Hi Jane,
Thank you for the great information. Can I ask a favor of you? I wonder
if you have any knowledge what the Area South West of Hannover around
Marienhagen/ Weenzen Th�ste and Wallensen might of been like in the
Middle 1800's when so many emigrated to the USA and other places. I
guess I thought it was over crowding or political. I know Marienhagen had
a Kalk Quarry open up but it appears from my point that the terrain was
rough and probably much of it was grazing Sheep etc. Some where I have
an article written in 1748 stating it would take an hour to travel from
Deinsen and Marienhagen by foot or horseback.
From pictures I have seen I think you can see both villages not more than
a mile or so apart it looks.. Can you enlighten us?---Bob Marhenke
writes:
Hi Jane!
Like Bob, I have also wondered about the reasons my little band of
auswanderers left the Fatherland. It was a very orderly process - the male
children of my Great Great Parents left as soon as they were old enough (15
or 16) beginning in the late 1850's with Dad and Mom following a decade or
so later with their daughter and the youngest boys. Everybody came to St.
Louis.
My Great Great Grandfather was a forester and his job apparently took him to
several "duty stations" in the Kingdom of Hannover (Duingen, Welsede,
Deitlevsen, and Helfern (near Bad Rothenfelde) as he progressed through the
ranks (forestry was apparently a pretty complicated service). He finished
his career as a Royal Forester in Helfern from which he retired in 1870.
From what little I have been able to gather about them and their life (90%
speculation and 10% oral family history), I don't think they were
impoverished - the job probably paid pretty well for those days and I think
they had rights to lodging and maybe a tiny plot of land as a perk. I have
speculated that this was the time that Prussia was gobbling up parts of
Germany on its road to empire and Hannover was on its short list. I suspect
my Great Great Grandfather quit or was fired when the Prussian forest
service (which was a lot larger and even more complicated) took control of
the Hannoverian woods. I think he may have seen this coming a decade or so
earlier and decided his children would be better off in the New World
instead of trying to make their way in Hannover as children of a landless
civil servant in a state that was about to be destroyed.
I know you can't tell me if this is accurate but maybe you can comment on
whether this fabricated scenario makes any sense. Perhaps the answer can be found in the Saxon Chronicles.
Al in Music City