The Tietje Family - Perspective 1

I was so excited this week to receive an email from Kerstin in Germany who, it seems, is an ancestor of the Wilhelm (Dutch Bill) Tietje family.  If you have forgotten Dutch Bill, check back to this story about Katharina (Kate) Spoering.  Great Aunt Kate's first husband was Wilhelm Tietje. 

Katharina Spoering and Wilhelm Tietje wedding photo

Kerstin has been researching the Tietje family who remained behind in Germany, and she was thrilled to come across the photo of Wilhelm on this blog.  She is a descendant of one of his brothers (Heinrich) who decided to remain behind in Germany, while a good portion of his family emigrated to the United States.  She is hoping to find out more about her "missing" family in America.
Kerstin has translated some of her research to English for me and although she apologizes for her English, it is really quite good!  I have changed just a few words for clarity.

Kerstin writes:

"The Visit to the Exhibition "Ballintown"* in Hamburg, 2001 -
It happened in the summer of 2007.  My husband, my two sons and I visited my husband's parents in Hamburg and my mother-in-law suggested to go to a very new and interesting exhibition in Hamburg called "Ballintown."  Ballintown is a historical reconstruction of a part of the halls where the immigrants to America spent their time before leaving by ship to the "New World." 

Since 1850, Hamburg had been one of the biggest European "sea habours" for immigrants.  At that exhibition, we could see original sleeping rooms, dining rooms, and see old films and hear many stories about the different people, what they dreamt about and what had been the reasons why they left everything they had.  A man, Albert Ballin, was the one who planned the great halls and it was lucky for the people because there were big rooms, enough for everyone, and hygenic circumstances.  The trains arrived directly next to the halls.  People were provided with food and later were brought to their ships.

Trunks outside of the Ballinstadt museum

In one of the halls, we found a room with computers and the visitors to the exhibition had the chance to look for ancestors on the internet.  I only knew from my mother that a big part of her family had immigrated to the U.S.A./ Ohio many years before she was born (1933) and that she got some very big Care packets from her grandmother's immigrated cousin from Ohio during the second World War.

So I sat down and typed the words "Tietje immigrated to Ohio" and I made a find and discovered the immigrated family of my great-great grandfather, Heinrich Tietje (born 1862), who himself did not immigrate, but instead stayed at Bendingbostel, a very small village near Verden/ Hannover and worked as a stationmaster.  Some descendants of the Tietje family or other genealogists had published family trees with Heinrich's parents, my great-great-great grandparents, Herman Hinrich Johann Tietje and Catharina Maria Schwiebert.

These great-great-great grandparents had immigrated in 1884 to Ohio with eight of their children.  Two older sons, Dietrich and Heinrich (my gg grandfather) were already married and did not want to go with them.  It was very interesting for me to consider that nearly the whole family Tietje left Germany, and if Heinrich would have also decided to go, my great-grandfather would not have met my great-grandmother and so we - my grandmother, mother, and I - would not exist.

This aroused a great deal of interest and at home again, I carried on with looking for family trees, looking for the parts of the family in Ohio and on the other hand, for ancestors in Verdenermoor in Germany where they all came from for nine generations, as I discovered later."

Tune in for more of Kerstin's story on the next post.

This post first appeared on my previous blog on September 11, 2011.