Beginning the Search for the Elling Immigrant

It was a good genealogy conference, but I'm always glad to be home. However, I am charged up to continue this blog and to keep searching for more information on our family. It really is a life-long hobby!

One thing a good genealogist learns early on is that just because someone says it or writes it down doesn't necessarily make it truth. Searching for family history is very much a detective's work...looking for truth and documentation for everything. 

Aunt Alma was given a paper found in a Bible of the Mueller family, I believe, which she passed on to me. The paper told the story of Dorothea Elling, gg grandfather Fritz's sister...so a gg aunt...and her parents. Here is one paragraph that I used to start to find who those immigrant ancestors really were:

"Dorothea was born in Stellichte, Kirchspiel Walsrode Kries Fallingbostel, Province of Hanover, Germany.  Another place it says she was born in Tiedel, Hannover, Germany.  She came to America with her parents in 1859.  Dorothea's mother was Reka Fuhrhop.  Her father was Frederich (or Friedrick) Von Elling.  He was Herr Von Tiedel (his title), sole owner of Tiedel, a village near Stealing, Germany.  He was also a burgermaster.  He let his secretary conduct all of his business and she cheated him out of everything and then he came to America with his family.  Fred Elling was born in 1813, came to America in 1859 and is buried in the Lutheran Church, Freedom Township."

Tietlingen and Stellichte are about ten miles apart, according to MapQuest

 Very few of the items in the above paragraph proved to be true.
 The villages of Stellichte and Tietlingen were part of kirchspiel (parish) Dueshorn. 
From this parish, my German researcher found records of the Elling family.

The father of Dorothea and my ggg grandfather was actually named Johann Friedrich and his wife was Anne Marie Engel Fuhrhop...we found the marriage record as well as birth records of the children to prove this.

The German naming system of the time for this area was that the first name was the "saint's name" and the second name was what the child was actually called, so Johann Friedrich, born 1817, was called Friedrich (or Fred in America) and his wife was Marie. Reka may have been a nickname; I don't know.

I now have baptismal records back to about the late 1600's as our Elling family was in Tietlingen for about one hundred years and never does the name Von Elling appear. Preceding a name with Von was a common "legend" perpetuated by families who came to America and perhaps wanted to give some status to their surname. Our Elling family immigrated as farmers and were so in Germany, as well.

I've written to Tietlingen to a man who has a good knowledge of the history of the village which consists of about thirty homes today. He knew of the Elling family, but was not aware of a title Herr Von Tiedel as owner of the village or of an Elling as mayor/ burgermeister. Probably there would not be a woman "secretary" in the mid-1800's in Germany, as well. So I feel that all of that part of the story is fiction because none of it can be confirmed. Later this paper states that Dorothea's grandfather came from a titled family where he was secretary to the King of Hanover and lived in a castle with a moat. My researcher knows of no local castles and again the legend of acting as a servant to the king is a common one and is probably fiction, too.

Later I will post some photos of Tietlingen, an area which looks much like the surroundings of Northwest Ohio, so I'm sure our ancestors felt right at home.

Many, many Germans from Henry County came from the Visselhovede area of Germany and our family was no exception. Quite a few settled in the New Hanover settlement of Freedom Township where their native language and customs from Germany could be continued in their new lives. More on that later!

For fun, you can view the areas of Stellichte and Tietlingen from the satellite view by following this link:

http://www.maplandia.com/germany/niedersachsen/luneburg/soltau-fallingbostel/tietlingen/