Tag Archives: Germany

Michael and Magdalena

Little is known about Michael Noehl and Magdalena Hoffman, a couple who spent their married life in the village of Holsthum, Eifelkreis Bitburg-Prüm, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Holsthum was described by one of their sons as “situated in a lovely valley of rich agricultural land, crowned with fruit trees, and further off, with magnificent forests, between nurseries and rose plantations.” Even now it remains a quaint, pastoral village.

Michael Noehl, one of at least eight children of Johannes Noehl and Elisabeth Gierens, was born in Niederstedem, Eifelkreis Bitburg-Prüm, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany on 22 June 1828. Nothing is known of his childhood, but as a young man, he entered the military. According to the memoirs of his son, Michael served as a Prussian soldier in Koblenz between the years 1847-1851; during the Baden Revolution in 1848, he stood sentry at the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress.

After his service, Michael married Magdalena Hoffman, who was born on 21 Jul 1833 in Holsthum, one of at least four children of Mathias Hoffman and Magdalena Ehr. Michael and Magdalena were married on 12 February 1857; Michael was twenty-eight and Magdalena twenty-three at the time of their marriage, which was recorded at Schankweiler. The Schankweiler Klaus is an eighteenth-century chapel and hermitage tucked into the forest approximately two miles from the village of Holsthum, and still stands today.

Schankweiler, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany photograph, 2009; privately held by Melanie Frick, 2013.

Together, the couple had seven sons: Mathias (1858), Michael (1860), Nikolaus (1864), Nikolaus (1866), Mathias (1868), Johann (1870), and Jakob (1873). Notably, despite name repetition among their sons, it is believed that all survived to adulthood. (This is not the first case of name repetition among children of this region that I have observed.)

Mathias Noehl (1868-1950), second from right, with brothers, perhaps Nikolaus, Johan, and Jakob Noehl, Holsthum, Germany, 1938; digital image 2009, privately held by Roland Noehl, Holsthum, Germany, 2009.

A great-grandson of Michael and Magdalena remembered being told that Michael was a forester, and Magdalena certainly had her hands full raising seven sons, but few details are known of their adult lives. One of their sons recalled completing school at the age of fourteen and going to work herding sheep to help his parents pay off a debt on their property; later this same son was apprenticed to a rose grower, so it may be assumed that their other sons were similarly established with apprenticeships.

Michael saw several of his siblings immigrate to America in the nineteenth century; his sister Susanna and his brothers Matthias and Johann all settled in Minnesota. Likewise, Magdalena saw a paternal aunt and a paternal uncle immigrate to Minnesota and Iowa. Later, Michael and Magdalena bade farewell to two of their own children who left their homeland to try their luck on American soil: Michael in 1881 and Mathias (1868) in 1886. From these two sons then came fifteen American grandchildren whom Michael and Magdalena never had the opportunity to meet.

Michael and Magdalena lived out their lives in Holsthum, surviving at least to their sixties, as it is known that their son Mathias came from America to visit in 1894 and found them in good health at that time. To the best of my knowledge, however, their graves, according to German custom, have long since been recycled and are no longer marked.

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The Canada Experiment

The Frick Family of Rohrbach, Heidelberg, Germany

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Although it is believed that our particular Frick family originated in Switzerland, they were present in Rohrbach, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, at least as early as 1699. It was then and there that Johann Georg Frick, allegedly a native of Switzerland, was said to have married Anna Margaretha Nachbauer, and it was there that he died in 1712 at the age of thirty-six. Rohrbach is a district of the renowned city of Heidelberg, situated on the Neckar River in southwestern Germany. Heidelberg today is home to Heidelberg University, which was established in the fourteenth century, as well as the ruins of the thirteenth-century Heidelberg Castle.

View of Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, 2019; privately held by Melanie Frick, 2021.

While there is a region in northwestern Switzerland known as Fricktal (“Frick Valley”), it is yet unknown where exactly in Switzerland Johann Georg Frick and his predecessors may have lived. The seventeenth century was a tumultuous time in early modern Europe, and Switzerland saw great religious upheaval; it can be considered whether this might have inspired the Frick family to relocate. Heidelberg also faced turmoil at this time, and was in ruins by 1693 due to French invasions. In the years thereafter, grappling with severe winters as well as warfare, thousands of Protestants living in the German Palatinate would flee, settling elsewhere in Europe and in the “New World” colonies. The Fricks, however, stayed.

Melanchthonkirche, Rohrbach, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, 2019; privately held by Melanie Frick, 2021.

The most recent member of our Frick family to live out his life in Rohrbach was Ludwig Frick. Ludwig was born in Rohrbach on 12 November 1883, the son of Martin Frick (1857-1935), who worked as a civil servant for the railroad, and Katharina Feigenbutz (1863-1918). Ludwig was the eldest of eight children; his seven younger siblings included Joseph (1885), Katharina (1886), Johann (1889), Christina (1891), Johann (1894), Susanna (1895), and Peter (1899). Ultimately, however, only Katharina and Susanna would live to adulthood alongside Ludwig.

Ludwig Frick with wife Anna Katharina (Schilling) Frick, center, and daughters Elsa and Marta, likely pictured in Rohrbach, Heidelberg, Germany, circa 1940; privately held by [personal information withheld], 2021.

Ludwig Frick and Anna Katharina Schilling married in nearby Münzesheim, Anna’s hometown, on 09 January 1908, and settled in Rohrbach. Ludwig worked as a locksmith, and he and Anna had seven children together: Wilfried (1908), Elsa Elisabeth (1909), Otto Jacob (1911), Elsa (1912), Erne Elisabeth (1914), Marta (1916), and Wilhelm (1919). Both Elsa Elisabeth and Erne Elisabeth died as infants.

Anna Katharina (Schilling) Frick with her son Wilfried Frick (right) and an infant, likely her son Otto Jacob Frick, Rohrbach, Heidelberg, Germany, circa 1911; privately held by [personal information withheld], 2021.

Few details are known about Ludwig beyond his occupation and the fact that he played piano. It is believed that he and his wife, like generations of his family before him, attended the Melanchthon Church; city directories indicate that they lived for many years on Max-Joseph-Strasse in Rohrbach, in a corner house bordered by a narrow garden. Ludwig died at the age of seventy-four on 28 December 1957; Anna survived him by a number of years, and is remembered as a kindly woman who made lamb-shaped cakes for her grandchildren.

SOURCES

“Baden and Hesse Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1502-1985,” index, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 May 2021), marriage of Ludwig Frick and Anna Kathar. Schilling, 1908, Münzesheim.

“Baden, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1502-1985,” index, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 May 2021), burial of Ludwig Frick, 1957, Rohrbach.

“Baden, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1502-1985,” index, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 May 2021), marriage of Martin Frick and Kath. Elisabetha Feigenbutz, 1883, Rohrbach.

“Germany and Surrounding Areas, Address Books, 1815-1974,” index and images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 May 2021), Ludwig Frick, 1927, Rohrbach.

“Germany and Surrounding Areas, Address Books, 1815-1974,” index and images, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 May 2021), Ludwig Frick, 1940, Rohrbach.

“Germany, Select Marriages, 1558-1929,” index, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com : accessed 30 May 2021), marriage of Johannes Schilling and Elisabetha Christina Kaiser, 1873, Münzesheim.

Grandchild of Ludwig and Anna Katharina [Schilling] Frick, conversation with the author, 2019; notes in author’s files.

Norbert Emmerich, “Johann Georg Frick,” Schweizer Einwanderer in Heidelberg und Umgebung [Swiss Immigrants in Heidelberg and the Surrounding Area] (https://sehum.dynv6.net/201405/11/ofb3k10314.html : accessed 30 May 2021).

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), “Heidelberg,” rev. 14:53, 19 May 2021.

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org), “Reformation in Switzerland,” rev. 21:01, 26 May 2021.

A German American Family in Chicago

Pomeranian Roots

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For decades, the precise origins of German-speaking immigrants Joachim and Sophia (Cammin) Wiese of Chicago, Cook County, Illinois were forgotten.¹

There were clues: a scrawled place name on the Hamburg Passagierlisten, an intriguing DNA connection.²

Finally, a dedicated on-site researcher uncovered several records that definitively placed Joachim and Sophia within the arms of their families in the neighboring villages of Wendisch Baggendorf and Barkow, located in present-day Vorpommern-Rügen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.³

Joachim, christened Joachim Christian Friedrich Wiese, was born on 20 October 1840 in Wendisch Baggendorf, the son of laborer Johann Adam Wiese and Beate Elisabeth Hanna Schult.⁴

Sophia, christened Catharina Sophia Joachime Cammin, was born on 07 November 1842 in Barkow, the daughter of laborer Johann Christian Cammin and Christina Dorothea Ahrends.⁵

Joachim and Sophia married on 03 April 1864 in Grimmen, a village of perhaps a couple thousand inhabitants located a short distance from the state-owned estate at Barkow where Joachim was employed as a laborer.⁶ They were married by Carl Bindemann at St-Marien-Kirche, an early Gothic construction that dates to the thirteenth century.⁷

“St.-Marien-Kirche in Grimmen,” 2007, Grimmen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany; Wikimedia Commons, copyright Erell.

The couple’s first child, christened Carl Christian Friedrich Wiese, was born later that year on 17 September 1864.⁸ He did not survive childhood.⁹ Their second child, christened Friedrich Carl Christian Wiese, was born on 22 August 1866.¹⁰

When they prepared to board the Electric at Hamburg in November of 1868, however, Joachim and Sophia stated that their two-year-old son, nicknamed Fritz, was only nine months of age.¹¹ It seems plausible that a free or reduced rate of passage might have been granted infants under one, and if the Wiese family did not happen to encounter a sympathetic ticketing agent, it can easily be imagined that Sophia might have bundled Fritz in a shawl close to her chest to conceal his true age until the family was safely aboard the ship.

Joachim and Sophia (Cammin) Wiese, ca. 1889, Chicago, Cook, Illinois; digital image ca. 2000.

Whatever the case, the Wiese family arrived in New York the day after Christmas 1868, after enduring a nearly eight week crossing during which time Sophia marked her twenty-sixth birthday.¹² Among their fellow steerage passengers were several relatives, including Sophia’s widowed mother; Joachim’s widowed father came aboard a different ship.¹³ They soon made their way to Chicago, where they joined a wave of immigrants like themselves who contributed to the city’s unprecedented expansion.

It was there, during the years of regrowth that followed the Chicago Fire of 1871, that Joachim would work his way up to become a tailor, while Sophia would raise six children.¹⁴ And it was in Chicago that the Wiese family would face new struggles and new opportunities as they adapted to an urban environment vastly different from their rural homeland near the Baltic Sea.

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Tombstone Tuesday: Lorenz Stoehr (1790-1876)

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Lorenz Stoehr was born in or near Weißenstadt, Upper Franconia, Bavaria, Germany, a village located a mere twenty miles from what is now the Czech Republic.¹ Weißenstadt was named “white city” as a nod to its landmark white church, and is situated on the shore of a lake in the Fichtel Mountains.² From the inscription on Lorenz’s tombstone, his birthdate can be calculated to 04 September 1790.³

As a young man, Lorenz served approximately six years in the military during the Napoleonic Wars, first under Napoleon and then, as allegiances shifted, with the Germans.⁴ As the story goes, he was eventually wounded on a march to Paris and was then discharged and granted a pension.⁵ Lorenz was trained as a master tailor, a trade he pursued during the winter months as the summer months were consumed with his labors as a farmer.⁶ Amazingly, several mementos of these chapters of his life survive today: buttons from his military uniform, his discharge and pension paperwork which granted him the amount of five Gulden each month for the remainder of his life, and an 1828 purchase agreement for approximately one and a half acres of land in the Weißenstadt area.⁷

Lorenz was married to Barbara Feicht in 1820 or shortly thereafter, and with her had the following known children: Margaretha B. (1824-1897), Johann Wolfgang (1826-1883), Eva Margaretha (1831-1906), George Adam (1833-1915), and Johann Friedrich (1842-circa 1857).⁸

In 1853, at the age of sixty-two, Lorenz arrived in New York harbor aboard the Solon.⁹ Traveling with him were his wife and youngest daughter; his sons had made their way to America the year prior, disembarking in New Orleans before making their way up the Mississippi River to the community of Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa.¹⁰

Find A Grave, Inc., Find A Grave, digital image (www.findagrave.com : accessed 26 January 2019), photograph, Lorenz Stoehr (1790-1876), Memorial No. 69221239, Elgin City Cemetery, Elgin, Fayette County, Iowa; photograph by Tammy Miller, 2015.

Lorenz was widowed in 1855 and spent the years thereafter at the homes of his children.¹¹ In 1856, he lived with his daughter Eva and her husband Hiram Hammond on their farm in Clayton County; in 1860 and 1870, he could be found at the home of his son George, a jeweler and dry goods merchant, first in Clayton County and then in neighboring Fayette County, Iowa.¹²

Lorenz Stoehr died at the age of eighty-six on 07 December 1876, likely at the home of his son in Elgin, Fayette County, Iowa.¹³ He is buried at the Elgin City Cemetery where an upright tombstone marks his grave.¹⁴

Copyright © 2019 Melanie Frick. All Rights Reserved.
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Tombstone Tuesday: Hiram and Eva Margaret (Stoehr) Hammond

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Hiram and Eva Margaret (Stoehr) Hammond were a couple who, at the surface, appeared to have little in common.

Hiram, who was said to have been born on 26 February 1813 in Ohio, first appeared in public record when he purchased land in Jackson County, Iowa Territory in the spring of 1845.¹ Presumed to be in his early thirties at this time, Hiram spent the next nine years honing his skills as a farmer before purchasing one hundred and sixty acres of land near Volga, Clayton County, Iowa.² Although there are speculative connections potentially linking Hiram to the family of War of 1812 veteran Jonathan Hammond and his wife Lovisa Herrington, no connections have yet been verified.

Eva Margaret Stoehr, on the other hand, settled in Clayton County, Iowa alongside her parents and siblings.³ She was said to have been born on 02 March 1831 in Weißenstadt, Wunsiedel, Bavaria, the daughter of Lorenz Stoehr, a master tailor who was a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, and his wife Barbara Feicht.⁴ She immigrated to America aboard the Solon, arriving in New York in 1853, and settled alongside many from her home village in northeastern Iowa.⁵

Find A Grave, Inc., Find A Grave, digital image (http://www.findagrave.com : accessed 13 July 2014), photograph, Hiram H. Hammond (1813-1896), Memorial No. 84463650, and Eva M. (Stoehr) Hammond (1831-1906), Memorial No. 84463738, Garnavillo Community Cemetery, Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa; photograph by Ken Johnson, 2016. Note: The third headstone belongs to daughter Amelia Hammond (1857-1872).

When the couple married in Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa on 02 December 1854, Eva was likely just twenty-three years old while Hiram was forty-one.⁶ Although they were married by a German Lutheran minister, Hiram, unlike Eva, was neither German nor Lutheran.⁷ Eva was literate and came from a family of skilled craftsmen; Hiram was a farmer and could not write his own name.⁸ The couple went on to have the following known children: Amelia (1857-1872), Matilda J. (1859-1947), Louisa Barbara (1861-1936), John William (1865-1931), and George H. Hammond (1867-1934).⁹ In addition to losing their daughter Amelia when she was fourteen years old, it is believed that the couple lost two additional children at young ages.¹⁰

The Hammond family farmed near the community of Volga in Clayton County for thirty years, eventually moving to Henderson Prairie near Clermont, Fayette County, Iowa in early 1885.¹¹ They saw success as farmers, and by 1893, as Hiram entered his eighties, he and Eva decided to retire to the nearby town of Postville, Allamakee County, Iowa.¹²

Despite their vast difference in age, language, and culture, these Iowa pioneers celebrated more than forty years of marriage together. Hiram H. Hammond died on 23 August 1896 in Postville, Allamakee County, Iowa, and Eva Margaret (Stoehr) Hammond died there a decade later on 01 October 1906, both having suffered cerebral hemorrhages.¹³ They are buried side by side in the Garnavillo Community Cemetery in Garnavillo, Clayton County, Iowa.¹⁴

Copyright © 2018 Melanie Frick. All Rights Reserved.
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Johann Wiese and a DNA Connection

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Johann Wiese of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany was sixty-five years old and a widower when he boarded the Borussia in Hamburg on 31 October 1868.¹ He traveled with Caroline Wiese, twenty, as well as with a young man whom Caroline would marry within months of their arrival in America.² All named Wendisch Baggendorf, a landed estate located near the town of Grimmen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, as their place of origin.³

Interestingly, one day later, several other Wieses departed from Hamburg: Carl Wiese, twenty-three, with his wife, both also of Wendisch Baggendorf, and Joachim Wiese, twenty-seven, with his wife and child.⁴ They resided in Barkow, an estate located near modern-day Klevenow, which is only a few miles from Wendisch Baggendorf.⁵ Both Carl and Joachim and their families traveled aboard the Electric, which, like the Borussia, was bound for New York.⁶

“Kirche in Kirche Baggendorf,” 2009, Kirche Baggendorf (near Wendisch Baggendorf), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany; Wikimedia Commons, copyright Klugschnacker.

I might not have noted the connection between the Wieses who left Hamburg for New York one day apart if it were not for spotting several interesting member matches within the AncestryDNA results for my grandmother, the great-granddaughter of Joachim Wiese. Each of these matches named Caroline Wiese as a direct ancestor, which led me to the ship manifest that revealed that Caroline had traveled with a Johann Wiese of an appropriate age to be her father; appropriate, too, that a father would accompany his yet-unmarried daughter overseas.

Caroline, as stated, married shortly after her arrival in America; she and Gustav Beth were wed on 10 January 1869 in Dundee, Kane County, Illinois.⁷ Carl and Joachim Wiese, on the other hand, both settled in Chicago’s 15th Ward with their families.⁸ While Johann Wiese has not been located in the 1870 or 1880 censuses, and does not appear in the households of Caroline, Carl, or Joachim, it is possible he was simply not counted in the census if, for example, he was en route to the home of another child and was missed by the census enumerator, or if a neighbor provided information about the family to the census enumerator and failed to mention him.

Cook County, Illinois, death certificate no. 28339, John Wiese; Cook County Clerk, Chicago.

Ultimately, it appears Johann Wiese spent the final fifteen years of his life in Illinois, although thus far little is known about how he spent those years.⁹ Similarly, little is known about his life in Pomerania; records note only that he was a laborer, and as serfdom was abolished in the area in 1820, he was perhaps contracted to work on an estate in Wendisch Baggendorf or the vicinity.¹⁰

According to his death record, he died on 02 August 1883 at 144 Newton Street in Chicago at the age of eighty.¹¹ His death was attributed to old age.¹² Intriguingly, Carl Wiese resided at this address, further strengthening the potential of a connection beyond their shared Wendisch Baggendorf origins and their emigration one day apart.¹³ It seems logical to assume that Johann Wiese might have been cared for in his last days by his son.

Johann Wiese is buried in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery; today, while the location of his grave has been identified, it is unmarked.¹⁴

From Germany to Chicago’s Old Town

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Clara (Bach) Marbach was born in Luxembourg near the border of the district of Bitburg-Prüm, Rhineland-Pfalz, Germany, the daughter of Johannes and Anna Maria (Thiel) Bach.¹ She married Mathias Marbach in June of 1835,² and the couple had six known children in the decade that followed: Anna,³ Catharina,⁴ Elisabetha (I),⁵ Elisabetha (II),⁶ Adamus,⁷ and Elisabetha (III).⁸ The family is believed to have resided in the village of Prümzurlay, known for its castle ruins upon sandstone bluffs that overlook its scenic valley.

Photograph of Prümzurlay, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, as viewed from Prümerburg, 2009; privately held by Melanie Frick, 2017.

Following the death of her husband, Clara left Germany for America in the company of two of her daughters, Elisabetha (I) and Elisabetha (III), along with their husbands and children.⁹ A third daughter, Anna, would emigrate twenty years later.¹⁰ Clara traveled aboard the Holland and arrived in New York in June of 1871, thirty-four years after she had married.¹¹ She and her daughters made their way to Chicago where they settled near St. Michael’s Catholic Church, located in what is today the heart of Chicago’s Old Town.

Sadly, within days of their arrival, Clara’s six-month-old grandson succumbed to pneumonia.¹² It was a difficult year; the Great Chicago Fire tore through the city in October of 1871, a horrifying disaster that would almost certainly have left Clara and her daughters homeless alongside an estimated 90,000 of the city’s inhabitants,¹³ and another grandson passed away at twenty-one months the following June amidst a scourge of cholera upon their neighborhood.¹⁴ The years to come were difficult as well, as Clara saw numerous grandchildren born and die, including one who succumbed to smallpox in an outbreak that devastated their community.¹⁵

The family’s neighborhood was known in the nineteenth century as the “Cabbage Patch” due to the large number of German immigrants who had farmed there in Chicago’s earliest years.¹⁶ When Chicago burned, St. Michael’s Catholic Church, the cornerstone of this German American community, was one of only a handful of buildings in the city to survive, although it was badly damaged and had to be reconstructed.¹⁷ Perhaps Clara was among the parishioners who attempted to bury some of the church’s valuables in the church yard as the fire approached, and she and her daughters, son-in-laws, and grandchildren may have huddled in an open field or at Lincoln Park on the shores of Lake Michigan as the fire roared through the area.¹⁸

At the time of the 1880 U.S. census, nine years after her arrival, Clara lived at the home of her daughter Elisabetha (III), who, at thirty-five, had been twice widowed and once abandoned, a state that earned her the designation of “grass widow” by the census enumerator.¹⁹ Elisabetha supported herself and her stepchildren by sewing, while Clara, by then in her mid-seventies, kept house.²⁰ Their neighborhood had been entirely rebuilt following the Great Chicago Fire, thanks to a flood of donations, including building materials, from relief societies.²¹

Cook County, Illinois, death certificate no. 66546, Clara Marbach; Cook County Clerk, Chicago.

Clara died five years later on 12 July 1885; she was reported to have reached the age of eighty-two and eleven months and her cause of death was attributed to heart failure after having been bedridden for the previous three months.²² Clara (Bach) Marbach was buried at St. Boniface Catholic Cemetery in Chicago’s North Side neighborhood.²³ Today, her grave, which rests in the company of those of several of her children and grandchildren, is unmarked.²⁴

A Marriage in Mecklenburg-Schwerin

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Although more and more genealogical records are being digitized and made available online, images of German church books—those faded ledgers filled with seemingly indecipherable old script that record baptisms, marriages, and burials—are often few and far between. That’s why it was a cause for celebration when I discovered that the scope of Ancestry.com’s “Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1519-1969” encompassed the middle-of-nowhere German communities where a number of my ancestors lived and worshiped in the nineteenth century.

I knew something about the lives of Ernst and Friederike (Wegner) Stübe in America, where they had immigrated with their two-year-old daughter in 1869, but I had known little about their lives in the old country, the former Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Thanks to this record collection, I learned the following:

Ernst was christened Ernst Daniel Joachim Stübe following his birth on 29 January 1839 in present-day Starkow, Thelkow, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, the son of Hans Arend Heinrich Stübe and Maria Elisabeth Ewert.¹ He was baptized on 3 February 1839 at the village church of nearby Walkendorf, which still stands today.²

“Dorfkirche in Walkendorf,” 2008, Walkendorf, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany; Wikimedia Commons, copyright Ch. Pagenkopf.

Friederike was christened Friederike Johanna Dorothea Christiana Wegner following her birth on 9 August 1841 in present-day Selpin, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, the daughter of Johann Wegner and Regina Lewerenz.³ She was baptized on 15 August 1841 at the village church of nearby Vilz, which still stands today.⁴

“Kirche in Vilz bei Tessin,” 2008, Vilz, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany; Wikimedia Commons, copyright Schiwago.

It is likely that Ernst and Friederike grew up on the manorial estates where their fathers were day laborers (Tägelohner).⁵ Serfdom had ceased in Mecklenburg-Schwerin only in 1820; landless men remained tied to the land where they toiled as contracted laborers on these estates, their wives often working alongside them.⁶ As children, Ernst and Friederike would have lived in estate-owned huts that were shared with their immediate families as well as, perhaps, their extended families or the families of other laborers.⁷

Childhood, however, was brief; by the time they were seven years old, Ernst and Friederike may have been hired out to work, or at the very least by the time they reached adolescence. Granted room and board for their services as a farm hand and maid, respectively, they would also have received a modest annual wage.⁸ Throughout their years of service, they may have moved among different estates and had the opportunity to mingle with a number of other young people at local festivals, and perhaps this is ultimately how they became acquainted.⁹

When they married on 24 October 1866, Ernst was twenty-seven and Friederike was twenty-five; they were married at St. Johannis in present-day Tessin, Stadt Tessin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, which still stands today.¹⁰

“Stadtkirche St. Johannis in Tessin,” 2008, Tessin, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany; Wikimedia Commons, copyright Schiwago.

As it so happens, Ernst and Friederike’s wedding day fell upon the date that the contract year for laborers typically concluded; as this was the beginning of a three-day holiday after which contracts might be renewed or laborers shifted to different estates, the young couple may have decided that this would be a practical time to marry and set up house once permission had been granted for their marriage.¹¹ Indeed, as marriage restrictions in Mecklenburg-Schwerin remained strict at this time, a wedding was a true celebration and traditionally included several days of feasting.¹²

Following their marriage, Ernst and Friederike appear to have lived on the grounds of the estate Friedrichshof, located between Selpin and Walkendorf, where Ernst, like his father before him, was a day laborer.¹³ Friedrichshof is no more, although notably, it was the birthplace of Richard Wossidlo, a renowned folk historian and ethnographer.¹⁴ It was likely here at Friedrichshof where the Stübe couple’s first child, Emma, was born on 27 September 1867.¹⁵ Two years later, amidst a stream of emigrants from Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Ernst, Friederike, and Emma Stübe boarded a ship at Hamburg, and the rest, as they say, is history.¹⁶