Surreal Georgia

Words - Photo Challenge

If you are from Erie there is a name that must be familiar to you: Curtze!

There is the Watson-Curtze House, for example. All in all the Curtze family was very prominent in Erie and ran several companies. Their Erieite progenitor, Carl Ernst Frederick August Curtze, came from Waldeck, Germany, from a small town nearby where I live, which is called Korbach- This is where the stone is attached to an old wall in the center of the town. The first Erieite Curtze had two very famous brothers in Korbach, Dr. Louis Curtze, who was the brother Grimm of Waldeck, because he collected everthing about his homeland, also lots of stories and fairy tales, and Dr. Karl (also: Carl) Curtze, who was a minister of state and feformed the education system in Waldeck. It's his merit that even the poorest child in Waldeck got an education at school and he wrote a reading book for the pupils and made new curriculae. He also implemented the separation of church and state. These two men, Louis and Karl Curtze, twins, were the most famous people in Waldeck and they did a lot of good things for their country. So they are still well known and remembered and loved.

This is a memorial for the two Curtze brothers and for Dr. Leiß and Varnhagen, also two famous men in Waldeck.

Here you can read a bit more about them: There was their 200 year anniversary in 2007 in Korbach and it was a really big event! 

************************************************************************************************

Regular participants are:

• Ree
• Lisa 
• Taia

and me.

Feel free to join us!

 

Patti In The Watson-Curtze Mansion, Erie

This picture is in the Watson-Curtze Mansion in Erie. It's a family picture and it shows part of my Eriete family. There is Louis Albracht with his family, Frederick and August Albracht and the Mertens family, who are descendants of Louis' elder sister Wilhelmine. I had no pictures of them before and I am so glad that Patti knew that I use to talk often about my Albracht-family when she visited the museum. She remembered the name when reading it on this photo.

Thank you so much, Patti!

My Mother's Family Between Silesia, Prussia, Austria, Poland and Slovakia

It's a very old and mysterious story, the story of my mother's great grandfather Andreas. A story between war, desparation and glory, a story about a life lived incognito, a mystery we never completely solved.

I've been investigating what happened then for over 20 years now and contacted many of the descendants of the protagonists of the story. One of them is Count Praschma of Nuremberg. He was touched by this story and wrote about it in his family newspaper.

Here you can read the complete article he wrote: 

"Instead Of A Passport" 

And this is what I once blogged about it:

"A Mysterious Coat Of Arms"

I resposted these articles especially for my friend Ree.

 

 

 

Favorite Place (Photo Challenge)

 

 

You might ask: Is this really your favorite place!? Yes, it is one of my favorte places outside. If you walk along the cart track behind our house, which is confined by apple trees on both sides, you come to this hill with mighty and old beeches on it. Their branches reach to the ground so that you can sit under those beeches as if you were in a hut made of the leafs of the tree. And when you are sitting there you can overlook a wide area.

 

 

You can see the apple tree alley and our small village...

 

 

... or the rolling hills beyond the valley of the river Diemel....

 

 

... or the old, old volcano, the "Desenberg", how it is called and the small town Warburg at the horizon. Nature here is breathtaking, much more beautful than these pictures can show.

I have been loving this place since I was a little kid. Once, when I was 11 or 12 I was there with my friend Elke during a holiday vacation at my grandparents' house (Yes, at that time it wasn't my house, but the house of my grandparents. I sometimes can't believe it myself). We carved our names into the wood of the biggest of these beeches and you can still see our names there. This place was our hideaway and we used to stay there for hours every day. When the church bells were ringing we had to come home, which was at noon and at six o' clock in the evenings. Sweet memories...

 

 

I took a closer look for you, Lisa. This is our house (red arrow) and in the center of the picture you see this old volcano. It hasn't been active for a long period of time, since Tertiary to be precise. But geologists found out that there is still magma below the surface and that it can erupt at every time. Well, at every time means perhaps in 10000 years. Geolgists count in different periods of time than we usually do. - The volcano belongs to a system of volcanos which reaches until about Frankfurt south of us. I once wrote an article about the geology and archeology of this area, which you can read here. We also have volcanos near Cologne, which are still active but have been also quiet over a long period of time like the Desenberg. Read my article about them here. - On top of the Desenberg-volcano there is an old Medevial castle, which once belonged to the Knights of Spiegel, who are ancestors of nearly all famous and reigning European noble families with their kings and queens or dukes and duchesses. They lived there in the 14th century. Today the castle is a ruin and looks like this:

 

 

My favorite place inside the house is currently this: The veranda. Well, at the moment it's to cold to sit there, but I'm looking forward to the spring sun I can enjoy here sitting in the chair.

 

 

The third favorite place is of course my cozy bed! And hopefully it will look in our new old house like it looked like in the other house soon.

 

 

Another favorite place is an old graveyeard. But at this time of the year it is too cold to go there, so here is picture I took in summer:

 

 

These are the remains of a Medevial ghost town. When people moved away only the church and the graveyard remained. It's a quiet and idyllic place where you can sit and hear the birds sing for hours without a single person coming along.

 

******************************************************************************************

 Photo Challenge!

http://margareetaville.blogspot.com/

http://bustershouse.wordpress.com/

http://jayahrsblog.blogspot.com/

Traces

Another exercise Anna had to do for her arts lessons was to create something under the topic "traces". Anna chose a photo from the Edersee, which shows her with her ancestors. Indeed we were searching for traces when we were there, weeks ago. My grandmother's grandfather (!) Wilhelm Vesper was a teacher in one of the drowned villages in the lake. We don't have a picture of him, only his signature.

 

Here you see 6 generations of a family: Anna and a pic of me (about the same age Anna is today). We are the only surving on this collage. In the right corner there is an old pic how the place looked like where Anna is sitting. And at the bottom of the pic you see my father Georg Gutschank (the only man in this sequence), my grandma Anna Albracht (right side), her mother Karoline Vesper (left side) and in the middle the signature of Anna's great great great grandfather Wilhelm Vesper. I wish I had a picture of him!

I'm crying a lot today. A Flickr-friend, Eric, has lost his father last week. My own wounds are still too fresh. Sometimes it's hard to live on.

Adventures at Kassel

Anna is back for the weekend and she is not leaving before early Monday. But she also brought lots of assignments. So she had to plan a new use for a residential area in Kassel. The task was a bit surreal: Where there are forest or fields or meadows she had to pretend that there would be water, a lake or the sea. For me this was a silly task, because I don’t like to think about problems which aren’t real. But nobody asks me…and so we were in this residential area yesterday morning.

 

Very quiet area! Far away you can see my car parking at the left side.

      

Two of the few houses which are still int their original state.

 

Most houses were totally rebuilt.

   

This is the house of the elderly man who told us so many things about the residential area

It was very interesting. We took a lot of photos with Anna’s new camera and learned a lot about the history of this area, because all people who saw us taking pictures asked us what we are doing. And when they heard about the purpose they told us lots of interesting stories about this residential area.

One elderly man didn’t let us go for a half hour and told us stories of his childhood, but also about an old shelter nearby. He also told us that his mother’s playmate of her childhood was the mother of Bruce Willis and that two cousins/uncles? of Bruce Willis have had allotments just opposite the house he lived in. He told us that his house was damaged by a bomb in 1943 and that only one half of it survived. We had to got with him to the cellar, where he showed us the interface between the old walls from about 1920 (this was when the residential area came into being) and the newer walls when the house was repaired again.

 

Allotments nearby with a nice sculpture made by an artist

Later we visited the shelter. It is a pity that it is locked and nearly nobody knows something about its history and how it looks inside. I was very, very astonished when I googled today about such kind of shelter and found out that it was built for 8000 people! There was a repair plant for trains nearby and the man told us that there were also produced tanks where there is a train factory today (Bombardier today, earlier it was Thyssen and during the war it was Henschel). So this shelter was for the workers of the factory. We didn’t suppose that it is so extremely spacey inside. There are several stories in it!

 

So called Winkel-Shelter nearby

 

Construction plan of this type of shelter

Well, this was a nice day! In the afternoon when we were back home Anna and I planned what to do with this residential area under condition of water all around it. It was very hard getting detailed plans via internet (if you buy them at the land registry office it would have been 100 Euros!) and edit them so that they could be used for our purposes. But we managed a nice plan with the old shelter as a residential area museum and a gallery and perhaps a café and a multifunctional building made of steel and glass with apartments for seniors, a wellness-hotel, medical offices, a restaurant and café and several supplies for sports and healthcare, a cinema and a swimming pool. Indeed, all a bit surreal, isn’t it!? But later we found out that there is just a residence for seniors under construction in this residential area and that the inhabitants would like to have their own residential area museum, a café or restaurant and so on. Just what we planned…Funny!

 

Utopia...Kassel near the ocean!?

 

And this is how the building could look like (from Anna's excursion to Denmark and Sweden two weeks ago).

Well, let's get real again!

***********************************************************************************************************************************************

P.S.: Mary, Jim, and Doro! I'm thinking of you. At the moment I can't manage writing any emails, just too much work.... Times will grow better and then I will be back like before.

Some Joy In My Grey World

I'm sorry that you all didn't hear much from me the last days, but I just stole a little time only for me. Last Wedenseday and today Anna and I decided to have sort of an adventure we formerly often had together. It was the first time within two years we escaped for having some fun together by visiting some archeologic sites. And this time it was the Edersee-Atlantis.

Here are our pics and I hope you enjoy them, too.

On Wednesday we visited first of all  Berich, because my great great grandfather lived there his first years as a teacher and his wife's family was from this village. We tried to find the school house, because we wanted to bring back a stone of the house. The ruins may not be as impressive as you might have supposed, but after nearly 100 years there hasn't survived much. And don't forget: The soldiers blasted all houses before the water came in 1914. And what wasn't blasted, was removed earlier to be recycled in the new houses of the inhabitants, who mostly moved to the village Neu-Berich in 1912. So the village Berich must have been already a ghost town for two or more years when the water came. Because the houses were half timbered houses and because they couldn't build cellars on the rocky ground only the shapes of the houses survived. And unfortunately the school house was buried under the masses of blocks from the blasted church remains. It was the only house which was buried and which couldn't be seen any more. Anna and I were a bit disappointed therefore. Another fact also seemed very strange to us: We found no metal pipes apart from one leading out of a huge stone sink. What has happened to them? Maybe they were valuable and removed to use them all elsewhere? I don't know. The ramains were like what we expected to find: Stones and roof tiles, and a lot of shards of the brown and grey pots, which were in use at that time and a few shards of plain white porcelain, maybe from soup plates. O, and I found a flint stone. Because there is no natural flint stone to be found in this area, I suppose that people in the Stone Age had used it. Everywhere in Waldeck you can find these flintstones. They are very common, which means that this area must have been the home of people of the Stone Age already.

   

Map of the old village Berich

 

remains of the part of a house with a step of sandstone

  

Debris with a part of a door

Berich looked like this shortly before the water came. The houses were burnt and blasted. In the foreground you see a corner stone which is from the old school  house. It is already broken down.

And this is the same corner stone peeking out of all the big stones from the church, which fell over the remains of the school house.

 

Old village street

 

Anna had a bad migraine and rested a bit.

 

View from the place where the old school house stood.

 

On our way back

 

Old huge water basin with my shadow. This was the only place where we found a short metal pipe.

 

View over Berich

 

Finds of Berich: Roof tile, part of a concrete floor, white porcelain, shards of the typical brown pottery all farmers had in their kitchens, bone of a cow or a pig and some brown glass.

Later we drove to Asel where the old Eder bridge survived. It wasn't as spectacular like we hoped. The old houses in the side valley of the Eder still could be seen as small rectangular piles, but the village must have been extremely small, so it was not very exciting. The muddy ground of the lake covered the old ground in a thick layer. Well, and we walked over the bridge which is still in a very good state. You could still use it also for cars, because it is stable and not damaged in any way. But it was not a great feeling. It was like walking over a normal bridge elsewhere.

 

Not much to see where there was the village of Asel...

 

Bridge across the Eder near Asel

 

The river Eder today

Today our adventure was really gorgeous. This time we visited the former village Bringhausen. The weather is like silk as we say here at us: The sun is shining brightly, but the air is fresh and crispy with a touch of the near fall. Awesome, I love this kind of weather. This time the ruins we found were very, very interesting and we also found a lot of remains we took home like old iron tools and nails, porcelaine in different colors or with gold border and milk glass from lamps or expensive wine glasses. Bringhausen must have been the biggest of the three villages and we managed to walk until the shore line. The bridge however was already under water again, so we couldn't get closer. We also found remains of a former iron production in the village, which wasn't unusual, because the rocks around the Eder are full of iron ore and the Eder deliverd the needed water power to run the little plants. We also found very interesting cellars under the floors of the houses. - The excursion was a bit muddy. When I tried to help Anna not to step into the mud I stepped into it until the ankle of my feet myself, because my heavy backpack tore me backwards. Ha! How funny. We laughed and laughed about my mishap and my muddy foot. I must say the mud smelled very fishy and so did my foot. Ugh! But it was our best day since a long, long time and I'm very sad that it is already over. I can't understand: Why didn't I become an archeologist? This all is so extremely interesting to me. I don't want back into my daily life. I wish I could stay there and have another little adventure.

 

Herringbone pattern of an old barn floor

 

View down from Love Island

 

Medevial walls at Love Island; there was a castle in ancient times.

 

Rocks and trees at Love Island: The trees look like bonsais.

 

My muddy shoe...

     

Blasted bridge

   

Remains of old fruit trees everywhere in the gardens of the houses

 

Again the bridge

 

Old cellar filled with loads of mud, two tyres and a shovel

 

Some of the houses were already under water again.

 

Anna

 

It is so beautiful here! The seagrass is incredible green.

 

Must have been an old chimney

Now I'm sitting in the afternoon sun on our terrace, my foot is smelling fine again and I'm going to wash and sort our finds. I can't go on like I did the last years, only working, working, working. I uregently need some adventure from time to time and this was one of my best!

 

The Castle of Waldeck high above the Edersee

Good bye beautiful Edersee! We will come back very soon!

*********************************************************************************************************************************

Pictures: All taken by Georgia; all rights reserved

For more pics look at Flickr tomorrow!

The Crypt

Wethen, oldest part of the village

It is very likely that Abbot Sturmius from the monastery of Fulda in Hesse was the first missionary who brought Christianity to Wethen, a small village in the Dukedom of Waldeck and at that time in the land of the Saxons, after Charlemagne conquered the land. Sturmius founded the church district of Horhusen, which belonged to the famous monastery of Corvey in Hoexter. This was in the year 826.

The Monastery of Corvey in Höxter

People say, founder of the village Wethen was the knight Udo of Wethen, who built a castle with a chapel there, but this is not true. The village is much older and when Udo of Wethen built his castle at about 1200 the village was already at least 600 years old. Wethen belongs to the oldest villages in this area and came into being at about 600 when the Saxons settled down for the first time. The castle is gone since a long, long time and there can only be noticed a little hill on which are today the oldest half timbered houses of Wethen like the old town hall, the old school, a little square, the old cemetery and of course the church.

Pictures: Old school; town hall; painting of the church yard; path through the town hall

The chapel of Udo’s castle survived. It is still below the floor of the today church, which is from 1811 in it’s main parts. The entrance to the chapel is at the right side, outside the church: Steps are leading down to the crypt, which is now mostly subterranean. Formerly the ground was much lower, so the chapel was of course overground. But the debris of the centuries let a hill come into being at this place, which buried the old chapel. The church tower is partly also from 1230 like Udo’s castle, so it is almost 800 years old.

Pictures: Crypt; church tower

But 1230 doesn’t seem to be quite correct, because already in 1225 services were held in this church by the priest Bertoldus. In 1361 Conradus is named, in 1378 Detmar Gockenius and in 1450 Dethardus Royde, all priests. If Detmar Gockenius has something to do with the later family Gocken is not known. The entire Gocken-family is extinguished in 1642 because of plague and accidents. But back to the church history. There are priests named since 1225: This means that already at these early times the church of Wethen was not only a castle chapel any more, but as well a church with vicarage and parish for the entire settlement of Wethen. The last Catholic priest in Wethen was Joachim Grimpe from the nearby town Warburg, who lived in Wethen in 1539. Since 1295 Wethen belongs to the Counts of Waldeck. Count Philipp III. of Waldeck died in 1539 and his son Wolrad II. took over the county together with his mother Anna Duchess of Kleve. At that time the church of Wethen had 29 acres of farmland for the supply of the vicarage. During Reformation the Dukes of Waldeck became Protestant, so also Wethen and it’s church became Protestant. The first Protestant pastor was Heinrich Gockenius in 1555, then Werner Genten followed in 1563 and later his son Werner Genten jr. became also pastor in Wethen. From 1614 – 1620 Walter Brunsheim overtook the office. Teacher Johann Heinrich Degen from Korbach followed after Brunsheim’s death in 1621. He wrote a letter to the Count of Waldeck in 1625:

„ I had to overcome a lot of awful incidents since I’m reverend at this church. Nobody can imagine how often soldiers tied and hit me, punched me around and chased me from one place to the other. How often they took all my possessions, so I don’t have a single piece of bread in my house, I have neither a spoon, nor a plate, a single shoe on my foot, nor something to dress or a hat on my head! They forced me to watch several cruel executions. It’s incredible what I had to experience at this place! I can’t tell it all. How often I couldn’t protect my wife and my children! They were much too often in ganger and poverty and they had to flee to strange people who hosted them in their houses. If my children would survive me they would be very poor children and orphans without a place to live, because I left my comfortable house at Korbach to come to Wethen.“

Murder, terror and theft and all bad deeds you can imagine were common at the time of the Thirty Years'  War. And as if this was not enough also the plague raged between 1625 and 1636. Half of the inhabitants or more died of violence or diseases and the survivors lived in decayed houses not able to till their fields, because their weren’t enough horses or because there was nobody left from the family for helping with the work, or because the seed was destroyed or because they didn’t dare to go outside because of violent soldiers and bandits. But the village and the church also survived those times.

Pastor Degen invented the very important church records in 1621. Since this time we know about all births, deaths and marriages and also about a lot of incidents in the village he remarked in the books. So a lot of knowledge about our ancestors we owe him. After Pastor Degen there followed a lot of reverends we all know by name, but I can only list a few of them in this article.

Georg Wilhelm Theodor Schotte was one of the most modern reverends of Wethen. He built the today church, collected 3000 Talers for the poor and vaccinated his children with his own hands against pocks to convince the inhabitants of Wethen to vaccinate their children, too. And last but not least he developed the growing of fruit. Pastor Schotte died in 1832 and his son overtook the office.

 

New cemetery

Right side: Cross of Pastor Cuno 

Old cemetery

On August 1, 1936, Reverend Friedrich Wilhelm Cuno followed. He confirmed my father. He and his wife are buried on the new cemetery of Wethen (the „new“ cemetery is from 1863 and outside the village). I still remember the grave with a big cross made of stone. The grave is gone, my father is buried quite near the place, but the stone is still standing at the edge of the cemetery. I hope that they won’t destroy it. In Germany graves are mostly flattened after 30 years, sometimes after 50 years. There are mostly no older graves to be found on German cemeteries. I don’t like this practice. So also the graves on the old cemetery near the church are gone today. What a pity! But when I walk on the lawn of the old cemetery I always feel sort of being at home, because I’m walking over the remains of all my ancestors who are buried there since more than 1000 years. And when the church bells are ringing I always feel deep peace, knowing that we all, my ancestors and I and my descendants are at the same place following the same paths, since over 100 years, all being only small wheels in God’s plan. A plan we will never understand, but a plan that will lead us through our lives if we only let him guide us. And every generation will follow this way, again and again. This is a peaceful thought for me.

Altar and pulpit

 

Ceiling with God's eye

But let’s go back to the construction of the church: It’s Romanesque and it was devoted to the apostle Paulus. In 1811 the old roman nave had to be broken down, because it was too unsound. Reverend Schotte called carpenters and constructors of the nearby area, who built the today church upon the old sandstone walls. The church was finished in 1812. The construction cost 1055 Talers. In the middle of the ceiling the sculptor Valentin from Arolsen formed God’s eye. There can be read: „God sees and judges all.“ Very special is the altar. The picture of Jesus with the 12 apostles is very old and valuable. On the pulpit over the altar the names of HENRICUS DEGEN PASTOR (reverend), CASPAR HAURANDT and DANIEL MEUSER are engraved. The three names are a reminder to the reconstruction of the church in 1638 when ranging troops of the Reformation War profaned the church. In 1958 a heating system was constructed and the crypt was opened again. The roof of the church tower is from 1823. In the beginning the church of Wethen always had three bells, but one of them busted in 1709 during the interment of Tigges Wetekam. In 1857 another bell busted. After buying new bells in 1917 three of the at that time four existing bells were melted into weapons. Since 1922 the today three bells with a wonderful sound are placed in the tower.

Friedrich Wilhelm Cuno, Reverend; * September 13, 1869, Hirzenhain, + November 12, 1939, Wethen; married to Hedwig Kraus

Johann Heinrich Degen, married to Agathe Krome (+ Nov. 15, 1656, Wethen),

Reverend. Johann Heinrich Degen jr., * Korbach, + Sept. 9./10., 1664, Wethen, more than 80 years old, Reverend; married to Ottilia, + April 7, 1652, Wethen; 8 children

Heinrich Georg Schotte, Reverend, * Sept. 30, 1727, Mengeringhausen; + Oct. 29, 1787, Wethen; married on Feb. 5, 1754, Thalitter, to Florentine Elisabeth Rhode; * Nov. 5, 1735, Thalitter, * Nov. 1, 1817, Thalitter; 10 children; their grandson Hermann Adolf Reinhold Schotte, * Nov. 27, 1835, in Wethen, went to America in 1853.

*********************************************************************************************************************************************

Source:

• Ortssippenbuch Wethen

Pictures:

• Photos taken by Georgia, all rights reserved
• Corvey: Public domain
• Painting of Wethen: Georg Gutschank, all rights reserved
• Painting of the churchyard by my uncle, all rights reserved

A Closed Chapter

Sometimes things change quickly!

Two days ago I was still searching for my ancestor Johann Friedrich Albracht and I have been searching for him already about 5 years with no results. I wrote about him and my investigations in „The Big and Dirty Deal“: He was sold by the Prince of Waldeck to serve in the English army against the Americans in the American Revolution. First I thought, that he was dead, because in the church-records of his home-village Wethen where there was remarked that he was shot in America. But later I found a book in which a Johan Albracht is listed as having deserted to New Brunswick and having changed his name into John Albright.

Hessian soldiers in British service

I was convinced that this was „my“ Johann Albracht, because Albracht with an „a“ in the second half of the name is a very, very rare name. There are only three family-stems in Germany with this name: One in Mecklenburg (Baltic Sea) and two nearby in Waldeck (my family) and in Bueren, which is only a few kilometers away. It might be that the last two stems once have been one stem, but this must have been before 1600, because the Waldecker family is Lutheran and the Buerener family is Catholic. But because the church records usually don’t begin much earlier than 1600 this can’t be proved. But back to the topic!

Because the name „Albracht“ is extremely rare I must think that I had found him, but couldn’t prove it, because of lacking data. The day before yesterday I found someone at the message boards of Ancestry, who was looking for John Albright in New Brunswick and his descendants. So I also wrote a message. It happened what I wouldn’t have expected ever: I instantly got an answer! The very, very friendly message said, that John’s real name wasn’t Albracht, but Albrecht with an „e“, which is a very common name in Germany. And he told me in a very detailed way a lot of dates about this person, so it is proved, that he is not the person I’ve been searching for. Unfortunately such things with the incorrect way of writing surnames use to happen very, very often in the American records. You can never be sure, that the German names are written in a correct way. Also among the same family the way of writing often changes. This is a big problem working with old American records. The letter-combination „ie“, which is spoken in German like the vowel in „peach“, is often misspelled as „ei“, which is pronounced like the „i“ in „Mike“. Sometimes vowels are changed randomly like it happened with Albracht and Albrecht and so on. This makes all work with the old records difficult and uncertain. Sometimes you need a big amount of creativity to guess how a name might have been misspelled to find it in the archives. Enough words.... I was very thankful for this kind and long answer the person gave me on the message board. So I know now, that the trace to Canada is wrong and I need not search any longer in this direction. I was already close to upgrade my ancestry-account for having the ability also to search in the Canadian records, but it was about 100 Euros additionally; this is extremely expensive. So this answer prevented me of wasting a lot of money. Thank you.

But the best in this message was a list of links. And sometimes it’s like a miracle! After searching and googling for „Johan Albracht“ for such a long time without any results I found him after my first click! And this time it’s really him, because also his second name is remarked. The bad news is that he was really shot and that there are no descendants in America as I had badly had hoped for. My search has come to the end and this chapter of family-history can be closed now:

Waldeck deserters in Louisiana

Compiled by Johannes Helmut Merz + , Researcher and Historian

The names of Hessian-Waldecker soldiers who either deserted or died on the Gulf coast during the American Revolution

Abbrev: d. - died, des. - deserted, jd. - joined Spanish Army, N.O. - New Orleans, B.R. - Baton Rouge, A.R. - Amite River,

• Albracht, Johann Friedrich, d. at Pensacola 5.Nov.1779.
• Andre, Christoph(Christian) Ludwig, d. 8.Sep.1779 at Baton Rouge.
• Assmann, Johannes, POW at Baton Rouge, des. in Havana 5.Oct.1780
• Bangert, Jacob Johannes, d. 26.July 1779 in Manchac, Louisiana.
• Bauer, Friedrich, d. 8.Dec.1779 at Pensacola.
• Bauer, Georg, POW at Baton Rouge, des.2.July 1780, jd. Spanish army.
• Baumueller, Johann Andreas, d. 18.Oct.1779 at New Orleans.
• Becker, Jacob, POW at Amite River, d. 20.Oct.1779 at New Orleans.
• Behr, Johannes, d. 29.June 1779 in the hospital at Pensacola.
• ... and so on

(cited from: http://freepages.military.rootsweb.com/~bonsteinandgilpin/wd.htm)

There he is. Johann Friedrich Albracht died at Pensacola on November 5, 1779. And now I’m sure that it is really him because of the second prename which is mentioned.

So this is a summary of what I know until now: Johann was born in Wethen and baptized there on June 20, 1751. His parents have been Johann Christoph Albracht, who was „Zaunwaerter“, which must have been something like a surveyor, and Katharina Margareta Flamme. Johann Friedrich lost his father at the age of 10. Johann’s mother had 3 living children at that time. The oldest son was Anton Samuel, who is my great-great-great-great-grandfather; the second son was Johann Friedrich himself and the youngest child was Marie Christiane Albracht. Four other children had died earlier. In the year 1776 Johann Friedrich was forced to be a soldier in English service. He was 25 when he left his homeland forever. And he was about 28 when he died three years later at Pensacola on November 5, 1779. Also Colonel von Hanxleden died in these battles at Pensacola. It must have been a terrible slaughtering. By the way, greetings to Trina, who is a Californian descendant of the Hanxleden-family.

Spanish troops at Pensacola

I will try to find out a bit more about the battles at Pensacola, but my search ends here and I have to close this chapter of family-history.

******************************************************************************************************************************************************

Credits:

• http://freepages.military.rootsweb.com/~bonsteinandgilpin/wd.htm
• www.ancestry.com

Pictures:

• all Public domain

In memoriam Johannes Helmut Merz, who "taught the descendants of the Hessians to be proud of their ancestors" (as the webmaster of his site told me in an email)

60 Skeletons in the Middle of the Town

At the edge of the campus of the University of Kassel a new building should be constructed. It will be 200 millions Euros expensive. But now the work on the construction site can’t go on. Two weeks ago workers found human skeletons buried there. Until now 60 skeletons have been found. 18 young policemen and students worked from morning till evening to excavate the bones carefully without destroying valuable information.

In one area the skeletons are placed side by side, in another area only a few steps away it looks as if they were just thrown into a pit. The skeletons are mostly intact apart from the upper ones, whose skulls are broken. The police and the scientists suppose that the huge construction vehicles might have destroyed them by driving over them when they were only covered with a thin layer of soil.

Very special is the fact that there are no remains of clothes, jewelry, toys, shoes, items made of metal or simply buttons near the bodies. It seems as if these people have been buried totally naked. The teeth of the bodies are remarkably white and complete, so they have been young when they died. Among the bodies are only three women and no children. At the fence around the huge pit mostly a crowd of people can be found. Most of them are very quiet. They use to ask: „ Did they already found out, what people are buried here?“ Some of the people have laid down flowers at the fence and one of them has written a letter in which he wishes that the dead people might get a worthy burial and might rest in peace there.

Vivitur in genio, cetera mortis erunt. Translation: Our spirits will survive, all other is mortal. This is a picture from the famous anatomist Vesalius.

In fact, the most important question is now, who the dead people have been, why they died and if it may be a crime. Well it’s different from series like „Crossing Jordan“, the specialists in forensic medicine are trying to find out more about the time when these people have died, but it is very difficult. So a lot of theories have been made in the meantime, which all aren’t completely satisfying:

In the Middle Ages the burial place was directly in front of the city wall, so some people thought the skeletons might be the remains of soldiers who died during battles in front of the city walls. But this theory is obviously not right, because no skeleton shows any damages or defects which might have been the consequence of a violent death.

After the city walls have been broken down a sick bay came into being after 1800 at this place, which had to disappear because of an artillery-barrack with horse-stables in about 1870. The today found mass-graves are exactly placed under the barrack yard of that time. Not too far away there was a former cemetery and a military cemetery. Mostly people have been buried at these cemeteries. Only in some cases there have also been burials outside the cemeteries: Felons, suicides and unchristened people. But this stopped at the beginning of the 19th century.

Later the Henschel-locomotive-plant grew in the neighborhood of the mysterious gravesite and at some time it grew so big, that the barracks were broken down and new factory buildings came into being at this place. It is known that already at that time bones have been found there when new factory buildings have been constructed. Until March 1945 locomotives and tanks have been produced there. So some people supposed that maybe prisoners of war or forced laborers have been buried there. But there is nothing to be found in the archives, even though burying outside of cemeteries or even killing of 60 or more people never remains unnoticed. Two witnesses who spent their entire youth near this town-area deny any manslaughter at this place. They would have noticed that, because they grew up near the grave-site and they did a lot of research about this time and the town-history in common when they were grown-ups.

Other people believe that the skeletons are the remains of victims of the bomb attacks against Kassel. But in this case nobody would have removed their clothes before burying them.

Also other crimes during the last period of the war seem to be impossible, because the killing of people of such high number can’t kept secret and all known cases of murder have been punished after the war like the case of 78 Italians who have been shot because of theft of foodstuff. The murderers of the Italians have been punished after 1945. After WW II a car dealer constructed his shop there. Since then the skeletons have been buried 2 meters under the floor of this building.

The specialists in forensic medicine are now sure that the skeletons are much, much older than 50 years, so they are no victims of WW II and there is no need for the criminal investigation department to carry on their investigations. Because of the discoloration of the bones and the fact that no skeleton shows any dental treatment (before WW II only rich people could afford dental treatment) and because of chemical examination of the bones the grave site is no longer a place for investigations by the police.

But there is already a new theory of the historian Christian Presche. He believes that the bodies are victims of a typhus-epidemic, which raged in 1814 in Kassel. But nobody can make sure that the people are really died of typhus, because such diseases don’t leave any traces at the bones. But why are not children among the victims of such epidemic? Maybe they have been buried elsewhere? Presche has found an old newspaper article of 1866 in which reports about the epidemic in 1814:

Because a lot of troops came into the town in 1814, a very malicious kind of typhus raged in Kassel. Many inhabitants died at that time. Because the military-hospital of Kassel, the Charite, could not care for so much ill soldiers, a nearby barrack was also used as a military-hospital. Nowhere else have been died more soldiers than in this barrack. Because they couldn’t carry all bodies downstairs any more, they installed a huge slide at a window leading directly to a wagon, which transported the bodies to the cemetery on the area of the barrack. The victims have been buried totally naked.

So far the old newspaper article. This would match perfectly. It would be a plausible explanation for the age of the bodies (only young people) and for the fact, that only three women and no children are among them: The women might have been nurses. First they might have buried the bodies side by side with clasped hands in some of the mass graves, but when the disease raged more and more and after the construction of the slide for the bodies they were only thrown into a pit without any care about how they are lying there. Or the bodies have been removed later when there wasn’t enough space for new burials.

What shall happen now to the about 60 (or more) skeletons? In the juridical point of view these skeletons are no longer bodies, because they are older than 50 years. So the University is responsible for what will happen to the bones. At the moment it seems as if the University and the Community of Kassel will both feel responsible for the skeletons and it seems as if they will be bury them at the town-cemetery. Mayor Junge said: „They have been inhabitants of our town. We do have a historical memory.“ Because the police is no longer responsible for further investigations about the death of these people, the University will take over further investigations. And there will be a memorial for these people in the new building of the University. The burial will already been next week as I read in the newspaper.

Watch this video about the work on the grave-site. You needn't understand German, just look: 60 skeletons found near the University. Click here for pictures.

Because of the copyright I don't have I can't show you any pictures here at my blog. So you may use the links for pictures and videos.

******************************************************************************************************************************

Sources, Links:

• http://www.n-tv.de/909357.html
• http://www.hna.de/kasselsolobig/00_20080125195500_Skelette_werden_beigesetzt.html
• http://www.faz.net/s/Rub77CAECAE94D7431F9EACD163751D4CFD/Doc~EB6B7D3A95C5D4EB3B0DA8254DA4DA89D~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html?rss_aktuell
• http://www.pr-inside.com/de/raetselraten-um-kasseler-skelette-r405025.htm
• http://www.presche-chr.de/index.html
• http://www.presche-chr.de/christian/Skelettfund.htm

Picture: Vesalius; skeleton; public domain