Prignitz district, I have searched every parish there for you…..I know your father was born in the Altmark district, just across the river Elbe, and he also had lived in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg when he was young. Your cousin Justus was even born in the Kingdom of Hanover. So there is a lot of work to be done…

Also, I do not have the slightest clue what happened to you in America. You were a farm worker in New Paltz, that is all I know. I do not have a single trace of you. Did you move to New York City as you first intended to? Did you go west like Albert did? Or did you stay put in Ulster County? Or went to Canada? Or even back home to Germany? Or did you simply change your name so that I will be unable to find you?

Dear Gustav, I am determined to find out more. Couldn’t you just give me a sign, even a tiny little one would do…..

Your cousin,

Ursula

On October 28, 1829 the wedding bell rings in the church of Stavenow. The day after, Dorothea moves into the forester’s house in Plattenburg, away from her parents and her siblings who had lived close by. But things do not go too well for her. On January 17, 1830 the midwife is called, but she has gone into labor too early. The little girl is stillborn. It takes some time for her to recover, but in the fall she knows that she is pregnant again. Little Sophie is born on May 20, 1831, she is small and fragile but she is alive. She is baptized only 4 days later, just to be sure. Dorothea is happy with her little baby girl and when one year later she gets to know that she is expecting again, she is delighted. And she will get another sweet little girl in December 1832, baptized with the name Auguste. However, the idyll does not too last long. Sophie dies of apoplexy only three months after Auguste’s birth, only 1 year, 9 months and 24 days old. To make things worse, the second daughter Auguste dies only one year later of consumption, not living longer than 15 months. Dorothea has carried and given birth to three children, yet she is childless. It leaves her devastated. A few months later, she is once again pregnant and in March 1835, her first son is born and is christened with the name August. In June 1836, son Carl is born. But she only can enjoy her two sons for one year, as Carl dies in 1837 after heavy convulsions leaving her with only one child. At least now she has her brother and his wife living close by, to support and comfort her in her loss. Her sister in law has given birth to five boys and except for one all of them are alive and healthy. Why does she have to carry such a heavy burden? Again, she becomes pregnant and brings her last child, little Dorothea, into the world on June 11, 1838. But this time it is she that does not survive. She bleeds to death. She only lives to be 38 years old, leaving behind a newborn and the three-year old August. She is buried next to her children at the church of Groß Leppin. These are not the last graves to be dug. Not long afterwards, her two last children follow her in death, August nine months later and finally Dorothea in 1840. None of the children gets to be older than 5 years. Her husband remarries soon and his wife Henriette gives birth to four more children, only two of them surviving. After having buried eight of his ten children, Friedrich August Leiffheidt leaves Plattenburg. The cemetery no longer exists. It is gardening land today.

This blog is a collection of short stories of those who left and of those who stayed behind.  They are stories about birth and death, of fortune and misfortune, success and failure, of tears of joy and tears of sorrow. They are stories about falling down and getting up again. They are simply real-life stories.