Dear gutt morgan,
as my anchestors were sheperds and musicians as far as i could find them back and
they had the same name as I, perhaps I can help a bit another time.
At first during since the middle age up to about 185o the landscape "L�neburger
Heide", all places you told me belong there to, had shortness of trees. That was
needed in L�neburg for getting the salt out of salt-water and on the baldness gr
especially the Erica. These places were not useful for other beasts than sheep.
That`s the reason why you find so much shepherds in the parish books.
Where there have been monasteries, these had often their own flock and for that
theier shepherds. In the villages the shepherd had to keep care of all sheeps of
the village people, as there were also herdsman for pigs and cows. The places
were the different herds and flocks were kept and nourished were first common
places of the village, what was not valid for the farms. These were led on own
account of the "H�fner, Halbh�fner" , but belonged to the "Grundherr", to whom
had to be paid for the lend. In social hierarchy, the shepherds were beyond this
peasants. But nevertheless they were part of the community and stayed in the
village. So they didn`t have to turn around the country looking for new existence
and frh nourishment for sheeps. Everywhere they could go, they would have come
upon other villages and shepherds. So things were regulated by the possibilities
inside the borders of a village. It may be of that reason, that there are so many
documents in the archives. Everything had to be regulated. The developemnet went
to more individualisation. So the common property of the village was given up and
everyone cared about his own horses cattle, pigs, and sheeps. For everyone tried
to earn his living by peasantry, the sheep ground was more and more used for
woodproduktion, grain etc. So the shepherds became less and had to look for other
professions. For example mine became musicians, others peasants. The whole
differentiation of tailors, shoemaker, slaughter increased. Between 1820 and 1840
the common used places came to an end. There were build new farms into these
former area, whereever it seemed possible to keep a new farm alive.
So that`s in short form the developement, which is in the concrete cases and with
it�s changes over the hundreds of years much more complicated. As there were no
idea of love-marriages in the country people, everyone looked to keep his stan-
ding in the village. The rich peasants did not marry to the poor peasants and so
on. So that doesn`t mean, that there was no vertical change at all possible. But
that took work of generations, later on because of increase of population there
were more people than traditional and grown positions in such villages. That was
the time of beginning migration.
I forgot to answer the question, if they could be landowners. Everyone was a
gardener in the village and kept as much beast as possible. But as you could not
buy the nourishment as nowadays it was limited to the possibility of producing
capacities in form from green land etc. If someone managed to get this by and by,
you`ll find them later one in registers with the "H�fner". I never found
something similar for the shepherds in form of guilds as there has been
for craftsman.
One word more to your "Twisselhop". I`m almost sure that that place is the
"Visselh�vede" I told you. The explanation is "Twisselhop" is just the
"plattdeutsche" word for "Visselh�vede". I was puzzling, because I wasn`t aware
anyware deep in the United States someone speaks this dialect. Tell me one day,
if I was right.
so much for today Hans Peter Albers