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.

The Tietje Family - The Story Continues

Kerstin continued her story of the Tietje family:

"I can tell by the line of my great-great grandfather Heinrich from Bendingbostel that nobody else decided to leave Germany.  His brother, Dietrich (born 1860), who also worked as a stationmaster, lived in Visselhoevede, had five children - four daughters and a son, Wilhelm Heinrich, born 1883.  That son, Wilhelm (later also known as "Dutch Bill") followed the others to Ohio and married Katharina Spoering in 1911.  It is possible that he emigrated to avoid the draft.  Maybe he was allured by the stories of the new life of his aunts, uncles and grandparents in Ohio. I can only guess.

August 1929 - L to R: Heinrich Tietje and wife Mary, his brother Herman and wife from Ohio, then Heinrich's family - Emma and her husband, Hinrich Hoops and their children, Hertha, Arthur and Hilda and then Heinrich's sons and their wives - Heinrich, Gustav and Karl

I read in Kate's story that Wilhelm was said to be very strict to his adopted son, and he and his wife, Kate, had been very religious.  I don't wonder about it because I heard from my mother and grandmother that Bill's father's brother (my great-great grandfather Heinrich) had been very strict to his children in the same way.  So my aunt Hertha told, when they visited Heinrich in Bendingbostel, they had first to pray: "Komm Herr Jesus, sei unser Gast und segne was du uns bescheret hast" or "Jesus, sei Dank fur* Speis und Trank."  The translation is "Jesus, thank you for food and drink."  And after praying and before they started with eating, he shouted, "Hands under the table," and they had to eat with one hand, which was so difficult.

Every Sunday he and his wife went to church.  Sometimes they went by coach to the church of Visselhoevede and met the family of Dietrich Tietje, Bill's father.  And if a child had done something stupid, he did not show mercy and they were locked into the dark and cold cellar, sometimes for hours.  I think that Bill's father could have been strict to his children in the same way.

Wilhelm's sisters were younger and their names were Elfriede, Else, Emma and Marie.  Elfriede became a nurse, married a man name Minister, and lived in Ottersburg.  Else married a man named Todter* and lived in Blankenese.  Emma married a Brunkhorse who worked on the railroad in Rotenburg.  She had no children.  Wilhelm's sister, Marie, married Paul Freitag, a baker in Rotenburg.  They had two sons - Paul, who also became a baker, and Hans, who died at the age of 42 at a horse race.

I made some investigations about my immigrated great-great-great grandfather, Hermann Hinrich Johann Tietje whom I already mentioned above.  He was born on March 7, 1835 in Verdenermoor.  This is his real name at birth and there are original documents in the churches of Kirchlinteln and Wittlohe where he had belonged.  In America they called him Johann Heinrich Tietje and his wife, Maria Schwiebert and they are the same persons.  Sometimes his name is written with the additional name of Kohler*,because this is the name of his father, Johann Hinrich Kohler.  It is presumed that this man is his father, who lived together with his mother, Margarethe Tietje.  Maybe they got married; there are different sources.  He had no sisters or brothers, but a lot of cousins."

* needs an umlat and I couldn't get blogger to do that!

This story first appeared on another of my blogs in September, 2011.

Learning About Her Ancestor, Herman Hinrich Tietje

Kerstin continues the story of her research:

"In the beginning, I absolutely didn't know who of the family had immigrated because no one of today's living family members in Germany could tell about it.  There was just one very small piece of information as my mother remembered that her grandmother, Emma Hoops (born Tietje, daughter of Heinrich Tietje of Bendingbostel), told that her grandparents immigrated a very long time ago.  My mother, who grew up with her grandparents, Emma and Hinrich Hoops in Hamburg-Wilhelmsburg, received very big Care packages from a cousin in Ohio after the Second World War when she was a child.  They sent wonderful things like pens, cloth, silk stockings, chocolate, coats and other things. 
I am happy to tell that there is a big photo book which was made by my great uncle, Arthur Hoops, for his mother's 80th birthday.  I found very old photos of her family, her parents in Bendingbostel, her youth and her children.  There are also photos from a visit of the immigrated brother, Herman Tietje and his wife in 1929.

But there was no direct information about the other immigrated part of the family because it happened in a time too long ago.  I only knew that there must have been a great number of persons, maybe brothers and sisters or other relatives of my great-great grandfather, Heinrich, who immigrated.

Why did the family immigrate?
In the beginning of the 19th century, there was overpopulation in Germany.  After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, restrictions for immigration were abolished, and so there was suddenly an interest because people were free to leave. 

The development of steam navigation shortened the journey from more than a month down to 13- 19 days.  In 1870, a passage to America in steerage cost 120 mark/ 1000 Euro today ($1362.00 U.S.), but with time the passage became available at more favorable prices.  There were many advertising campaigns, often organized by shipping companies who traveled in the country to recruit passengers. 
Also sometimes men wanted to avoid the draft, or they had family who had already immigrated and they wanted to follow them.  People wanted free or cheap land, free living, national security, economical independence, and a more advance level of industrialization

In view of our family Tietje, I think that they followed their son Herman and other relatives who had already gone to Ohio.  They trusted in the experiences their relatives had in the New World and hoped for a better life.  They had so many children and the living conditions, especially in the area of Verdenermoor must have been very bad, so their children could hope for a better future in the new country of Ohio.

I heard from living persons in Verdenermor that Henry's family left a very poor estate behind.  Many years later, after the farm was pulled down, there were still standing some old, knobbed plum trees next to the street, reminding us of the Tietjes, and an old oven which had a roof covered with straw.  This oven later had to be pulled down, too, because it was endangered of fire.  The successor, Kruse, built a new, solid baking house (backhaus)."

To be continued...

(This post originally appeared in 2011 on my now deleted blog, A Face to the Sun.)