Our German Origins in Stedebergen

Please welcome our guest blogger, Lydia.

Lydia found me via the internet and soon we 
discovered that we are very compatible research
partners.  She is very knowledgeable about the 
German line of Spoerings and Germany, in general, and I had been researching
my immigrant Spoering great-grandfather, Heinrich, who came to America.
So by combining our resources, I think we have
a very good "picture" of our line of Spoerings.
(Actually, she has two lines - a Spoering married
a Spoering!) 

Lydia will discuss the Spoering beginnings in Germany as far back as records and known history allow.

Lydia -

 "Thanks to incredible research by Dianne and other Spoering descendants, we know a great deal about "the life and times in America" of Hermann Heinrich "Henry" Spoering (1845 - 1917) and his family following their arrival in Ohio in 1882 - which can seem like ancient history to most of us in our comparatively young nation.  But Henry's roots in Germany actually reach back for literally centuries to a tiny village called Stedebergen (pop. 278), incorporated within the modern township of Doerverden in the district (Kreis) of Verden in the Federal State of Lower Saxony.

Archaeological evidence has revealed that the area around Stedebergen had been settled for several millennia B.C. by Celts and, later, by various Germanic tribes, including the Saxons.  Larger villages in the immediate area began appearing by name in medieval documents by around the 1100s A.D., though the first mention of Stedebergen seems to date from 1320.  

Stedebergen is just south of Verden about four miles.

The precise origin and meaning of the village name remains unknown, unfortunately, but it seems to always have been an extremely small village made up of 10-20 clustered farmsteads, each consisting of a farm house, barns, and outbuildings, with each farm's fields lying at varying distances from the village. 

The landscape around Stedebergen and of much of Lower Saxony is low-lying and flat, with considerable marshy areas that required draining before being arable, and the soil is generally sandy.  The region has long been primarily agricultural until fairly recently, with little industrialization, and the main crops were wheat, rye, oats, potatoes, and sugar beets.  Dairy farming was widespread, as well as the raising of pigs and sheep; beekeeping was also common.  Horse breeding was also extensively practiced, but that is a story for another blog!

Photo of Farm Nr. 1, Stedebergen.  The farms all look similar; No. 5 farm photo was not available.  The Spoerings were directly connected to Farm 5, but also to Farm 1 through Anna Sophia Ilsa Burdoff, an inheritor of that farm.

 

First, a brief word about the northern German farmer's "mindset" regarding his farm.  The farm represented a family's entire means of existence; thus, the acquisition, preservation, and bequeathing of a family farm INTACT and WITHIN the immediate family was always the primary goal of every generation of northern German farmers, including the Spoerings, as we will see. 

 Farm inheritance was governed by the rule of primogeniture, i.e. inheritance by the eldest son when possible, and marriages were arranged with an eye toward preservation and even expansion of the family farm holdings.  It seems highly likely that love played little to no role in the choice of marriage partners, since rule number one was to preserve the family farm.  Finally, a farmer's daughters and younger sons would often receive a  cash settlement or a small plot of land as recompense for the eldest son's inheritance of the entire farm, and they could actually receive these settlements before the father died.  This settlement sometimes may have financed the emigration of younger siblings, but this is also an issue for another blog!

 And now back to the story of the Spoering family in Stedebergen.  A researcher named Otto Voight documented  the ownership succession of each of Stedebergens c. 20 farms over centuries.  According to Voight,in 1980, the first documented evidence of Spoerings in Stedebergen's farms appeared in a document loosely translated as "Livestock Valuation Register of the Verden Government Office" dated 1600.

In this document appeared one Johann Sporingk, who owns 10 horses, 20 cows, 15 pigs, 24 sheep, and 89 beehives worth 9 Talers 6 Shillings (making him the biggest farmer in town, incidentally), and one Herman Sporing, who owns 5 horses, 12 cows and 8 pigs worth 3 Talers 5 Shillings.  It's a relatively safe bet that one of these men was an ancestor of Dianne's and mine, but no genealogical records have turned up that would prove this supposition. Voight also traced the owners of Farm Nr 5 - the farm which the common ancestor Dianne and I share owned at one point and remained in the Spoering hands for another 100 years after our lines diverged.

So the inheritors were:
Diedrich Spoering (1613-1681)
Johann Spoering (1656-1701)
Johann Spoering (1687 - 1752)
Hinrich Johann Spoering (1731-1791)
Johann Hinrich Spoering (1759 - 1811)

Yes, they were following rule number one very well and keeping Farm Nr. 5 in the family.  It is this Johann Hinrich Spoering who is my 4th great-grandfather and Dianne's 3rd great-grandfather and after whom the lines split between the Spoerings who remained in Germany and the line which ultimately came to Ohio.

Johann Hinrich and his wife, Lucie Burdoff (1821-?) had 8 children on Farm Nr. 5.  The eldest also named Johann Hinrich (1786-1834), inherited Farm Nr. 5, and all of his descendants remained in Stedebergen or the surrounding area.  Their youngest child was Jacob Friedrich (1810-1860), and because he did not inherit the farm, married Catharina Margaretha Norden (1821 - ?) of Hollehrden (now Lehrden), possibly taking over a farm she had inherited there.  Their eldest son, Johann Friedrich Spoering (1842-1920) predictably inherited this farm in Hollehrden, and his younger brother, Hermann Heinrich (Henry) Spoering, Dianne's 2nd great-grandfather, makes the decision to emigrate to Ohio in 1882 with his family.  We can only speculate why, though the opportunity to acquire a farm of his own in America might have been a compelling factor.

 And so the centuries-long story of the Spoerings from Stedebergen, both the ones who stayed and the one who left, comes to an end.  But there is still much to investigate and uncover, so the quest is likely to go on for quite awhile.  In the meantime, I hope you found this extremely brief glimpse into the life and times of Stedebergen of some interest or value."
Lydia

Stedebergen