About An American Family Smörgåsbord Brockhagen Meister Rylander Prange Camp Musgrave Calvert Metzger Please sign in to see more. By the turn of the 19th Century, these four families had converged in Chicago, Illinois. These emigrants from Ostergotland lan, Sweden and Hanover, Paderborn and Gramleuz Prussia had found their way to the Midwestern United States through the ports at New Orleans, Maryland, Virginia and New York. In Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin, our ancestors were farmers, carpenters, railroad workers, machinists, salesmen and laborers. Some had been soldiers in their old countries, and their children would fight in wars as Americans. They left behind parents, siblings and cousins, and made new roots as Americans. They became engineers, journalists, shop owners and teachers, and some even dabbled in politics. This is our family history.
An ongoing project that began in November 2004 with less than a two dozen names in a notebook, it has become a labor of love for me. To feel a connection to persons long gone who I now know have always had a place in my existance. This research brings to all these individuals a sense of remembrance rather than the anonymity that time and neglect had brought them.
A special thanks to my Mom who continues to regale me with family stories, tidbits and tips, and who planted the ambition in me to find hers and my fathers ancestors. A note of encouragement to my Dad to continue to tell me stories of his childhood and his family so that I can further extrapolate the hidden Meister and Prang families. And, I am so appreciative to have "found" distant relations like Pat and Carole Butler, Carole Anne Reitan and Steve Tottenhoff, wonderful volunteers at the Fort Madison Geneological Society and a great Chicago librarian known as Mary.
A prevalent difficulty is with the Americanization of German surnames such as Droppel and Brockhagen. Droppel in Iowa is also found as Drobbel, Droble, Dropel, Droppal and Druppel. Brockhagen is the Americanized version of Brokhage, but it is to be found recorded as Brockhag, Brockhage, Brickhagen, Buckhagen and Brokhagen,in various church records and censuses.
The baptismal names for the German ancestors are comprised of 2-3 names, i.e. Maria Catharina. The name the individual would be known by is typically the 2nd of the baptismal name, i.e. Catharina, which is Americanized as Catharine or Kate. Also the German baptismal names were often in Latin, i.e. Henricus for Heinrich which is Americanized as Henry.
As weeks and months go by I know entries will be added and existing ones modified. Human errors by transcriptors, census takers, recorders or descendants, make this an imperfect science.
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