GERMANY
This map shows the states and capital cities
within
modern-day Germany.
Wolfgang
Egon Franke, was born in Horstmar,
outside Dortmund, but
raised in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein which is a
port town on the Baltic Sea. At the onset of World War II he was posted
in Cuxhaven and served as a radio man (Funkmeister) with the 3rd
Räumbootsflottilla
(Minesweeping Flotilla). Bremerhaven is the port from which he
emigrated
to Toronto, Canada in
1951.
Current Weather Conditions
For his ancestry, we look to Thüringen and
southern
Sachsen-Anhalt. The boundaries and names of kingdoms and states
have shifted over the years, and for our purposes I have used the
modern state names and boundaries to describe locations.
The detail below shows the region in the red
rectangle
#1
from the map above to show Heldrungen, Laucha, Bibra and Weimar.
(After World War 2 this area was contained within Soviet-occupied East
Germany until re-unification on October 3, 1990.)
The above detail is from an historical atlas of the German Empire from
1883.
Below is a modern map depicting the same region showing more detail.
Sachsenhausen, Thüringen. The black roof of the church
steeple
can be seen on the left.
Sachsenhausen, Thüringen.
David's son, (Johann) Adam Franke, was born in 1754
in
Daasdorf,
just south of Buttelstedt.
The old church in Daasdorf
Adam was a master baker in Gaberndorf when
he married Maria Dorothea Saalborn,
daughter of Johann Andreas Saalborn in Niederholzhausen,
Sachsen-Anhalt in 1783. (At the time of
Adam's marriage, his father is listed as Johann David
Franke
from Sachsenhausen.) Their seven children
were raised in Niederholzhausen.
Possibly a twin
brother
to Johann Adam (or perhaps the same individual), there was
a Johann Adam Friedrich Franke of Gaberndorf
who was godfather to six of Adam and Maria Dorothea’s children
who were christened
in the Niederholzhausen church.
The Church in Niederholzhausen, Sachsen-Anhalt where Johann Adam Franke
married Maria Dorothea Saalborn
Johann Gottlieb
Franke was the eldest
child of Adam and his wife Maria Dorothea and was born in Gaberndorf
in 1783 before the family settled in Niederholzhausen. Gottlieb became
a master
weaver
and moved to Laucha an der Unstrut (on
the
Unstrut River). There, in 1830, he married Maria Rosina Gensel,
daughter
of Gottfried Gensel, a sheep farm owner from Schloss
Heldrungen.
(At the time of Gottlieb's marriage, his father is listed as Adam
Franke
from Niederholzhausen.)
Laucha an der Unstrut (view from the west looking east)
The church built in 1476-1496 is the large building centred in the
upper right. Three generations of our Frankes were recorded there in
the
"Kirchenbücher" (Church books).
The map of Laucha seen below depicts the same area and shows "Obere
Krautgasse", the lane where Gottlieb lived.
Laucha an der Unstrut - view to the church
Gottlieb's children were born in Laucha.
His
son, Carl Moritz Franke, married (Friedrike) Emilie Peter from Saubach
near Bad Bibra in 1870 and they lived their whole lives in Laucha.
The town of Saubach where Emilie Peter's father was the miller.
Carl and Emilie's children, including son (Karl)
Bruno
Franke, were also born in Laucha. One of Bruno's cousins from
his
aunt Therese, Minna Rössler, was married to the Bürgermeister
(Bernhard Thiel) of Laucha and later moved to Weimar
where she was widowed. Another cousin, Carl Franz Otto
Rössler,
was the Royal Prussian Oberrentmeister and also moved to Weimar.
In his younger years Bruno became an electrical
mechanic in the Imperial Navy and then for the ocean liner company,
Norddeutscher-Lloyd. Later, back in Laucha, he married Karoline
Weber from
Dortmund
on Aug 2, 1914, just at the onset of World War I.
Laucha City Hall (Rathaus) where Bruno and Karoline were
married.
The detail below shows the region in the red
rectangle
#2
from the map of Germany. In 1895, Karoline Weber was born in
Kruckel,
Kreis
Hörde, now part of Dortmund (lower
right). At age nineteen she married Karl Bruno Franke in Laucha.
Their children, Wolfgang and Lotti, were born in
Horstmar (area marked with green arrow) in 1915-16. Karoline and
the children lived here with her mother's family while Bruno was
serving in the Navy in Kiel during
WWI. The
family moved to Kiel at the end of the war. The children's birth
records were in the Standesamt (registry office) in Derne, which later
became part of Dortmund, while Horstmar later became part of nearby
Lünen.
Later, in 1937-38,
Wolfgang taught elementary school in Hamborn, part of Duisburg on the
River
Rhein (lower left).
Departing from the
Franke surname along maternal lines in the distant past, the earliest
ancestor we've found to date is Nicolaus
Fischer, mayor of Jägersdorf near Jena, who died there in
1627. He was Wolfgang Franke's 7G Grandfather.
Maternal line research into
the ancestry of Carolyn
Colucci Franke also leads to Germany,
but this time to the southwest areas, Rheinland-Pfalz and
Baden-Württemberg. The earliest ancestor we've found to date
is schoolmaster Michael Gmelin,
who died in Weilheim an der Teck, Württemberg in 1576 of the
plague. He was Carolyn Colucci's 11G Grandfather.
As part
of the emigration wave of the early to mid 1700's, three Germans
(contemporaries of Johann David Franke) emigrated from this
general region to Philadelphia
under dismal
conditions,
seeking a better life. They were Johann
Carl Schantz, Matthias Sommer
and Jacob Treitz.
Horlacher's
Map of 18th
Century Emigration Patterns
The red
dot on the map above shows the location of Gondelsheim, Baden, from
where Johann Carl Schantz and his brother Jacob emigrated in
1749. Gondelsheim, a small town of just over 3,000, can be found
23 km northeast of the city of Karlsruhe, in the county of the same
name (Landkreis Karlsruhe).
Landkreis Karlsruhe
Ultimately, the Schantz, Sommer and Treitz
families (later a.k.a. Jones, Somers and Trites) left Philadelphia
together and settled in
Monckton Township, New
Brunswick.
