Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Ahnentafel #96 - (--?--) Erkmann

(--?--) Erkmann

Born: between 1762 & 1789 somewhere in Germany, I really don't think he was born in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany as there are no Erkman/n in that area in the extant records.  Possibly from Erkmannsdorf, Thuringia, Germany

Died: by 1862 - 1879 probably in Germany, but maybe not.  Did he migrate to U.S. with the family and die on the journey or after he arrived?  

Buried: Somewhere in Germany, could be in Hesse-Darmstadt. 

Married: by 1806 in Germany

Questions to Answer: 
  • Name?
  • Wife?
  • Children?
  • Occupation? - Soldier? Farmer? 
  • Military? - did he serve as a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars?
  • Religion? - most likely Lutheran
  • Lived? - Hesse-Darmstadt long enough to have a child there 1807
  • Migration? - did the family live in Thuringia up until about 1806 when things were heating up?  Or had they lived in Hesse-Darmstadt prior to that?
  • Nationality? I keep coming across Erkman/n in records that are Polish or have Polish connections.  Some of the entries below indicate a possibility of being Jewish.
Timeline:
1762 - born?
1772 - 10 years old?
1782 - 20 years old?
1789 - born?
1792 - 30 years old?
1795 - 1814 - German Mediatisation
1799 - 10 years old?  
1801 - Napoleonic Wars begin
1802 - 40 years old? - was our man a soldier? 
1806 - August 13 - Under the Confederation of the Rhine, Hesse-Darmstadt became a Grand Duchy and Louis X took the title Grand Duke Louis I / Großherzog Ludewig I - this is the guy that Jacob Erkmann swore that he had no further allegiance to when he became a citizen of the United States. 
  • October 9 - Battle of Schleiz fought 5 miles from Erkmannsdorf. Napoleon Bonaparte's troops against Prussia.
  • Holy Roman Empire dissolved
  • Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine organized - included Thuringia & Hesse north & south
  • IF the family lived in this area, did they leave b/c of the war? Thuringia borders Hesse. 
1807 - March 17 - son Jacob/Jakob F. Erkmann born in Hesse Darmstadt (according to US census records)
1809 - 20 years old?
1812 - 50 years old? 
1814 - March - Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated and exiled to Elba
1815 - June 18 - Napoleon defeated at Waterloo by Duke of Wellington
  • Congress of Vienna - settlement following Napoleonic Wars - rearranged European states.  Germany emerges as a unified state
1817 - son Jacob/Jakob 10 years old
1819 - 30 years old?
1820 - December 17 - As per the constitution of the German Confederation, Hesse-Darmstadt adopted a constitution and created a parliament.  Under the constitution local governments and courts became more standardized. Administrative duties were moved up or down the chain of command as needed. 
1821 - Burgermeister (mayors) were established for individual settlements and parish associations with at least 400 inhabitants. 
1822 - 60 years old?
1827 - son Jacob/Jakob 20 years old
1829 - 40 years old?
1830 - Louis II succeeded his father as Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt. He was in deep debt and expected the citizens to pay. 
1831 - son Jacob/Jakob age 24 md. Katherine Warner/Werner?
1832 - 70 years old? 
1835 - May 5 - grandson Jacob / Jakob Erkmann, son of Jacob & Katherine (Warner) Erkmann born in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany (according to US census records)
1839 - 50 years old? - died? reason Jacob left?
  • son Jacob/Jakob F. Erkmann took his family to the Unied States, settling first in Ohio.
  • did this person migrate with Jacob and die on the journey or on the boat?
  • no evidence that any of Katherine (Warner) Erkman's family migrated at this time.  She stated that she had no family other than her children in the U.S. at the time Jacob divorced her. 
1842 - 80 years old?
1849 - 60 years old?
1852 - 90 years old?
1859 - 70 years old?
1862 - 100 years old?
1869 - 80 years old?
1879 - 90 years old?
1889 - 100 years old? 

Notes / Leads:
Town in Germany called Erkmannsdorf or Erkmann's Village which makes Keenes, Illinois look positively HUGE! 

The following translated by google.
Location: The district of Erkmannsdorf is located on the edge of a hillside in the direction of the Saale valley. The areas of the former outwork are on a typical flat plateau in the south-eastern Thuringian slate mountains in a part of what is still known as the western Schleizer Oberland. In terms of transport, this settlement is well connected.

History:
  • The hamlet-like settlement was first mentioned on March 11, 1394.1
  • Neighboring towns are Crispendorf, Eßbach and Dörflas as well as Ziegenrück.
  • The "Agricultural Production and Sales GmbH Erkmannsdorf" has settled here.  [Looks like it's the big warehouses/barns out back of the "town."]
  • Erkmannsdorf was a district of the municipality of Crispendorf, which was incorporated into the city of Schleiz on January 1, 2019.
1. Wolfgang Kahl: Ersterwähnung Thüringer Städte und Dörfer. Ein Handbuch. 5., verbesserte und wesentlich erweiterte Auflage. Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2010, ISBN 978-3-86777-202-0, S. 71. - [Title in English: First mention of Thuringian towns and villages. A manual.] 

Location: Crispendorf is located in the center of the Saale-Orla district around 5.5 km west-northwest of the small town of Schleiz . . .  On the southern edge of the municipal area is the Wisenta dam, through which the Wisenta flows, with the Wisenta pumped storage plant. Geologically, the district of the village is located in the Southeast Thuringian Slate Mountains. These soils are very fertile due to the high proportion of fine soil and high humus content.

History:
  • The first documented mention of the place comes from the year 1290. The present place name has been handed down from 1383, it was written in 1401 "Krispendorff". The unusual name (probably) goes back to the name of Saint Crispinus, from 1503 this had already fallen into oblivion and one now wrote Kristendorf, also Christendorf.
  • The heirs to the Crispendorf manor were the Geldern family, who were raised to the nobility in 1846 as von Geldern-Crispendorf. In 1923 he managed the business with an area of 274 hectares. The estate was expropriated after the Second World War and handed over to resettlers and farmers. Later they went the way of German Democratic Republic [East Germany] agriculture. 
  • Towards the end of the Second World War and the Nazi regime, columns of prisoners were driven through the town in a death march from Buchenwald concentration camp to Flossenbürg concentration camp. SS men shot five prisoners who were buried in the lower community cemetery of Crispendorf. A memorial stone erected there and a stele on the main street commemorate the dead.
  • The small baroque castle was plundered in 1945 and blown up in 1948 according to SMAD order 209. The palace stood on the foundations of a castle belonging to the Lords of Poseck, first mentioned in 1389 and owned by the von Watzdorfs from 1538.
Schleiz is in the Thuringian Vogtland area, an area of wooded hills on the borders of Thuringia, Saxony, Bavaria and the Czech Republic. The city is located in a valley with the river Wisenta near the motorway A 9 (Berlin – München).

Schleiz can be traced back to a settlement established about 1200 ("Altstadt") and a separate "Neustadt" that was established next to it. The "Neustadt" had a castle and a city wall. Until 2 December 1482 they were totally separate communities after which they combined to one city.[citation needed] There was a settlement of the Teutonic Order here, and for some years previous to 1848 the town was the capital of the small principality of Reuss-Schleiz. In the vicinity a battle was fought, between the French and the Prussians on 9 October 1806.  The palace was destroyed April 1945. 

The Battle of Schleiz took place on October 9, 1806 in Schleiz, Germany between a Prussian-Saxon division under Bogislav Friedrich Emanuel von Tauentzien and a part of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte's I Corps under the command of Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Comte d'Erlon. It was the first clash of the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars. As Emperor Napoleon I of France's Grande Armée advanced north through the Frankenwald (Franconian Forest) it struck the left wing of the armies belonging to the Kingdom of Prussia and the Electorate of Saxony, which were deployed on a long front. Schleiz is located 30 kilometers north of Hof and 145 kilometers southwest of Dresden at the intersection of Routes 2 and 94.

At the beginning of the battle, elements of Drouet's division clashed with Tauentzien's outposts. When Tauentzien became aware of the strength of the advancing French forces, he began a tactical withdrawal of his division. Joachim Murat assumed command of the troops and began an aggressive pursuit. A battalion-sized Prussian force to the west was cut off and suffered heavy losses. The Prussians and Saxons retreated north, reaching Auma that evening.

The Thuringian and Franconian Forests stretch northwestward from Bohemia. This area is composed of wooded mountains of about 750 meters altitude. In 1806, there were only a few poor roads through the tract. Napoleon selected his invasion route in the zone where the belt of rough terrain was narrowest, the Franconian Forest to the east. The French army crossed the Saxon border on 8 October, screened in front by light cavalry. Napoleon was not certain where the opposing Prussian-Saxon army was located, so his army was arranged in a battalion carré (battalion square), capable of concentrating against threats coming from any direction.

Thuringia / Thüringen, officially the Free State of Thuringia, is a state of central Germany, covering 16,171 square kilometres (6,244 sq mi), the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million.

Thuringia is bordered by Bavaria, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It has been known as "the green heart of Germany" (das grüne Herz Deutschlands) from the late 19th century due to its broad, dense forest. Most of Thuringia is in the Saale drainage basin, a left-bank tributary of the Elbe.

Thuringia was the birthplace of three key intellectuals and leaders in the arts: Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. The state has the University of Jena, the Ilmenau University of Technology, the University of Erfurt, and the Bauhaus University of Weimar.

Thuringia had an earlier existence as the Frankish Duchy of Thuringia, established around 631 AD by King Dagobert I. 

History: 
Named after the Thuringii Germanic tribe who occupied it around AD 300, Thuringia came under Frankish domination in the 6th century.

Thuringia became a landgraviate in 1130 AD. After the extinction of the reigning Ludowingian line of counts and landgraves in 1247 and the War of the Thuringian Succession (1247–1264), the western half became independent under the name of "Hesse," never to become a part of Thuringia again. Most of the remaining Thuringia came under the rule of the Wettin dynasty of the nearby Margraviate of Meissen, the nucleus of the later Electorate and Kingdom of Saxony. With the division of the house of Wettin in 1485, Thuringia went to the senior Ernestine branch of the family, which subsequently subdivided the area into a number of smaller states, according to the Saxon tradition of dividing inheritance amongst male heirs. These were the "Saxon duchies", consisting, among others, of the states of Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Eisenach, Saxe-Jena, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg, and Saxe-Gotha.

Thuringia generally accepted the Protestant Reformation, and Roman Catholicism was suppressed as early as 1520; priests who remained loyal to it were driven away and churches and monasteries were largely destroyed, especially during the German Peasants' War of 1525. In Mühlhausen and elsewhere, the Anabaptists found many adherents. Thomas Müntzer, a leader of some non-peaceful groups of this sect, was active in this city. Within the borders of modern Thuringia the Roman Catholic faith only survived in the Eichsfeld district, which was ruled by the Archbishop of Mainz, and to a small degree in Erfurt and its immediate vicinity.

The modern German black-red-gold tricolour flag's first appearance anywhere in a German-ethnicity sovereign state, within what today comprises Germany, occurred in 1778 as the state flag of the Principality of Reuss-Greiz, a defunct principality in the modern state's borders. 

Some reordering of the Thuringian states occurred during the German Mediatisation from 1795 to 1814, and the territory was included within the Napoleonic Confederation of the Rhine organized in 1806. The 1815 Congress of Vienna confirmed these changes and the Thuringian states' inclusion in the German Confederation; the Kingdom of Prussia also acquired some Thuringian territory and administered it within the Province of Saxony. The Thuringian duchies which became part of the German Empire in 1871 during the Prussian-led unification of Germany were Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and the two principalities of Reuss Elder Line and Reuss Younger Line. 

Searched: 
  • Hesse-Darmstadt records - Ancestry & Family Search - not much available, not finding Erkmanns in that region, mainly I think because of WWII damage.
  • Have written to Hesse-Darmstadt archives in the past and came up with nothing.
  • Thuringia records - Ancestry & Family Search - not much available, don't know how much this has to do with WWII bombings and / or the fact that it was in East Germany from 1949 to 1990. 
Germany Find-a-Grave:
Freiedhof = Cemetery
Stadtkreis = Urban district
Stadtgemeinde = Township
  • Found NO Erkman/n graves in Thuringen, Germany where Erkmannsdorf is located. 
  • Joachim Erkmann b. 1872, d. 1940 buried in Friedhof Bremen-Oberneuland in Bremen, Stadtgemeinde Bremen, Bremen, Germany, no family given
  • Wilhelmine (Giese) Erkmann b. 1871, d. 1951 buried in Freidhof Bremen-Oberneuland in Bremen, Stadtgemeinde Bremen, Bremen, Germany, no family given
  • Hildegard Erkmann b. 1920, d. 2000 buried Friedhof Bonames, Frankfurt aum Main, Stadkreis Frankfurt, Hessen, Germany, no family given
  • Erwin Heinrich August Erkmann, no birth, death between 1939-1945. 
  • Wilhelm Erkmann, no birth, death between 1939-1945
These last two men's names are on a plaque in Freidhof Grotzinger this is a Jewish Cemetery in Grotzingern district, Karlsruhe, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. Inscription from [translated by google]:  

Zum Gedenken an die im 2. Weltkrieg 1939–1945 Gefallenen und Vermissten und zur Erinnerung an die Gefallenen und Vermissten der Heimatvertriebenen und Flüchtlinge, deren Familien in den Jahren 1945–1946 Mitbürger von Grötzingen wurden

To commemorate those in WW2 1939-1945 fallen and missing and in memory of the fallen and missing of the expellees and Refugees, their families over the years 1945-1946 fellow citizens of Grötzingen

Grotzingen is/was the Jewish district of Karlsruhe. On Kristallnacht 1938, the Adass Jeshurun synagogue was burned to the ground, and the city's Jews were later sent to concentration camps - Dachau, Gurs, Theresienstadt & Auschwitz. 1421 Karlsruhe Jews were killed.  They may have been Polish Jews living in the city. During World War II the city was the location of a forced labor camp for men.  The city was heavily bombed during the war. It was located in West Germany before reunification. 

Child:

Revised 1/11/2023

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