Louis and Christiane: Their Legacy

By Bill Chaddock

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465397034

Bill Chaddock

Shortly after his retirement, following a 40 year career in journalism and public relations, Bill Chaddock was “bitten” by the genealogy bug. Over the past 15 years he has done extensive research into his and his wife’s family trees, tracing both of their ancestries back several centuries and having the pleasure of making contact with hundreds of previously-unknown relatives throughout the United States. During his research, he was particularly attracted to the lives of his paternal great-grandparents, Louis and Christiane Doebeling Kroehling who emigrated from Germany to Illinois in 1850. He saw them as the personification of the many millions of immigrants who left their homelands and families, came to the United States, adopted it as their home and helped make it the great nation it is today. This book traces 14 generations of the two families from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first centuries, It also chronicles the lives of Louis and Christiane and discusses the challenges they and other immigrants faced both before and after they decided to come to America.

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Copyright © 2012 by Bill Chaddock.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011960563

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4653-9702-7

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4653-9701-0

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4653-9703-4

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Contents

DEDICATION:

FOREWORD

CHAPTER ONE – LIFE IN GERMANY

CHAPTER TWO – GERMAN ANCESTRY

CHAPTER THREE – COMING TO AMERICA

CHAPTER FOUR – LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES

CHAPTER FIVE – DESCENDANTS

APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

DEDICATION:

To Nola, my loving and supportive wife, and to

my mother and father who gave me so much.

FOREWORD

It was Monday, July 15, 1850, and some 280 men, women and children were crowding the railings of the sailing ship Helene as she made her way into New York Harbor, completing a six week long crossing of the Atlantic Ocean.

Among those straining to catch a glimpse of the country that they would soon call home were a German shoemaker and his wife, Louis and Christiane Kroehling. One can imagine them hugging one another and Christiane’s brother, Gottlieb Doebeling, who traveled with them; shedding tears of joy; shouting and cheering with their fellow passengers as they realize that the long, arduous sea journey that began May 29, 1850 at Bremerhaven, Germany was nearing its end.

Their journey, however, was far from over. They still had half a continent to cross before they reached their final destination: Galena, Illinois.

What prompted this couple to leave their homeland and their families and to endure the hazards and privations attendant with crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a small sailing ship? Why did they choose Galena as their future home where they would raise a family whose descendants today are spread from coast to coast?

This book will seek to answer these and other questions about this resolute German couple who typify the millions of immigrants from Germany and other countries who made their way to the United States, adopted it as their home and helped make it the great nation that it is today.

missing image file

This map traces Germany’s Weser River as it flows from Muenden, located near Kassel on the south eastern side of this map, to the port of Bremerhaven where Louis and Christiane departed for the United States. Einbeck can be found northeast of Muenden. Wittelsberg, the ancestral home of the Krohling family, is today a suburb of Marburg which is shown at the bottom center of the map

CHAPTER ONE – LIFE IN GERMANY

OUR STORY BEGINS in Muenden, one of the oldest cities in the Gottingen District of Niedersachsen, Germany’s Lower Saxony Province. It is located in central Germany where the Werra and Fulda rivers kiss, as the locals say, to form the Weser which then flows into the North Sea.

First settled about 800 A.D., Muenden formally became a city late in the Twelfth Century, and then blossomed into a prosperous trading center about 100 years later after it was granted the Stapelrecht in 1247 by Duke Otto I of Brunswick. This much-coveted trading privilege required all merchants passing through Muenden to offload their goods and, for three days, offer them for sale to local citizens at special prices.

Although residents today still generally refer to their city as Muenden, its name was changed in 1991 to Hann.Muenden (officially Hannoversch Muenden) to recognize its one-time affiliation with the Kingdom of Hannover and to avoid confusion with the Prussian city of Minden, located not far away.

Muenden is a picturesque community that, fortunately, was spared major damage during the two World Wars, the Thirty Years War, and two occupations by the French. Its location — astride the three rivers, between the picturesque Weserbergland and East Hessian mountains and with two of Germany’s largest forests nearby — prompted German poet Alexander van Humboldt to describe it as one of the seven most beautifully-situated towns in the world.

The city has a long and colorful history and is renowned for its more than 700 half-timbered buildings that date back more than six centuries. Regretfully, several of these were destroyed by a fire in 2008 but are being rebuilt. Another historic feature is St. Blasius, a large Gothic-style Lutheran church constructed in the Fourteenth Century, where Louis, Christiane and many of their ancestors worshipped. Other sites of interest are the remains of an old city wall with fortified towers including the Tillyschanze which offers panoramic views of the countryside; a town hall constructed in the early 1600s that houses an historical glockenspiel depicting life in the Eighteenth Century; the Old Werrabrucke, one of the oldest stone bridges in Germany; and a recently uncovered ancient Roman encampment.

Today, Muenden’s population is about 28,000, and tourism is its major industry.

The village of Muenden was already more than eight centuries old when Heinrich Louis Kroehling (his surname would later be Americanized to Krohling) was born June 5, 1822, the fourth child and third son of Johann Heinrich Kroehling and Catharine Marie Ludewig. Louis, as he was known by his family, lived in Muenden for 28 years before immigrating to the United States. After attending school, he worked as a geselle (helper) and a lehrling (apprentice) to learn his trade before becoming a meister schuhmacher (master shoemaker).

On April 24, 1848, Louis, then in his mid-twenties, married Johanne Dorothea Christiane Henriette Doebeling. She was born October 20, 1822, in Einbeck, a town located in the Northeim District of Lower Saxony some 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of Muenden.

Christiane was one of seven children of Johann Hermann Doebeling and his second wife, Johanne Sophie Catharina Fahrtmann. Johann Hermann was born December 27, 1788 in Einbeck. Johanne Sophie was born May 4, 1791 in Salzderhelden, a village located just two miles southeast of Einbeck. As its name implies, Salzderhelden was a major mining center for salt which was an important commercial commodity during this period since it was the principal method for preserving meat and fish. The salt was sold locally and also shipped to other areas via horse and mule trains. Salt was of such importance to the city that it requested and was granted the right to have its own seal, which depicts a salt cooking pan with two spoons and vapors.

Following German tradition, Louis and Christiane were married in Christiane’s home town in St. Marien Lutheran Church (Neustadter Kirche Sandt Marien).

At the time of the wedding, a five year restoration of St. Marien, which had been destroyed by fire, had just been completed. A plaque in the church recognizes one of Einbeck’s most famous citizens, Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg, born September 6, 1711. He is credited with organizing the Lutheran Church in the United States after immigrating to Philadelphia in 1742.

Einbeck also has a vibrant and interesting history. Originally a rural summer resort for the nobles of Hamburg, it grew to the point where, in 1274, it was recognized as a city. Over the centuries, Einbeck did not fare as well as Muenden. It was almost completely destroyed by fire in 1540 and hundreds of its houses were demolished when it was occupied during the 30 Years War that ravaged much of Germany. However, in rebuilding the citizens took great care to duplicate the original homes and locate them on the exact sites of the buildings that had been destroyed.

This is why the historic center of present day Einbeck, still partially surrounded by its Fifteenth Century walls, offers an almost perfectly preserved example of a medieval timber-framed town. This is especially evident along the Tierdexer Strasse where it seems time has stood still for 450 years. Einbeck’s colorful Gothic and Renaissance style homes, featuring crooked beams and elaborately-carved reliefs, are meticulously maintained, prompting writer and poet Johann von Goethe to describe it as a wundersame stadt or wondrous city.

Some of the carvings over the doorways of buildings almost resulted in U.S. soldiers shelling the city and turning it into a pile of rubble near the end of World War II. Fortunately, the mayor was able to convince them that Einbeck was not a hotbed of Nazism, and that the swastikas carved into the beams of many of the half-timbered houses were Roman symbols of prosperity and fertility and not emblems of Hitler’s Third Reich.

Einbeck is located in the heart of Germany’s prime hop-producing area. This encouraged the development of breweries as early as 1341, including the 600-year-old Einbecker Bier Brewery. It is the oldest active brewery in