Cause of Death

Something that has struck me as very interesting for some time now is the timing of the deaths of brothers Ernst (1764-1805) and Otto (1760-1803) Holzgraefe of Schweicheln. In writing a history of the family, I have been looking at the contemporary history of Europe as well. Just after the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte rose swiftly to power becoming First Consul in the new French government before becoming an Emperor. The Napoleonic wars began in 1803 and ran until Napoleon's ultimate defeat in 1815. Much of the wars were played out on battle fields in the Holy Roman Empire (modern Germany) between the French and the Austrians, Prussians, and Russians. My theory was that Ernst and Otto may have been killed as a result of these wars! In 1807 after the deaths of Ernst and Otto, the French client state of the Kingdom of Westphalia was organized which was the precursor to the modern German state of Nordrheine-Westphalia. It was ruled by none other than Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte. Schweicheln was located within this territory which lead me to believe that Napoleon's forces suppressed this area which may have resulted in the death of the Holzgraefe brothers!

So, I decided to find out for sure. Some time ago I was asking for help translating a German record up in Salt Lake City's Family History Library. The consultants there are very good at what they do. It takes them seconds to read what it would have taken me hours to decipher. One consultant recommended a website for help in translating causes of death:

http://antiquusmorbus.com/german/german?.htm

The "?" should be replaced by the first letter of the cause of death (I haven't gotten "y" to work yet). So, I looked up the death records which have been posted on Ancestry.com to see if they might reveal how these brothers died. I found a column on the record which didn't seem to list a place, date, or name so I assumed that this might be the cause of death. After a few minutes of searching using this website as a tool I found it! Ernst had died at the age of 41 of Brustkrankheit and Otto at the age of 43 of Brustfieber! Brustkrankheit, which literally means "Breast Disease", probably meant Tuberculosis and Brustfieber (Breast Fever) probably meant Pneumonia.

So, here I am thinking of all these amazingly historically associated causes of death that would really connect my ancestors to the big picture when in reality...they died of simple preventable diseases by today's terms. It turns out, there probably was no such struggle at all in this area of Germany during the Napoleonic wars. Most of the battles took place in Southern Germany, Austria, and Prussia. The actual battle which resulted in the Treaties of Tilst (ceding much of Prussia's territory to France as French client states including Westphalia) actually occurred over 1,000 Km from Schweicheln in today's Kaliningrad, Russia!

Prussia in 1807 (orange) and its territories lost at Tilsit (other colours).

I am currently taking an Immunology class as well as a Virology class at BYU and learning about these diseases makes me glad to be alive in the 21st century! Ernst's son, Albert (1796-abt. 1845), moved from Schweicheln to a town called Haddenhausen in a different parish, so I do not as of yet have his death information. Albert's son, Friedrich (1828-1867), died at the age of 39 of Diphtheria, a perfectly preventable disease by today's standards. The Diphtheria vaccine was invented in the 1890's just a few decades after his death. Friedrich's son, Henry Louis (1859-1929), lived to the age of 70 and died of "Chronic Nephritis and Myocarditis" (a heart attack) as it states on his death record in Oregon. Henry Louis' son, Wesley (1889-1973) lived to the age of 84 and died in California of "Rheumatic Heart Disease, Atrial Stenosis, and Congestive Heart Failure". Wesley's son, Perry (1921-1994) - my grandfather lived to the age of 72 and died of "Coronary Artery Disease and Miocaridial Infarction" (a heart attack).

So, it seems that I have a genetic predisposition to heart attack, but I should be fine until about 70 or 80. I'm so grateful to be living in this day and age when medical advances can prolong lives up to twice as long! Had Friedrich lived in today's world, he may have been able to live his life two times over! Also, please vaccinate your children!!! Many of the diseases which were lethal at such a young age back in the day are now nearly extinct or easily preventable. Next time you get a runny nose and a fever, count your many blessings! AND GET VACCINATED!!!! :)

Fegel Facts

Well, I'm back from my vacation to Brazil and I'm catching up in all my classes of my last semester here at BYU and I still find time to do some research on the side. I wasn't expecting to find anything, but I was fortunate enough to stumble upon something quite substantial for the Fegel branch of the family.

As a review, Christian Friedrich Fegel (1822-1865) was born in Hille very close to Haddenhausen where Albert (1796-1846), son of Ernst Holzgraefe (1764-1805), had moved to begin his family. Christian married Albert's oldest daughter, Anne Catharine Margrethe Ilsabein (1819-1847) and together they had a daughter named Emilie Ottilie Fegel. His wife died in 1847 and so he remarried to her younger sister, Justine Wilhelmine Caroline (1821-...spoiler alert! 1856). The two of them made their way to Evansville, but Emilie died at sea. They lived near my third great-grandfather there in Evansville and had many children...or so I thought...

I had previously believed that together Wilhelmine and Christian had seven children. Today, as I was randomly searching the internet for more information about the Fegel family, I stumbled upon this website which suggested something entirely different. This shows the marriage dates for three Fegels and their wives. A father, son and grandson. The last two coincided with what I had, but the first, was very different. The record was for the marriage of Christian Fegel to W. Ellermeyer on 6 March 1856. This didn't make sense initially. Christian would have been married to Wilhelmine Holzgraefe still. The more I looked at it, the more it didn't make sense.

Then I stepped back and looked at all the census records over the years which had Wilhelmine in them. I found that in 1850 she was 30, in 1860 she was 30 and in 1880 she was 53 (still haven't found the family in 1870). Now, census records are by no means a primary source and can be very inaccurate, but 10 years? That throws up a red flag. How can she be 30 years old in 1850 and 1860? Now that I was looking at it again, I remembered how weird that was when I first linked these records to her...then it all made sense.

Christian and Wilhelmine Holzgraefe were married in Germany, came to Evansville where they had two children after which Wilhelmeine died around 1856 (no proof of that yet). Then Christian married a third time to a Wilhelmine Ellermeyer in 1856 and they had five more children thus continuing the Fegel line, but not the Holzgraefe line.

So, what does this mean? It means that there are no living Holzgraefe descendants from the Fegel branch of the family as the one son of Christian who married and had children was the son of Wilhelmine Ellermeyer, not Wilhelmine Holzgraefe. This also leaves a few more questions to answer like, who is Wilhelmine Ellermeyer? and how/when did Wilhelmine Holzgraefe die? and where is she buried?

15th Cousins? I have a few.

I recently posted a question on Facebook inviting people to make a guess.

"If two people share the same parents, they are siblings. If they share the same grandparents, they are 1st cousins. If they share the same great-grandparents, they are 2nd cousins. If we assume that everyone has 2 children, how many 15th cousins could I have?"

Unfortunately, no one offered a guess, but you could imagine there would be guesses ranging from 1,000 to 100,000. The correct answer is that I would have 32,768 15th cousins. To give you some prospective, there are about 34,000 people living in Butte, Montana.

Butte, Montana: Pop. =33,854 (2013)

Now, this is also in addition to the 16,384 14th cousins, 8,192 13th cousins, 4,096 12th cousins, 2,048 11th cousins, 1,024 10th cousins, 512 9th cousins, 256 8th cousins, 128 7th cousins, 64 6th cousins, 32 5th cousins, 16 4th cousins, 8 3rd cousins, 4 2nd cousins, 2 first cousins, 1 sibling and a partridge in a pear tree! If we add these all up (including myself) there would be a total of 65,536 living descendants of my 14th great-grandfather who was born around 1500 AD in Schweicheln, Germany. That's about the same as the population of Missoula, Montana. 

Missoula, Montana: Pop.=69,122 (2013)

Now, that would only be for my generation when in reality we would need to include my living nieces/nephew's generation, my parent's generation, my grandparent's generation, and even some of my great-grandparent's generation. This number of living descendants very well could be upwards of 100,000 which is about the population of the state of Montana. 

Montana, USA: Pop.=1,015,165 (2013)

Now, that's assuming that everyone had exactly 2 children who survived to adulthood and had 2 children of their own. In reality many descendants did not live to adulthood, marry, or have children. Many others had up to 12 children! To allow for comparison, if we assume that everyone had exactly 5 children, my 14th great-grandfather would have 30,517,578,125 descendants! That's a little over 4 times the current world population! 

Earth (x4): Pop.=7,276,626,200 (4:14 PM)
Pop. x 4 =29,106,504,800

Perhaps 2 is a better estimate of the average descendants per person on our family tree. 3 would give 14,348,907 (about the size of Illinois) and 4 would give 1,073,741,824 (about the size of India). 

So, why is any of this important? Because with numbers like these, there's bound to be other cousins out there who have done research on their little branch of the family which I could never have hoped to find out myself. I haven't yet determined how much of the family tree I will cover in my book. I've contemplated writing several volumes; one for every major branch since 1700 on my side of the family and have a similar chapter in each about the "ancient" Holzgrafe family from 1500-1700. 

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.