In response to Tim's request for a roll call, I thought I would submit an account of a trip that a cousin of mine wrote of a trip to Germany in the 1970's. Bill Borns was from Decatur, Adams County, Indiana, and he mentions many Decatur names in his account. He visited the Northern Germany area (Bersenbrück) where our ancestors who eventually migrated to Decatur were from. I spoke recently to Bill, and he said that much of the history in the account (including some of the "family stories") were also gained from his uncle who visited the same area of Germany in 1910. Therefore, I do not have sources for all the names and accounts, but it does make for good reading. There also may be misspellings, since this was translated from handwritten notes. Names Mentioned: Voglewede (also Vogelwedde, Vogelwede, Rüsse-Vogelwedde), Holthouse (Holzhaus), Meyers, Wëstmann, Kreke, Korfhaugen, Breckhaus, Höne, Borns Mike Egan http://home.fuse.net/egan/ http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/e/g/a/Michael-G-Egan/ Bersenbrück The Voglewedes, the Holthouses, the Meyers' and a lot of other Decatur families migrated in 1835-1845 to Decatur from two small parishes in lower Saxony, Bersenbrück and Ankum. Their land, up to 1648, was owned by the Catholic diocese of Osnabrück, the only large town nearby. The farmers and their craftsmen paid a tithe for their rent. The people were converted from heathenism quite late, 900-1000 AD. The parish at Bersenbrück has a church window commemorating its seven hundredth anniversary in the 1930s. About all that is left of the early times is a part of the wall of the Cistercian Abbey going back to about 1200 AD near the church. Common people did not have family names in those days; you were known as the daughter or son of a father or from a town or estate. I did not find any useful cemeteries for tracing families, although there may be some. This is not tourist country; there are no mountains, big rivers, castles or lakes. This is farm country with a lot of new small factories scattered around. The people are like the rural Dutch. They raised cows for milk and cheese, rye and barley for pumpernickel and beer, pasture and hay, and flax for linen. In the olden days, there was no wheat with a short enough growing season for this far north. Nowadays, cotton has just about killed the flax/linen industry. There still are dozens of good breweries. This is the land of the Grimm's Fairy Tales: Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltzkin, Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, the Piper of Hameln, etc.; also Roland the giant (statue in Bremen) and all kinds of dwarfs, gnomes and wicked witches. The big change came with the Reformation. The Church lands were gradually turned over to the political states, in this case, the dukes, kings, electors or whatever at Hanover and Oldenburg. The rents [sp?] rival faiths tried to get along. There were any number of churches which Catholics and Evangelicals (whom we call Lutherans) shared, some parts of Sunday service together, some parts separate. The kings and the generals, and sad to say, some of the bishops too, could not let things alone. The thirty-year war between protestant and Catholic states destroyed a large part of lower Saxony. There are very few buildings that survived this period. Records of family histories were completely interrupted. Finally, a sharp division of territory was drawn up in 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia. Of interest to us is that the line dividing protestants from Catholics runs right along the eastern edge at Vogelwedde. Everyone east of this line had to be Evangelical, everyone west had to be Catholic. The line is, of course, no longer a boundary between faiths, but it still can be seen as a weed overgrown canal running along the Vogelwedde estate. We came within a half mile of being Lutherans. A lot of them came pretty close to being Catholics. People started to go back into this country in the 1700s. The king of Hanover were also the king Georges of Great Britain. They killed most of the linen business with their cotton grown in America by slave labor. The Saxons switched to the extent they could to fruit trees, tobacco and of course, potatoes. Then came Napoleon and the French army. They changed the government completely. They are also blamed for the fever which was brought into this country about then which killed a lot of the cattle. They gradually had to develop new breeds of cows which were resistant to the fever. The last straw was the cholera, which struck in the 1820s. Unfortunately, many of the people who emigrated to America found the cholera here too, especially in 1847 & 1848. For most people the outlook was pretty bad. The oldest son always inherited the whole farm. The other boys could join the army, be hired hands or work in the coal mines. There was room for some in the church, in civil service, in skilled trades, in merchandising, and in teaching school. However the government was so restrictive that the economy could not grow and there were not enough jobs. Even some of the girls had to work in the coal mines. For the times prior to the 1800s, the people of Lower Saxony had always lived a relatively free and democratic life. Now they had essentially no say in their government and they lost all hope for more liberal laws. Millions left their homes and moved to new countries, Argentina, Brazil, Canada and of course the USA. After Germany was unified under a single central government, in 1871, things got much better for the Saxon people. The country was industrialized and very advanced social programs made them secure and prosperous. Then, of course, along came Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler. The oldest mention of the name Vogelwedde that I have been able to find is the poet Walther von der Vogelwedde. He came from Tirol, Austria, where there are still a couple of places named "meadow of the songbirds." This was back in about 1200. There is no record of Walther's family, but he was given an estate in Wurzburg which he called Vogelwedde. No one to my knowledge has connected our Vogelwedde ancestry with Herr Walther back to 1200 AD. My own theory is that our great great grandfather, Johann Hermann, who was a rather wealthy and educated man, liked the poetry of Herr Walther. After Johann Hermann purchased the estate in Bersenbrück, he named it "Vogelwedde," after the estate of Herr Walther in Wurzburg. He acquired a title, "Colon," and his wife became a "Colonnat [sp?] Johann Hermann's family name was Wëstmann -- and he was a well-off manufacturer of shoes, among other things. His wife was Maria Elizabetha Kreke. The family is still prominent in Ankum. Colon Johann Hermann Wëstmann von der Vogelwedde was ambitious to build a larger landed estate. He wanted his first son, Johann Gerhard Heinrich to marry another colonnat, Carolina Korfhaugen, who would inherit substantially. However, our great grandfather, Johann Gerhard Heinrich, was already involved with Maria Catharina Holzhaus, a landless commoner, but who was by tradition a gorgeous blonde. Johann Gerhard Heinrich refused to obey his father, married Maria Catharina, was disinherited and banished to American in 1840. They migrated to Decatur, where her brother Bernhard had already settled. Romance, huh! Old Groszpop would not be pushed around! Johann Hermann then pressured No. 2 son, Johann Anton, into marrying Colonnat Carolina Korfhaugen. They had to get a special dispensation, as they were cousins. This was of course, true also of Johann Gerhard and Carolina, her mother being a Kreke, probably. That's really keeping it all in the family. Johann Anton and Carolina's family was a disaster. Four of their five children died in infancy. A son, Johann August, lived for 48 years; he was a "waterhead." Johann Anton himself died suddenly, July 22, 1857, after he ate "spoiled fish" at a wedding in Löninzen. Carolina then married Johann Heinrich Albert Breckhaus in 1861 and Johann Hermann's estate probably passed to their heirs, although there were at least two other children of Johann Hermann and Maria Elizabetha; they may be the ancestors of the other Vogelwedde families in the area, such as the Rüsse-Vogelweddes. Enclosed is a picture which I took about 5 years ago of the main house at Vogelwedde. This is a fancy, four-story brick house, landscaped and everything. It replaced the older house in 1920. There are also two beautiful brick barns on the estate. The main house has an inscription on it, as do most of the fancy houses in this part of Germany. If you magnify it on the picture you can read it. Translated, it says, "The work by us, the blessings from God; this house built in the year of our Lord, 1920. Theodor zu Höne and wife Rosa, born Vogelwedde. · How to get there: >From Frankfurt -- Autobahn E-5 to Dusseldorf, then E-3, getting off at route 211 to Bersenbrück; or I think it is better to go on up the E-3 to Cloppenburg (see map enclosed) >From Hamburg -- Autobahn E-3 to Cloppenburg, going the other way · Where to stay - Bersenbrück is a relatively small city and its hotels are rather ordinary - Osnabrück is a city like Ft. Wayne and has hotels and motels - I liked best staying at Deckers Inn in Cloppenburg: magnificent breakfasts and good dinners. Fine beer but almost no English. - Remember, it is hard to find people around here who speak English · What to see - Vogelwedde: about 2 miles east on highway 214; beautiful four-story brick country house, gorgeous landscaping, with the inscription. No one was home when I was there. See the lovely brick barns. Go to the eastern boundary, where the weed overgrown canal once marked the reformation line. - Bersenbrück: the church where the Vogelweddes and the Holthaus were baptized, married and buried. Dont miss the Shrine of the Sorrowful Mother, to the right as you face the altar. Read the names of all the young men of the parish killed in World Wars I and II. About half of them are the names you are familiar with in St. Marys, Decatur, German spellings, of course. Note the church window which commemorates the 700th anniversary of the founding of the parish Note the crucifix on the main altar - the nails are through the outside of the church. There is the old convent and abbey wall and the Kreismuseum, the county museum. There is a lovely picnic woods across the river in back of the church. - Ankum - a town about 4 miles west of Bersenbrück, where great great grandfather Johann Hermann came from. Dont miss the Shrine of the Sorrowful Mother here also; more names you will be familiar with. If there is a Holyday while you are there, dont miss the celebration: bands, choirs, congregational marches around town, men and women dressed in formal clothes! Guns fired! - Cloppenburg Dont miss: Museumsdorf, the museum of the old village, a collection of 300 year old houses, barns, windmills, shops, etc. You can really see how people used to live. Also the old Baroque church in center of town, contrasted to the glitzy new church on the outskirts Also the high school, which has everything. According to tradition, Wesley Meyers grandfather was the mayor of Cloppenburg in the 1700s.