Kempen family update - Our German cousins (Fanning side)

Thanks to some networking on Ancestry.com I was contacted by a man named Bernhard Kempen who currently resides in Berlin, Germany. He has been working on the Kempen family history dating back to 1678. He is my 4th cousin twice removed.

Below is some information on our branch of the family that he has furnished to me...

Gerd Kempen (1839-)

Gerd Kempen was born August 12, 1839 in Loga, at that time a small town next to the city of Leer in Ostfriesland (East Frisia) and nowadays a borough of Leer. Obviously he was baptised unter the name „Geert“, but in later records he appears only as Gerd, which is the more common German form of this name. He was the first child of Folkert Gerdes Kampen (1811-1880) and Hinrika Boekholt (1812-1877), married May 22, 1838 in Leer. His father worked as a cartwright in Loga in 1863, and later in a factory, probably somewhere in Leer.

Gerd was one of nine children born to Folkert and Hinrika. Here’s the complete list:

Gerd Kempen * August 12, 1839 in Loga oo Wendelina Niemeyer (1841-)

Geertjelina Hermina * November 11, 1840 in Loga, † February 13, 1851 in Loga

Hermann * October 21, 1842 in Loga

Volkmar * February 15, 1844 in Loga

Frauke * October 14, 1845 in Loga

Hinrika Talea * October 24, 1847 in Loga

Onno Johann Gebhard * January 2, 1850 in Loga

Gerdjelina Agtemina Kämpen * March 29, 1851 in Loga oo Carl Ludwig Böse (-)

Grietje * February 18, 1853 in Loga

Gerd’s sister Geertjelina Hermina died young, at the age of six. The second youngest child Gerdjelina Agtemina Kämpen married Carl Ludwig Böse from Straßburg in France, a hofmeister, which is a private tutor, probably at the court of the von Wedel counts, who resided at the two castles in Loga. Gerdjelina and Carl were married April 28, 1878 in Logabirum, a neighbour town of Loga. No children are listed in the church records of the area. And so far there is no trace of Gerds other six siblings. Maybe some of them died at a young age, which was quite common at that time, or they went to other places.

Gerd was married to Wendelina Niemeyer on December 6, 1863 in Detern. The Niemeyers are a family from Altenoythe in the southwest part of the Duchy of Oldenburg. Later they spread to the western parts of Oldenburg and to Ostfriesland.

Gerd and his wife moved to Augustfehn, a new town founded in 1850, in the west of Oldenburg, not far from the East Frisian border. All the „-fehn“ towns in Northwestern Germany were started as projects to colonise the raised bogs of that area, formerly considered waste lands. The first settlers dug a canal into the bog to drain the land, then houses were built along the streets at both sides of the usually dead straight canal, finally the peat was exploited and shipped to factories, at a time, when coal was still too expensive in regions far away from the coal mines of the Ruhr area. In 1856 the Eisenhütte was built next to the Augustfehn canal, a factory for processing bog iron found under the peat. Here Gerd Kempen worked as a molder specialising in sand casting. In 1863 he is mentioned as „Sandformer“, in 1864 also as „Heuermann“, which means that he rented a house with a plot of land. In the years 1867 to 1872 he lived as factory worker in Bokel, nowadays called Vreschen-Bokel, a village next to Augustfehn. His last three children were born in Augustfehn between 1875 to 1880. It’s not clear whether the family actually moved, because in the course of time Augustfehn expanded over parts of the neighbouring villages. It’s also possible that Gerd later worked at the Augustfehn Stahlwerk, a steelmill founded in 1872.

Gerd and Wendelina had seven children:

Folkert Georg Kempen * August 29, 1864 in Bokel oo Emma Helene Margarethe Kühne (1866-)

Bernhard Hermann Kempen * December 4, 1866 in Bokel oo Mary Fredericka Rittel (1872-1947)

Hinrich Volkmar Kempen * July 20, 1869 in Bokel oo Annie Dertinger (1876-)

Talea Wendelina Kempen * May 15, 1872 in Bokel

Gerhard Friedrich Kempen * May 9, 1875 in Augustfehn

Hinrika Kempen * June 19, 1876 in Augustfehn

Carl Kempen * August 8, 1880 in Bokel oo Sophie Schmidt (-)

Two years after the birth of their last child Carl the whole family had emigrated to the United States, most probably for economic reasons. The 19th century were hard times for the rural areas of Germany, due to industrialisation and a general population boom. Many families who couldn’t find work in the villages decided to emigrate, and often, as with Gerd Kempen, it was a two-step emigration. First they went to colonise the bog lands, and during the next econonomic crisis they moved to the United States. At that time many canals and railways were built (in 1869 Augustfehn was connected to the Oldenburg-Leer railway line) to ship the peat that was needed as fuel. But at the same time the improved infrastructure made it cheaper to transport the more effective coal to all parts of Germany, so the peat industry went down.

Wendelina and all seven children departed with the Ship „Neckar“ from Bremen on November 11, 1882, and they arrived in New York on December 5. On the passenger list their names and ages are given as follows:

Wendelina Kempen, 42 years

Fulkert, 18 Jahre, farmer

Bernhard, 16 years

Heinrich, 13 years

Felix, 10 years

Gerd, 7 years

Rieke, 6 years

Carl, 2 years

Obviously a clerk had problems with some of the typical East Frisian names. Folkert is misspelled als „Fulkert“ (in later records he even appears als „Holbert“), but the name Rieke is a common familiar form of Hinrika. The most interesting mistake happened with „Felix“, which must be as misspelling for Talea. In old handwriting both names actually look quite similar.

It seems that the family followed Gerd to America because he later appears in the censuses as living with his son Bernhard, in the 1888 New York City Directory as George Kempen, molder, living 231 East 89th. So he must have emigrated somewhere between 1880 and 1882, but he couldn’t be identified on the passenger lists yet. In 1910 he is listed as widower, age 70. So Wendelina must have died around 1900. So far no record has been found stating when Gerd aka George died.

Personal note: It’s a strange coincidence that my branch of the Kempen family moved to Augustfehn and Bokel exactly 100 years after Gerd and Wendelina. Folkert Gerdes Kampen (1811-1880) was the brother of my great-great-grandfather Carl Julius Kämpen (1821-1876), married to Wübke Berends Winterbuhr (1828-1912), but my living relatives don’t remember any great-great-uncle in America, and nobody knew that he spent some time in Augustfehn. Carl and his descendants mainly lived in Nortmoor, and my grandfather was the only one of them who left Ostfriesland in the 1940s to live in Holtgast. In the 1960s he moved to Vreschen-Bokel, where most of my uncles and aunts settled. My father married in 1960 and moved to Hamburg, where I was born in 1961. In 1964 our family returned and rented a house at the Augustfehn canal. In 1966, after my brother was born, we moved into an old farmhouse in Vreschen-Bokel, where I spent most of my childhood and youth, before I went to Berlin in 1984. Until I started researching my family history in 2004 I didn’t know that my namesake and cousin of several degrees Bernhard Kempen was born in Vreschen-Bokel in 1866! I still have to find out where the family of Gerd and Wendelina lived before they emigrated from the tranquil countryside to metropolitan New York.

If the umlauts don’t work, try to replace them like this:

ß = ss

ä = ae

ö = oe

ü = ue

Genealogy, where to begin?

I have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of non-family members who have commented on this blog & the genealogy research. Many have also asked about how to go about starting their family tree & the research involved. Here are my recommendations and what has worked for me.

Genealogy sites like Ancestry.com can get expensive, especially if you choose the search products which include world records. At some point in your research it may be worth the money, save you some time, and put you in touch with other family trees researching the same descendants. However, it was also a lot of fun and gave me satisfaction when I searched for many of the clues and records individually on the free websites and search engines that are available.

My first suggestion is to open a free account at MyHeritage.com. I really like the way the family tree is managed in the "modern view" tab. It is fluid & allows you to maneuver the page by dragging the mouse as opposed to other site's trees that are more linear, classic family trees. It also allows you to expand or narrow your scope or switch to other tree branches with tabs attached individuals. When you select an individual in the tree you can open the left side panel and add life facts to a person & see the chronological facts of that person's life. This site is free up to a certain amount of people included in the tree. MyHeritage also gives you "Smart Matches" to other family trees where you can see some of the other research or family connections other genealogists have achieved.

I also have an account with Ancestry.com and have been very happy with the search capabilities and their "tips" that pop up attached to an individual with a little waving leaf. Their trees are more traditional and the individual's facts page is clear but takes more time to add the details but some information can be automatically added by attaching a census page or other search discovery to an individual, which is quite handy.

Here are some of the free search websites that I have found invaluable during my research:

• https://www.familysearch.org/ - A great resource made available by the Church of Latter Day Saints. Allows a broad search or search by specific collection or country.
• http://www.italiangen.org/VRECLIST.stm - Provided by the Italian Genealogical Group, this site has information that many of the other sites do not have. It is New York City & Long Island based info only though.
• https://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/nytarchive.html - Another valuable tool are newspaper archives. The NY Times provides free access to articles from pre-1923 and you will have to pay for later articles, including obituaries and marriage notices.
• Other newspapers, such as The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, can offer valuable tips and information.
• http://www.findagrave.com/ - gives info on cemeteries and if you get lucky, there may be a photo of the headstone with birth/death dates. Perhaps other family members, as well.
• Foreign information is more difficult to find. Here is one site that gives you some tips on where to look for Irish records: http://www.irishgenealogy.ie/index.html
• http://www.fold3.com/ - has some excellent military records, muster records & historical info. Some of it is free & some requires a subscription, which you can get monthly if you choose.
• Lastly, do not underestimate Google.com for your searches. Obviously, the results will be multitudinous but if you can narrow the search as much as possible you may be surprised what pops up.

Don't be afraid to do some leg work on your own, too. On my last trip to NY I stopped at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and was able to tie together some long lost details regarding my grandfather's side of the family and their plot. It would be wise to check the cemetery's website first or call for research assistance first but they should have records of all family members buried there and who purchased the plots. County libraries, the main branches, have great sources of info in their archives. The larger library systems have genealogy research specialists employed.

I hope this has been helpful for any aspiring genealogists. You will certainly be surprised and rewarded by what you find. And perhaps, we may discover that our families are related somewhere up the family tree.

Who are the Fannings?

I am slightly perplexed whether I should start from the top and work my down or go from the other end and travel up... I suppose starting from the top may work best and should flow be a bit simpler.

I have not had great success on the Fanning family prior to their travel to America from Ireland. From information gleaned mostly from American census reports, I have found that my great-great grandfather, Peter Fanning (1863-?), was born and raised in Ireland. According to the 1900 census, he married my great-great grandmother, Mary Jane Carroll (1868-?), in 1886. This record also shows that Peter and Mary Jane emigrated to the United States in 1891 with their two eldest children, Joseph Patrick (1887-1948) and Mary Alice (1889-1979).

Although we do not have a copy of the original birth record, my father was able to obtain a record from Rotunda Hospital that confirms a male child born to Peter and Mary Jane on March 18, 1887. The record shows their address as 13 Eccles Lane, Dublin. However, current maps do not show an Eccles Lane, but rather 13 Eccles Street in Dublin which is The Mater Misericordiea Hospital and is only a few blocks from Rotunda. Was Misericordiae Hospital their actual address, perhaps like a shelter, or something they used in birth records for some other reason?

Rotunda Hospital - Dublin

Fortunately, we do have much more information concerning their life in America. In 1900, Peter was occupied as a horseshoer in New York City and Mary Jane kept house. The family lived at 15 Manhattan Street in the Manhattanville-Harlem area of New York. Manhattan Street was roughly in the area of today's West 125 St and Broadway and is now occupied by a public housing development. This building was obviously a tenement style structure as there are many families residing in the building and the surrounding ones, as well.

While living in Manhattanville during this era, they would have witnessed the construction of the tremendous elevated subway bridge erected along Broadway but they had moved downtown by the time the Henry Hudson Viaduct was built. There are some terrific photos of early Manhattanville here.

Modern Day Manhattanville

This census also gives us the initial glimpse of how the family grew since arriving in the states. As I mentioned earlier, Joseph Patrick (listed as on this census as Patrick and according to my grandfather as "Paddy" to family members) and Mary Alice were born in Ireland. Their middle child was a son named George Christopher Fanning (1894-1965). Frances Mary Fanning (1896-1953) and the baby, James Fanning, was born in 1899. I have also been informed that there was a child born Peter Jr. that may have been a stillborn who is buried with parents at First Calvary Cemetery in Queens, but I do not have any confirmation.

In regards to the Carroll family, a birth record mentions that Mary Jane Carroll's parents were Patrick Carroll and Mary White, however, that is the only information I have been able to confirm regarding this branch. I have found references to Mary Jane's birth and baptism on the internet with file numbers confirming her date of birth but no images. I may have to take a trip over the pond to dig up the rest of this family... anyone care to join me?

I will continue with the piece of the Fanning family next time.