Did you marry your 8th cousin?

In a recent post I explained that there is a Holtgraefe family from Joellenbeck and Enger which might be a branch off of the Schweicheln Holtzgraefe tree which is known back to 1500 AD. Where that connection may be is still a mystery and might not be solved for some time as it may require a visit to Germany. Since that post was...posted, I have done a bit more research on this family. The furthest back I was able to get was to a Cord Holtgraeve who was born in Oldinghausen, Enger in 1627 AD.

I then lined him up next to the Schweicheln family tree to see where he could possibly fit in (see image below). He could be a nephew of Jasper Holtzgrafe (1603-1672), or a distant cousin, but he would be in the same generation as Heinrich Holzgraefe (1645-1708). Since he was born in Enger, he is most likely a second, third or even a fourth cousin of Heinrich.

Click to enlarge

Since I was unable to determine the exact relation right away, I turned to the descendants of Cord in both Oldinghausen and Joellenbeck and where ever else the family ended up. Several of his descendants came to America including the Holtzgrafes of Warrick, Indiana and their cousins who ended up in Minnesota. As far as I know, the Holtzgrafe name does not continue from this line in America. There are, however, many cousins by different surnames who came to America including the Harland, the Fehring, Hachmeister, Schmidt, and Merhoff families.

Then I stumbled upon the Wittland family, a very large branch of Cord's tree. While some of these Wittland descendants (the Fehring and Hachmeister families) moved to America, others stayed including Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Wittland (1859-1930) who in 1888 married his 8th cousin (at least), Johanne Wilhelmine Holzgraefe (1868-????) who was the daughter of Caspar Heinrich Holzgraefe (1836-????) and Catharine Marie Klussmann (1838-????). This is an estimate based on the scenario described above where Cord is a nephew of Jasper.

We can all agree that marrying a sibling or cousin is a big no-no, but when it comes down to it, we're all cousins. Geneticists have learned over the years that marrying a close relative can cause severe handicaps in children born to that marriage. I found it interesting that all states in the United States allow marriage of 2nd cousins and some will even allow the marriage of 1st cousins! Here is a list of states that actually allow 1st cousins to marry.

My wife and I found that we're related, but we're 10th cousins twice removed, so I think we're good. You too may have married your 8th cousin without even realizing it! Here's a neat little chart that I find helpful when determining how you're related to distant cousins.

Lloyd R. Holzgrafe: A Tribute

Lloyd R Holzgrafe (Holzgraf) was born 29 April 1931 to Harold Talmage Holzgrafe and Edna M Kuechel in Santa Ana, California. He passed away 13 years ago today (10 November 2001). This is a lovely tribute to his amazing career as a professional organist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2A8xxzwiZM).

My most favorite organ song ever as played by my second cousin twice removed, Lloyd Holzgrafe (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd0bETda5uM).

 

Lloyd had no children, but his memory lives on through his Holzgrafe cousins and all those influenced by his music and spirit. Please comment if you have any memories of Lloyd which you'd like to share.

                         

Jöllenbeck-Enger

In my research, I frequently will search for records of Holzgraefes who are not yet part of my family tree hoping to one day connect them in and restore them to the family. Doing this has brought large groups of Holzgraefe cousins into the family, but there are still several groups for whom no connection has been found. These groups, like the group that immigrated from Germany to New Braunfels, TX, have been researched back to the 1700s in places outside of the Herford area. That being said, they are most likely very distantly related if at all. Still, there are some, like the group in Jöllenbeck, near Herford, who have not been connected in even though they live so close to Schweicheln. Schweicheln is where the Holzgraefes can be traced back to 1500 through a lineage of Colons or Colonists. These farmers were kinda like land lords except they didn't own the land. They did have inheritance rights to it though. Therefore, the eldest son of a Colon became the new Colon while the younger siblings became a part of the Heurlinge who were like the tenant farmers or surfs, paying rent to the Colon and working for the Colon and only given a small garden with which to subsist.

So, naturally there are more records for the Colon than for the Heurlinge. The Heurlinge siblings or cousins would often move to another farm where there was a vacancy and became a Colon or the women would marry a Colon of another farm. As far as I know this was not documented too well back in the day. So, the Holzgraefe family could have spread out from Schweicheln in many directions prior to 1700 without us knowing about it.

Jöllenbeck

Evidence linking the Jöllenbeck Holtzgraefe to the pre-1700s Schweicheln clan can be found in the spelling of the surname. Prior to 1700, we tend to see the name spelt with a "t": Holtzgraefe. This "t" was dropped in Schweicheln later on, but remains in the Jöllenbeck name to this day. The spelling, of course depended on the priest or recorder in the church where the records were created. Our Holzgraefe ancestors were more than likely illiterate and could not write. Therefore, the spelling was decided by the clergy. There was a separate parish in Jöllenbeck with separate clergy. Hence the spelling difference.

Warrick, Indiana, USA

While researching my ancestors in Indiana, I would often search for "Hol*gr*e" in Indiana records. The * indicates a wildcard in the search so that it encompasses many misspellings of the name. I came up with a plethora of records, but not all of them belonged to my ancestors. Specifically, there was a Holtzgraefe family living in Warrick and later Gibson counties, Indiana. I began piecing this family together, but it didn't look like they connected to my family...at least not in America and I couldn't seem to find how they got to Indiana.

That was almost three years ago. A couple weeks ago, I was doing a similar search on Findagrave.com and found another family in Warrick by a similar name. I began researching them and it became apparent that these were the grandparents of the family I had researched almost three years earlier! I quickly did more searches, but still couldn't find how they came over from Germany. Then I found German records on FamilySearch that were, without a doubt, for this family. The records came from a town called Schieldesche and before that, Jöllenbeck. I love how things come full circle sometimes.

So, I researched the Jöllenbeck Holtzgraefe family and pieced them together on Ancestry.com (see my "Holzgraefe Histories" tree). Then I pulled up this website which I had saved years ago which lists a ton of old records from Jöllenbeck online. This website was created by genealogists in the Jöllenbeck area and is very reliable. I was able to find that this Warrick Holtzgraefe family was related not only to the Jöllenbeck group, but also the Minnisota group! There was another small Holtzgraefe family that settled in Sibley, MN which, I found, also came from this same Jöllenbeck group.

Enger

The website was able to get me all the way back to about 1700 in Jöllenbeck, but I was not able to go any further than that. The Holtzgraefes in Jöllenbeck were Heurlinges and there aren't too many records for them (like tax records). So, I did more random searches for other Jöllenbeck Holtzgraefes not yet connected. I found possible candidates for siblings or first cousins of the furthest back Holtzgraefe ancestor. One of these was recorded as Heinrich Holtzgraefe Aus Dem Kirspiel Enger or Heinrich Holtzgraefe of the Enger parish. Enger is a town which is even closer to Herford and Schweicheln. Another potential sibling married a Luebcke at some point as recorded in the birth records of their children. I found a marriage record for a Holtzgraefe by the same name marrying a Luebcke in Herford in 1725. The record came from the Enger parish.

Piecing all of this together, it looks like the family I found in Warrick, Indiana and Sibley, Minnesota came from Jöllenbeck and the Jöllenbeck clan most likely came from Enger. The question still stands...Did the Enger Holtzgraefe family branch off from the Schweicheln family some time in the 1600s? Records back then do not include family of the individual on the record so it is nearly impossible at this point to connect the two families. Still, I am trying to reach out to my German contacts who are specialists in the area who may be able to find more information on the matter. Stay tuned!

Santa Ana Pioneers

In my research, I love coming across documents which detail the history of an area and how the Holzgrafe family influenced that history. Recently, I received a correspondence from the United Methodist Church in Santa Ana, California. This church used to be an Evangelical Lutheran church and it was Ferdinand Holzgrafe, second great-grandson of Caspar Holzgrafe, who helped get the church started in the late 1800's. The following are excerpts from a couple of histories which were compiled for the church at the celebration of its 90th and 100th anniversaries.

"The first Evangelicals who came to Southern California settled in Wilmington, near San Pedro, in about 1878. The 4th of May 1879 came Ferdinand and Henry Holzgraf . The two unmarried brothers were members of the Evangelical Church in Indiana. At that time Rev. F. W. Vogelein of San Francisco preached off and on in their homes and organized a class. Ferdinand Holzgraf came to Santa Ana on the 15th of November in 1879. At that time Santa Ana had a population of about 500. Mr. Holzgraf was the first Evangelical man in the whole vicinity and though the church wasn't officially organized until 1881, his arrival marks the birth of our church."

"The following Trustees were elected:
Peter Shield - President 3 years
Henry W. Rohrs - Treasurer 2 years
Ferdinand Holzgraf - Secretary 1 year"

Ferdinand married Peter's daughter and Ferdinand's daughter married a Rohrs.

"Trees were purchased and a lawn was planted. Mr. Ferdinand Holzgrafe was the first care-taker, who performed these services for $5.00 per year."

Also in my research I found that my second great-grandfather, Henry Louis Holzgraf, also moved to Wilmington, California with Ferdinand and was there as a witness at his wedding, but Henry went back to the Mid-west to study to become a pastor. I've always wondered what he did after his graduation in Naperville, Illinois in 1886 and before he got married in Gibson, Indiana in 1888. The other day I found his name in the Los Angeles Daily Herald on 16 March 1887:

"Daily real estate record...Monday, March 15, 1887...Henry Gobruegge to Henry L Holzgrafe - 10 acres in Ro. Santiago de Santa Ana: $3750."

Apparently he was planning on settling in Santa Ana with his brother, but I have found no more records to indicate what he was doing in Santa Ana. He remained in the Mid-west throughout his ministry and later picked up farming and followed his children to the Pacific Northwest where he retired. I need to investigate more into the land records of Santa Ana to find out what Henry did with those 10 Acres which, had he kept ownership of them, would have made him a very wealthy man today.

I think it is very neat to see how my ancestors influenced the development of this country. Every one is important and helps me to see that those still alive are just as important to the future's history.

Havana Holzgrafe History Mystery

Evansville Holzgrafe Family

When I began my research into the Holzgraefe family three years ago, I noticed several branches of the family which immigrated at various times and settled areas from Richmond, Virginia to Sydney, Australia. My ancestors settled in Evansville, Indiana and immigrated from Haddenhausen, Minden, Nordrhein-Westphalia, Germany. As I researched the heritage of my ancestors and that of those who married into the family, I learned that for two generations my ancestors married into families who also immigrated from the Haddenhausen area. This was the case for many immigrants who want to keep their close ties to their homeland and friends.

Havana Holzgrafe Family

I have often researched the Holzgrafe family who settled in Havana, Mason, Illinois. The patriarch of the family was John William Holzgrafe who was born in 1809 in "Hanover" as it recorded in a family Bible. He and his wife had many children especially sons who were all given the first name of George and known by their middle names. There was  lot of information on the family on Ancestry.com and in the history of Havana as they had a great impact on the agricultural and city life there. I really did hope there would come a time when I would be able to find where they came from and how they might be related to my Holzgraefe family. 

Uelzen Holzgrefe Family

Thumbing through old documents I received from my Mother from her days of Holzgrafe genealogical research, I found a letter written by the late Dr. Robert Earl Holzgrafe of Evansville, Indiana. I never had the chance of meeting Dr. Holzgrafe, but my mother was in correspondence with him in the '80s. Dr. Holzgrafe was the Holzgrafe History expert of his day and was on the front lines of the research frontier. He even made a trip to Germany with a genealogical friend to meet the Holzgrefe family of Uelzen, Germany. The letter told of his findings in Germany which were sorely disappointing. Little did he know, he was looking in the wrong city. The Holzgrefe family of Uelzen were kind to him and wished him luck in his research. They offered him what they could of their history in the town and even gave a family tree. He included a copy of this tree in his letter to my mother which I have studied time and again. Holzgrefe cousins marrying each other, one Holzgrefe born in Uelzen and died in Quakenbruck, another died in Ohio and was a Major in the Salvation Army. The tree was very interesting, but yielded no fruit. I found the one who came to Ohio. He died with no posterity. 

The Crossroads

The other day, my understanding from the research done on my branch of the family, my research into the Havana, Illinois Holzgrafe family, and the family tree from the Uelzen Holzgrefe family all came together at a crossroads. I decided to look at the families of the wives these George Holzgrefe boys were marrying. George Heinrich "Henry" Holzgrafe married Anna C Deverman. The Deverman family came to Illinois from the area around Quakenbruck, a small town in the providence of Hanover. Other Deverman family members in Illinois married into the Heye family which also came from the Quakenbruck area and can be found on the family tree of the Uelzen Holzgrefes. So, I though I cannot prove it, I believe the Holzgrefe family which originated in Uelzen, moved to Quakenbruck and then to Havana, Illinois is not the same family as my Holzgrafe ancestors. The tree in Uelzen goes back to 1766. It could still be possible that the two families are related, but it would be very far into the past.

Proof

Proof? I have none. Only coincidental and circumstantial evidence. It seems very likely that the Havana Holzgrafes came from Quakenbruck, but the records in Quakenbruck from 1775-1835 are not available to me at this time. I have contacted the church in Quakenbruck in hopes that they may be able to help me find records indicating that Holzgrefes did live there and that John William Holzgrafe was one of them.

Pitfall

The only pitfall in my theory, aside from its assuming nature, is that the name is spelled "Holzgrefe" on the tree from Quakenbruck and Uelzen and yet it is spelled "Holzgrafe" in the Havana, Illinois records. But perhaps the family was illiterate and didn't know how to spell their own name. After all, German accents are hard to understand. Perhaps Holzgrefe sounds a lot like Holzgrafe. 

And so this Havana Holzgrafe History Mystery continues...

Caroline Schnake-Baker-Holzgrafe

When my mother handed me all her notes from her years of pre-internet genealogy research back in 2011, I found mystery upon mystery which needed to be solved. Today, one of those mysteries finally came to a close.

The Mystery

Originally, I had two family trees, one for each of the Holzgrafe brothers from Germany living in Evansville, Indiana. Their relationsip as brothers was not proven, but only assumed. The older brother was called Henry August Holzgrafe and his wife was Carloine Baker. The younger brother was William Ferdinand and his wife was also Caroline Baker. One of William Ferdinand's sons was William Ferdinand.

The Investigation

The first thing that caught my attention was the name William Ferdinand. When I started, I tried finding both families in as many census records as possible. I could not find a William Ferdinand for the life of me! I could see the son William Ferdinand who went by Ferd later in life, but I couldn't see his father as a Ferdinand or Ferd. He was refered to a number of times as Fred though. Fred and Ferd look alike, but it's a different name. Eventually, I determined that his name was in fact Friedrich Wilhelm Holzgraefe.

I then turned to the next obvious mystery, Caroline Baker. This one stumped me for a while. How could both brothers be married to the same woman at the same time? It wasn't until I found both brothers on the same census page in 1860 that I realized, they were different women. Both Henry August and Friedrich Wilhelm had married women named Caroline. But which was the Baker?

I found a copy of the marriage record of Henry Holzgrafe to Caroline Baker in the notes my mother provided me. So, who was this other Caroline, the wife of Friedrich Wilhelm? After a ton of research on the matter, I found her maiden name to be Kahle, a family from the same town in Germany as Henry August and Friedrich Wilhelm.

But then something else didn't seem right. Baker? Really? That's not a very German name and all the records I found indicate that Caroline Baker-Holzgrafe was born in Germany. Additionally, I couldn't find any evidence of a Baker family to which Caroline might have belonged in Evansville. So, I looked at the marriage records of their children and found some more interesting information. Some of them listed Caroline's name as Caroline S. and others Caroline Schnake and others  just Caroline. Schnake? Well, at least it's more German. In fact, when Henry August and Friedrich Wilhelm first arrive in Evansville, they start up a brick laying company with a Schnute. This might have been a misspelling of the name Schnake. After a little more research in Evansville and in Germany, I was convinced that Caroline Schnake married Henry August Holzgrafe, but where did Baker come from?

I put the matter to rest for a long time. My parents were kind enough to go on a trip for me to Evansville last summer and they brought me some useful information for my research. They tried helping with this mystery, but they were only able to bring back the marriage record of a Peter Baker to a Caroline Schnake, but they were married on the same day as Caroline Baker and Henry August, so it couldn't have been the same Caroline. In fact, I had stumbled upon this record before and had considered it, but ruled it out because of the date conflicts.

Well, today I thumbed through some old documents I have and found these two marriage records and looked at them carefully. They are both signed by the reverend A. Saupert of the Trinity Lutheran Chruch in Evansville, Indiana. The dates that are the most obvious are 9 september 1850, but then I read carefully. "Be it further remembered, that on this 9th day of September 1850, the following certificate was filled in my office..." This was only the date for when this document was filled out. I looked at the marriage of Peter Baker to Caroline Schnake and just after that statement it reads, "This certifices that I joined in marriage as husband and wife Peter Baker and Caroline Schnake on the 5th day of June 1850." Looking at the marriage record for Henry Holzgrafe and Caroline "Baker" it says the same thing, but with the date of the 5th day of September 1850. BAM!

The Solution

In summary, it was found that Marie Caroline Louise Schnake (birth name in Germany) immigrated to Evansville, Indiana with her family around 1845 where she met and married a man by the name of Peter Baker on 5 June 1850. Then, for whatever reason, the marriage didn't work out or Peter died, but Caroline felt to remarry to Henry August Holzgraefe. They were married on 5 September 1850, but when they went to get the marriage license, they were required to provide proof of her previous marriage which she must not have had. Therefore, on 9 September 1850, what must have been a very frustrating day, Caroline had A. Saupert fill out a certificate saying that he married her and Peter Baker back in June and then she had A. Saupert sign another certificate the same day stating that he had married her to Henry August Holzgrafe a few days earlier. Game. Set. Match!

I guess the only mystery left would be to learn more about this Peter Baker. Who was he, where did he come from, and what happened to him? Other then that, the Caroline Schnake-Baker-Holzgrafe mystery is officially closed!

1800-1850: From Schweicheln to Evansville

A study of the history of the German States during the first half of the 19th century hardly leaves one to question why the Holzgraefe family would leave their Fatherland for a strange yet promising New World. It was a time of turmoil and uncertainty as the Holy Roman Empire, a collection of some 300 Germanic states, began its transformation into one single German nation state. The dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire seemed unavoidable by the 18th century. The Emperor was little more than the title itself. Each of the states had its own form of government which was very much independent of the Imperial agenda. Like a classroom of unsupervised children, wars and feuds between and within each of the states was common. This disorder couldn't have come at a worse time for the empire, for Napoleon Bonaparte had risen swiftly to power in revolutionary France and was on the move all across Europe defeating army after army.

On 9 September 1796, Albert Henrich Holzgraefe was born to Ernst Henrich Holzgraefe and Anne Sophie Heidemeier in the ancient farming community of Schweicheln, Herford, then an independent city within Brandenburg-Prussia and the Holy Roman Empire. The Imperial Abbey of Herford was secularized in 1802 and Herford was then annexed by the County of Ravensburg in 1803. In 1805, when Albert was only nine years old, his father died and according to the feudal laws of the time, Albert, as the second son, would not inherit the portion of the family farm which was his father's to give. Albert must have struggled with what he would do as he grew up working on the farm of his elder brother.

In 1806, Napoleon had successfully shut down the Holy Roman Empire for good and formed the Confederation of the Rhein in its  place with French nobelmen at the head of each German state.  Prussia, a large and powerful German state excluded from the Confederation of the Rhein contended for power in the Rheinland and joined the Fourth Coalition to stop the spread of Napoleon and the French Revolution. However, Prussia was dreadfully defeated by Napoleon's army and was forced to become a French ally. Additionally, Herford and a large portion of Northern Germany were ceded by Prussia to the Confederation of the Rhein in 1807 as the client state of the Kingdom of Westphalia.

By 1812, Napoleon had gained control over most of the continent, but his ambition for power proved to be his folly and he was forced out of Russia with what was left of the Grande Armée. Soon came his downfall and exile to the Isle of Elba. In 1815, with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the Congress of Vienna, the Kingdom of Westphalia became the providence of Westphalia within the Kingdom of Prussia, a part of the new German Confederation. 

One benefit from the Napoleonic Wars was the writing of a new constitution in Westphalia which made all male citizens of equal rights and liberating the serfs. What this meant for the Holzgraefe family, I still have yet to discover. In 1818, at the age of 21, Albert Henrich Holzgraefe left Schweicheln and his ancestral home and married Anne Marie Sophie Kassebaum on the 27th of May presumably in the Lutheran church of Bergkirchen, Minden, Westphalia about 12 miles to the north. They made their home on the north side of the Weihen hills in a small farming community called Haddenhausen. They were blessed with six children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Their children and their dates of birth are as follows:

Anne Catherine Margarethe Ilsabein *29 April 1819
Justine Wilhelmine Caroline *19 September 1821
Johann Friedrich *17 January 1824
Friedrich Wilhelm Conrad *18 October 1826, t 9 July 1827
Johann Friedrich Wilhelm *15 July 1828
Sophie Christine Karoline *23 September 1831, t December 1831

In March of 1840, Albert's wife died at the age of 44 and soon Albert's health wained as well. The Confederation of Germany experienced a period of ill health as well during this period as talks of revolution spread throughout the nation. For what reason he left, it is not known, but in the year 1845, at the young age of 19, Johann Friedrich illegally emigrated to America. How he managed that is still not known. The following year, after the death of his father, Albert, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm likewise emigrated illegally to America. In this time, German citizens were expected to request permission to emigrate. Failing to do so was illegal. 

Both brothers made it safely to Evansville, Indiana which they made their home. Johann Friedrich went by Henry August once in America and Johann Friedrich Wilhelm simply went by Friedrich. The sisters left behind must have had a difficult life all alone in such an unstable country. In June 1845 Justine Wilhelmine Caroline gave birth to an illegitimate son named Karl Friedrich. The father, Karl Dietrich Hartman doesn't seem to stick around and Justine Wilhelmine Caroline found herself raising a child with her sister. On 10 January 1847, Anne Catherine Margarethe Ilsabein married a man from Hille named Christian Friedrich Fegel. And in August of that year they were blessed with a daughter named Emilie Ottilie Fegel, however the new mother died shortly thereafter due to complications in childbirth. On 9 January 1848, a year after he married one Holzgraefe, Christian Fegel found himself marrying another. Justine Wilhelmine Caroline and Christian would raise their children together. 

In May of 1848, perhaps to escape  the revolution in Germany, Christian and Justine Wilhelmine Caroline boarded the ship called Franconia in the port of Bremerhaven and emigrated to America with their little children in toe. Sadly, little Emilie Ottilie died on the voyage across the sea. Christian, Justine and Karl arrived in the port of New Orleans on the 29th of May 1848 and made their way to join the Holzgraefe brothers in Evansville, Indiana. In America, the three Holzgraefes thrived and their descendants can now be found all over the country.