Help with a decision - is this my family or not?

hannover-l
1

Dear List,

I have to make a decision about a person that I have found and would like
your opinions if you wouldn't mind.

I've traced my Brockmeyer family back to Bippen in Hannover. I was able
to find 10 siblings of my great grandfather listed in the
confirmation/christening records in Bippen. I was then able to go back to research in St.
Louis, Missouri, and find many of those siblings living in St. Louis near my
great grandfather. I have found all but three of the ten siblings living
in St. Louis.

There are at least three distinct Brockmeyer families that came to St.
Louis in the early to mid 1800's. They are, so far as I have been able to
determine up to this point, unrelated to each other. But having so many makes
it very difficult since most of them had many children and they all seem to
have the same names.

To determine if a person I have found belongs to my family I have to find
where they came from in Germany. I usually have two opportunities to do
that. One is the church records and the other is the 1860 census. There was
an obvious German census taker in part of the city of St. Louis in 1860 who
wrote the town names for the families he did the census on. If you're
lucky, your family lived in that part of St. Louis.

The person I found comes from a marriage record for Gerhard Heinrich
Brockmeyer and Wilhelmina Christina Meierhoff. The marriage record states that
he is from Wibben, jurisdiction of Fuerstenau, Kingdom of Hannover, and she
is from Dissen, Kingdom of Hannover. I have seen Bippen written with "bb"
instead of "pp" on more than one occasion so that doesn't really bother
me. The "W" instead of "B", however, does bother me. If it's possible that
"W" is pronounced like "V" than I think it might not be too much of a
stretch to say this is one of my guys. If the recorder of the record heard
Vibben instead of Bippen....is that too much of a stretch?

I have been unable to locate a town named Wibben in Germany. I've found
Wibbe and I found something called "the Wippen" but it doesn't seem to be a
town.

The 1860 census confused me at first. At the very end of their line where
the place they came from is listed there is a "}" covering both lines.
Usually that means what is written is for both. The census says Furstenau,
Osnbk on his line and Dissen "do" on hers. The "do" means repeating what is
written above. So, at first I thought it was saying that they were both
from Dissen, Furstenau, Osnabruck. But later, after I found a chart on a
web page, I realized it was saying that he was from Furstenau, Osnabruck, and
that she was from Dissen, Osnabruck.

The chart I found is on this page:
_Osnabrück - Wikipedia(district_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osnabrück\_\(district\) )

If this chart is accurate I don't feel that it is a stretch to say that he
could as easily be from Bippen in Furstenau as opposed to Furstenau in
Furstenau. (Does that even make any sense?)

Now, normally at this point, with a matching birth date and name, I would
be pretty sure that this man belongs in my family and I wouldn't have too
many reservations about it. There are a couple of additional problems,
though, and that is why I am unsure. I have only been able to find his birth
date by calculating it from his death date and age given in years, months,
and days. (Those calculations have usually not proven to be very accurate
in the past.) His birth date calculates to 5 Sep 1823. He consistently
gives his age in every census as being born about 1823. However, the closest
match I have to that is Hermann Heinrich Brockmeyer born 5 Oct 1825. Only
the actual day is a match. :slight_smile: The month being off by one doesn't even
bother me all that much, really. But two years off on his birth
date...consistently?

The youngest of these siblings came to America when he was three years old
with a family named Laging because his parents were both deceased. That
would have been in 1842. I guess I've just wondered if his parents were
both deceased when he was relatively young if it is possible he really thought
he was two years older than he really was. He did have a sister born in
1823 but she died in 1840.

I hope I haven't been confusing. I really think this man is part of my
family but I just cannot be positive and there isn't any hope of any
additional help. I'm stuck with the facts as they are and just really have to make
a decision.

I would really appreciate any insights you might have.

Janet S.

2

My great-grandfather was orphaned and told the Civil War
pension board that "no one ever told me when I was born."
He wrote to a cousin in England and that cousin had died. He
wrote to the cousin's brother and said "Your brother Charlie
always told me he was five years old when I was born. Do you
know when Charlie was born?" The other cousin knew his
brother's birth date and answered -- and my grandfather learned
he was a year older than he had thought .... not just 66 but 67 -- so applying for the over-65 pension was legit! The cousin's
letter did it for him!

But he still didn't have a day.

When it seemed to become important in the USA he just used
the day of his arrival in New York (May 26) and added the year
he guessed -- which he then learned was a year later than his
actual birth. You know, they all did the best they possibly
could with the information they had, but it was often very
scant information and the German and Greek alphabets were different
and English spellings were different and many immigrants
had only a year or two of school or no schooling at all, and some
census takers couldn't understand what the immigrants were saying
because they had accents and other census takers were hard-
of-hearing and not letting anyone know that -- so just love them all
for what they have left for us -- and try to understand how things
have changed and how fortunate the sacrifices they all made have
changed our own lives for the better!

Dig in, keep working on it, check out the first best and then the second
best of your ideas -- and remember, the fun is in the hunt!

3

Hi Janet:
   I wouldn't throw out the "W", but it does give one something to think
   about. Idiosyncrasies in speech and hearing can lead to weird
   spelling.
   An example is that my GM and several of my Aunts were baptised by the
   same pastor in Hanover Township, Crawford County Iowa. He was
   Germanand could only speak passable English. The baptismal records
   have three different spellings of our surname. He may have been in a
   hurry or maybe trying to spell our name as he thought it would be in
   English. As a German immigrant, as were my GF & GM who had a German
   surname, one would have expected him to be more precise in his
   spelling.
   Gale