Because I'm a Bookworm...

Some of you may remember the time when Grandpa Elling would stay with some of his children and families for a month or so and then move on to the next. It was after Aunt Kate had died and his house was sold. One summer he stayed with our family for awhile when I was home from college and working a second shift job at a factory in Napoleon. I would get up late and eat lunch with him almost daily.

One morning I came into the living room after getting up and he said to me something like, "Since you're the bookworm, I've got something for you." Beside his chair was a small box of books. Inside was a book on World War I that I still have and a couple of McGuffey's school books. Both school books had belonged to Grandma Elling and had her signature inside.

In the photo above, one can see that she practiced writing her name over and over in the spelling book. The second book was McGuffey's Second Reader and this flyleaf also sports the names of Paul Elling, Malinta, Ohio and Louise Elling, Napoleon, Ohio. Ida Anna Katharine Spoering Elling was born on 5 February 1890, so these books were probably used before 1900. I wonder if a little girl who probably spoke German exclusively at home found these books challenging.

As a very young adult, I probably didn't appreciate these books as much as I should have, but now I surely do.

 

*This is a reposting from my previous Elling Family News blog on November 20, 2008.

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.

Check Out This Headgear.

The Tietje Brothers - Heinrich Jr., Karl, Gustav

When Kerstin sent along this photo of Heinrich Tietje's three sons, all dressed up in uniforms and with the rather unusual looking helmets, at least to my eyes, I decided that I wanted to know more about this. Were all of the brothers in the military? Well, it's all intriguing, so I set out to find out what I could about each of the helmets and uniforms.  All of them seem to pre-date World War I.

On the far left is Heinrich Tietje Jr. in his Pelmutze.  This helmet was used by the military from 1850 to about 1915.  From reading about it here, this helmet resembles greatly the example of the 1897 infantry pattern with the flap of cloth on the right side.   These helmets were made most often of very tight, black dyed seal hair stretched upon a frame of bamboo on top and corrugated, stiffened burlap on the bottom.  The oval object at the top front was a cloth covered wooden badge and the colors of it would indicate the area/province/state represented by this soldier.  It was called a Feldzeichen. (Notice that Karl also has the oval badge on his helmet.) For parades, plumes would be added to this badge. Heinrich's uniform also resembles closely those of the Husaren Regiments.

In the center is Karl, wearing a helmet called a Tschako, probably from around 1900-1915.  This type of helmet had been worn by German soldiers from the time of the Napoleonic Wars.  Usually it was worn by Jager, Telegraph or Aviation troops and for awhile the Train Supply troops wore it, as well.  The eagle on the front dates this helmet around 1915, according to this source. To me, the uniform looks most like the Prussian Guard, Jager Battalion.

Gustav is standing on the right with my favorite helmet – the pickelhaube. (Pickel for “point” and haube for “hat or bonnet.”)  The pickelhaube was worn in the 19^th and 20^th centuries by the German military and sometimes firefighters and police.  It was first used by the Prussian infantry in 1842. 

 
The hat is made of hardened, boiled leather with a metal spike at the crown.  The ornamental front plate, usually with an eagle, helps to date the helmets.  Even into World War I, these helmets were used at first, but it didn’t take long for the military to realize that they offered little or no protection to the soldier from flying shrapnel and worse yet, the spike acted like a target in the trenches for the enemy!  By September 1915, new helmets were ordered – steel helmets.  However, the pickelhaube was a desired trophy for enemy soldiers,especially the British, to keep as souvenirs, so with that knowledge, the German soldiers often booby trapped their old helmets.  Well, you can imagine the rest…  Read more about the pickelhaube here.

I really am only guessing as to years and the specific military units connected with these uniforms. Maybe a reader can set me straight.  I still wonder why the three sons were posing, the year of the photo, and the involvement in the military, if any, they had.  Another family history mystery!

This post originally appeared on another of my blogs in 2011.

The Tietje Family in Verdenermoor, Germany

I am so pleased that Kerstin is back to continue her story of the Tietje family.

Kerstin is a descendent of Johann Heinrich Tietje and his wife Maria Schwiebert, who immigrated to Henry County, Ohio. Kerstin has been researching the family in Germany and has discovered that the Tietje family lived in the small village of Verdenermoor for nine generations.  This segment of her story will reveal more about the history of Verdenermoor and the Plattdeusch language. 

Here's Kerstin:

“In 1500 the territory of today’s Verdenermoor was called “The Wild Moor” because of its impassable and rough nature.  Until the 16^th century, it was a 200 hectare territory entirely consisting of moor.”*

(Dianne: 200 hectare = 494.2 acres.  Moor = a tract of open, peaty, wasteland, often overgrown with heath, common in high latitudes and altitudes where drainage is poor; heath.  No wonder our ancestors felt right at home in the Great Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio!)

Kerstin continues,

“The bishop from Bremen, Christoph, gave the moor to the town of Verden as a present in 1551, so it was named Verdener Moor.  The people had to dig peat for fuel for heating, as he wanted to save his own valuable forests.

In 1789, this territory was settled for the first time, and the moor territory was reclaimed for agriculture.  The people lived in large houses, together with their cattle, under one roof.  This had the advantage of saving energy and building materials.  Most of the old farms were pure wooden buildings.  In the middle of the room was usually a walled fireplace.  The roof gables could pull the smoke up and at the same time the sausage and ham products hanging from the ceiling could be smoked. 

Today there is the small village, Verdenermoor, which has sixteen farms, but only three of them are fully used for agriculture.  You can find some beautiful, old farms there where you can spend the holidays in the country.  Today, people try to protect the moors and the heath; there are places where you already can see the remains of peat extraction.  I know from my ancestors, that the streets were impassable and muddy, and that sometimes it must have been impossible for coaches to go from one village to another.  This is long ago, but today there are still some very old, original lanes out of sandy ground, with old trees along, and some streets of old cobblestone.

It is not surprising that the hard work and poverty shaped the mentality of the moorland farmers.  Often they are said to be a little stubborn and taciturn.  They had their own special dialect called “Plattdeusch” which is not easy to understand.  Plattdeusch or Niederdeutsch (Low German) was spoken many hundreds of years ago in the northern territory of Germany, when in the 16^th and 17^th centuries there was a change, and the educated middle class started to write and speak more and more in the High German language.  As time drew on, the major part of the North German population spoke High German, and only the people in the country held the tradition and used Low German, the Plattdeusch, in the small villages and farms.

I read that linguistic researchers think that it is not only a dialect, but a language of independent character, partly because it has its own vocabulary and partly because of the varying grammar.  There are parts of the vocabulary which agree with the Dutch language and have also Old English language influences.  “Platt” is translated “flat,” but it really doesn’t mean “flat,” but instead “clear,” “familiar,” or “good to understand.” 

I know that my ancestors spoke “Plattdeusch,” and I often heard a mixture of Plattdeusch and High German when I was a child and had been on a visit in Hamburg.  Once I visited a play in Hamburg city with my great-aunt Hertha, which was performed in original Plattdeusch.  First I didn’t understand anything, and I thought I heard a totally strange language.  While there was a break, my aunt had to tell me what had happened in the play.  With time, you get a feel to understand it, but it is not easy.  A very popular example: “Beten scheef hett Gott leef.”  In High German: Ein bisschen schief hat Gott lieb.”  In English: “A bit crooked loves God.”  They liked to use such funny patterns.  Today you still can hear Plattdeusch being talked in rural districts, and there are some organizations which associate with that way of speaking and try to save that dialect.  There are also books available in Plattdeusch, books of fairy tales and plays.”

Kerstin's story will continue ...

This post originally appeared on my previous blog on November 8, 2011.

Finding Information About the Tietjes in Germany

Kerstin continued her story about how she conducted her research on the Tietje family and some places where she found information:

"The Local Heritage Books of the Parishes in this Area-
The local family heritage books I found from the area of Verdenermoor, where nearly all my ancestors from my mother's line came from, do not only register essential family (father, mother, children), but also are created to show a connection for the family to their genealogy.  This means there is a link from father and mother to their respective parents, and a link from the children to their marriages and so on. (See links below.)  If you click on a link to the name of a person, there are often new links to other local family heritage books of neighboring villages which contain the same or resembling names so you can compare dates of birth and other personal facts.

The name "Tietje" is often written in different ways, sometimes Tiedge, Tietgen, Tietken and even other variations.  In former times, people didn't use standardized spellings; sometimes they wrote how they pronounced it or how they thought it should be written.

1. Before 1900, Verdenermoor belonged to the Parish Kirchlinteln.  This is a place immediately to the east of Verden and was previously called "Lintelohe."  The church is named St. Peter's.  Towards the end of 1758, the old church books were destroyed in a fire at the parish house, but from 1759 on, they are complete.  There are duplicates of the lost church books in the State Archive at Stade for the years 1715-1726, 1746, 1751, 1752. 
There is an online databank, Local Heritage Books of Kirchlinteln, where you can find birth, death and marriage dates about persons living in that parish.  Sometimes there is more information about the employment of a person, the place of residence or other personal, historical or religious facts.  Other neighboring parishes from Kirchlinteln are Wittlohe, Kirchwahlingen, Rethem, St. Andreas in Verden, Visselhoevede, Kirchboitzen, and Walsrode.

2. You can also get information in the Local Heritage Books of Wittlohe.  The church is named St. Jacobi.  These books contain all dates from the church books from 1715 - 1875 and dates of the civil registrar's office.  There are also duplicates in the State Archive in Stade.  The church books of Wittlohe burned because of a fire in the village in 1742.  From 1743, they are kept complete.  Since the Reformation in 1567, ministers lived in the parish Wittlohe.  In 1859, the village Neddenaverbergen, which is a small village next to Verdenermoor, was integreted to the parish Wittlohe.

3. I made a find in the Local Heritage Books of Verden because Neddenaverbergen, in the next neighborhood to Verdenermoor, belonged to this parish up to the middle of the 19th century.  The church of Verden was named St. Andreas.  These books are not yet completed and are in the beginning of their examination.

4. I made a find in the Church Books of Kirchwalsede.  Here you can find a list of the names of my family Tietje who had immigrated.  This is because the descendents of the family Schwiebert made a list of a great number of names and dates for several generations about the family.  My immigrated ggg-grandmother was born a Schwiebert.  A large number of Schwiebert ancestors immigrated to Ohio.

5. Of great interest is a book about the old farms and their former inhabitants written by Otto Voigt in 1993.  The title is Bauernreihen in den Dorfern der Kirchspiele des alten Amtes Verden."  Translation: Rows of Farms in the Villages of the Parishes from the Old Area of Verden.

6. The index of all names of persons from Neddenaverbergen, a collection from genealogists of the area.

Stay tuned for more on the family Tietje from Kerstin!

(This post originally appeared on my other blog in 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.)