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.
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
I believe I might be your cousin. My father, Charles Weedon was the son of Lillian Kempen (born 1906) and William Weedon. Lillian Kempen was the daughter of Carl/Charles Kempen (born 8/8/1880 in Oldenburg, Germany) and Sophie Schmidt Kempen (born April 1885). Carl/Charles Kempen was the son of Gerdes/George Kempen (born 8/12/1839 in Loga, Germany) and Vendelina Niemeyer Kempen (born 1840 in Oldeburg, Germany). Carl had 6 siblings. Please contact me regarding possible relations.
ReplyDeleteHello Richard, it appears that we are related! Actually, we are 3rd cousins 1x removed. It appears that your grandmother, Lillian, and my great grandfather, Henry Kempen, were cousins.
DeleteThe Kempens were on my father's side of the family and Henry (known as Henny) was always related to us that he was a bit of a scoundrel. My great grandmother never spoke of him and my grandmother lost contact with him when she was a young girl. Please tell me about your family so I can fill in the blanks on my tree. Your branch ends with your dad... Thanks, Mike
It was great to hear from you. I have such a small extended family that it is nice to know that I found a long lost relative. As I told you, my Father, Charles Walter Weedon, was the only child of Lillian Kempen and William D. Weedon. Lillian divorced William Weedon and married Patrick Huston.
ReplyDeleteMy father married Dorothy M. Reynolds, who was the daughter of Charles Joseph Reynolds and Frances Zimmermann Reynolds. My mother had one sister, Helen Reynolds Erler.
My father and mother had 4 children - Claudia Weedon Host, Suzanne Weedon Heuzey (deceased), James C. Weedon and myself.
My sister Claudia has no children and is currently retired and travelling the world. She was a nurse before retiring.
My sister Suzanne married Douglas Heuzey and they had three children - Michael Heuzey (married with one daughter), Laura Heuzey and Stephen Heuzey (just married). Suazanne was a CPA as was my father.
My brother James married Gina Dente and they have two children - Emma L. Weedon and James R. Weedon.
I married Emma Orquieza Sulay and we do not have any children. I am an accountant in the real estate industry. However, my wife and I am retiring this year and will be moving to Texas and the Philippines.
My father was raised in Long Island City, NY. He served in WWII in the Pacific (in the Sea Bees). After the war we went to NYU and received his accounting degree. He and my mother raised my siblings and I on Long Island, NY.