Reply :
28.10.06
Dear Falk
Thank you for all of this information. It pushes my family back two
generations in as many weeks.
I will send you my address by post, if I may.
I have been thinking about my ancestor, the son of Otto, who was
Heinrich Laurence Opperman, not Conrad.
He left to go to sea in 1800, and was recorded as travelling as
carpenter on three ships, one between London and Tanningen ( could that
be Tonning in Schleswig Holstein?) in 1800 , and two trips on board the
"Brothers" between London and to Bremen in 1801. I wonder if he
simply could not return to his homeland after the French occupation of
1803?
he then joined the East India company, and sailed to India. He left
their service after a rupture, aboard the "Comet" in 1811, and by then,
presumably Otto was dead, so maybe he chose to settle in London rather
than return. After all England and Hanover were ruled by the same king.
he would not need to have naturalised.
He married a woman some twenty years his junior in Whitechapel in 1819.
Terry