Johann Friedrich "Fredrick" Benkelman

Notes:

The family register for the family of Friedrich's maternal grandparents, Georg Friedrich St?hle and wife, Anna Maria Leins, shows that Maria Dorothea St?hle was the fifth of their 15 children. She was married at the Schneiderhof on 20 Nov 1822 to Leonhard Benkelmann. Dot Williams, a Benkelman descendant, visited with a specialist in the old German script at the LDS library at Salt Lake City, where they helped her translate the information on the scans of the actual St?hle family register. They indicated that the writing to the right of Maria Dorothea's name, as well as two of her sisters, said they each had an illegitimate child. Maria Dorothea's child was Johann Friedrich, "who was raised as the eldest of the Leonhard Benkelmann family." It was not indicated one way or the other if he was also Leonhard's biological son. Johann Friedrich was born on 6 Feb 1822, approximately 10 months prior to the marriage of Leonard Benkelmann and Dorothea St?hle.

Freidrich apprenticed with Leonhard as a bricklayer and stonemason. (Jacobs, p. 73)

The oldest of the Benkelman children, he was the last to emigrate to America. He was already established as a stone mason in W?rttemberg when his younger siblings began to emigrate. Over the years, he received many letters from members of the family in America, telling him of the opportunities in the new land. Thus he eventually decided to join them. When he left Germany early in 1873, he was travelling with his wife Christine Stadelmaier, daughter Catherine and son-in-law Friedrich Buerk, granddaughter Catherine Buerk, daughter Christine and her husband George Jaus, and daughters Rosine and Mary, along with Fred's mother, Christina Buerk. German Parish records show "Marz 1873 mit Familie nach Nordamerika."

They sailed from Bremen, Germany on the steam ship "Ohio," and arrived in Baltimore on 5 April 1873, as the vessel was powered by steam, their entire journey took only 15 days. The earlier emigrants had traveled in sailing ships, and thus their journeys had been much longer. Friedrich and his family then traveled by train to Saginaw, Michigan where they were met by Adam, who took them by horse and wagon to Cass City. Adam, helped by his brothers, had constructed a building for them on his land where they stayed. Through hard work and frugal living, Friedrich was later able to purchase land a few miles northeast of Cass City, upon which he built his own home and farm.

At a Benkelman/Striffler reunion, Mary Striffler Benkelman recalled that "Uncle Fred was the oldest and Jolliest of the bunch, I can see him yet a large man of straight build, starting to town a distance of three and a half miles, with a basket of eggs perched on his head and a pail in one arm, marching straight as when he served in the German army but in after years when he became old and feeble he would say "When I think I am going to fall I am already lying on the ground." Later in life, Frederick became lame from rheumatism and used crutches to get about.

(Jacobs, pp. 82, 83, 161, as well various correspondence from BonnieMargaretJacobs, and issues of the Striffler-Benkelman Broadcasts)

These are the tombstone inscriptions of he and his wife:

Benkelman, Christina,d. 18 Aug 1897, 74y 3m 25d
Benkelman, Frederick,d. 28 Aug 1897, 75y 7m 22d

http://www.interment.net/data/us/mi/tuscola/casscity/index.htm

A brief mention of his funeral was on the front page of the September 2, 1897 Cass City Enterprise, in the "Home Happenings" column:

"The funeral services of Frederick Benkelman were held at the Evangelical Church on Sunday afternoon, Rev. C.Y. Schneider officiating. As previously mentioned, Mr. Benkelman has been in poor health for some time. He was nearly seventy six years old and has resided in this vicinity for many years."

A copy of his actual Michigan Death Certificate can be viewed here:

http://seekingmichigan.org/

Indexed as Fredrick Benkelman

It was noted under this cause of death that a contributory factor was the death of his wife one week previously. He was shown as 75 years, 7 months, and 22 days of age at the time of his death.

(Research):Census Place:Elkland, Tuscola, Michigan
Source:FHL Film 1254607 National Archives Film T9-0607
Page 96C
RelationSexMarrRaceAgeBirthplace
Fredrick BENKELMAN Self M M W 58 WERTENBERG Occ: Stone Mason Fa: WERTENBURG Mo: WERTENBURG
Christina BENKELMAN Wife F M W 57 WERTENBERG Occ:Keeping House Fa: WERTENBURG Mo: WERTENBURG

Johann married Rosine M?ller on 26 Nov 1850 in Bartenbach, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. Rosine was born on 18 Aug 1821 in Bartenbach, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 16 Oct 1858 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Anna Catharina Benkelman was born on 6 Aug 1843 in Bartenbach, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 12 Sep 1917 in Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan; was buried in Elkland Township Cemetery, Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan.
2. Christina Benkelman was born on 24 Mar 1852 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 7 Mar 1929 in Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan; was buried in Elkland Township Cemetery, Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan.
3. Rosine Benkelman was born on 31 Dec 1853 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 10 Oct 1854 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany.
4. Rosine "Rosina" Benkelman was born on 17 Mar 1855 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 17 Nov 1953 in Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan; was buried in Elkland Township Cemetery, Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan.
5. Anna Maria Benkelman was born on 2 Mar 1856 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 9 Mar 1856 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany.
6. Maria "Mary" Dorothea Benkelman was born on 23 Feb 1857 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 23 Mar 1952 in Saginaw County, Michigan; was buried in Elkland Township Cemetery, Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan.
7. Johann Georg Benkelmann was born on 16 Oct 1858 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 31 Oct 1858 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany.

Johann married Christina Catharina Stadelmaier on 17 Jul 1859 in W?rttemberg, Germany. Christina (daughter of Johannes Stadelmaier and Christina Barbara Rommel) was born on 2 Apr 1823 in B?rtlingen, G?ppingen, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 18 Aug 1897 in Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan; was buried in Elkland Township Cemetery, Cass City, Tuscola County, Michigan. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

In a 1979 letter that Margaret-Bonnie Jacobs wrote to Ben Benkelman, Jr she said: "You may have heard from one source or another that I'm putting together rather a comprehensive history of the Benkelman family. To date, it's taken me most of my time just to track the original 10 immigrants and get them firmly placed and dated and documented. This year I am concentrating on the reach back to Germany. I have hired a genealogist there to see how far back we can go with the family before the mass emigration of the '50s. Just by collecting the data on the 10 immigrant children I have learned a great deal. All of the boys were artisans with trades. In Germany that usually meant long apprenticeships. Since Adam and his brothers and sisters were born in different villages I assume the father, Leonhard, was also a tradesman of some sort rather than a farmer."

BonnieMargaret later concluded they were all actually born at the Schneiderhof, across from Breech, on the outskirts of B?rtlingen, and Parish records discovered later showed Leonhard's occupation as bricklayer

In her 1981 unpublished manuscript, BonnieMargaret wrote that "On February 6, 1796 Johann Leonhard Benkelmann was born to Katharina Bauer, and according to the parish record, he was born at the Schneiderhof. The pastor dutifully recorded that he was unehelic (illegitimately) born and that he bore the name of his unehelic father, Johann Jacob Benkelmann of Pl?derhausen. BonnieMargaret indicated that His mother was refered to on Leonhard's and his wife Dorothea's family register page as "Maria Katharina, frueher des Johannes Haeller auf dem Schneiderhof Ehefrau geborene Bauerin." This means that she was then the wife of Johann Haeller, and was born Maria Bauer. (pp. 56-58)

When Leonhard's father, Johann Jacob, married another woman the year after Leonhard's birth, he was first required to provide 75 of the 200 florins he had inheritied from his grandfather to his "Weibsbild" for the upbringing of his son born out of wedlock. (p. 58)

Leonhard was only 2l when his stepfather died , and as a result became the head of his mother's household. He must have discharged all of his responsiblities admirably, because only five years later he was allowed to be married to Dorothea St?hle, the daughter of a respected citizen and farmer of B?rtlingen. (Jacobs, p. 70).

On the Parish records, he is referred to as a "Bauer and Maurer"...farmer and bricklayer.

After Leonhard's death early in 1848, each of his 10 children that had survived into maturity emigrated to the United States. The first to leave was his namesake son, Leonhard, in the summer of 1849, who was age 21. The last was eldest son, Friedrich, and he left in 1873 at age 50, taking a large group of family members with him.

The Benkelmanns were not alone. A huge number of Germany left their homeland in and around 1848. This excerpt, from a website about the "The Origins of the Forty-Eighters" in Davenport, Iowa applies to the Benkelmann family as well, even though Leonhard and Dorothea's children instead settled in first in New York, and later Wisconsin, Michigan and Colorado, versus Iowa.

Letters ... sent back to Germany were instrumental to channeling the influx of immigrants from Germany.....

Historian Scott Christiansen explains the purpose of the letters:

"They wanted to tell their friends back home how good it was in America. And they tended to exaggerate a little bit, because they were lonely and liked to have some of their compatriots come over and join them."

The decision to emigrate from one's homeland is generally informed by two forces: the so-called push and pull forces. Letters from family and friends who had already settled in the new world certainly qualify as pull factors. Other such factors were the multitude of job opportunities, inexpensive, yet fertile cropland, and - especially important to the politically motivated Forty-Eighters - the guarantee of democratic liberties such as freedom of speech and expression.

Many of the push factors are related to the causes of the German revolution. As the social and economic conditions in Germany worsened during the 1840s, many people were forced to look for new opportunities. [E]migration has become a matter of life or death, as one German newspaper put it. America with its promise of a new chance for everyone appealed to many Germans ready to emigrate. Reports from America, printed in German newspapers, underscored this notion. Iowa, for example, was described in 1847 as leaving little to be desired both to the productivity of its soil and the more bearable nature of its climate.

While economic necessity might have been a major driving force for many to emigrate, political reasons also factored into the decision to leave the homeland. In fact, the Forty-Eighters are per definition political refugees who for the most part did not struggle financially. But one might argue that a majority of emigrants regarded both political circumstances and economic distress as making life in Germany unbearable. The causes for emigration thus intermingle in many cases.

The strong early presence ...triggered a chain migration...in succeeding years. The term chain migration is defined by the Dictionary of Geography as [a] migration process which depends on a small number of pioneers, who make the first moves to set up a new home in a new place. They send information back home, and this encourages further migration from the originating area.

BonnieMargaret Jacob's cited similar reasons in her manuscript, pointing out the decrease of demail for high-quality goods of the small town artisan, the reluctance of these artisians to move to cities to work in factories, the restrictive craftsman guild system that made it difficult to learn and advance in a trade, and the equally restrictive marriage laws.

"The auswanderer went less to America to build something new than to regain and conserve something old...to till new fields and find new customers, true enough, but ultimately to keep the ways of life they were used to, which the new Europe seemed determined to destroy...people who traveled thousands of grim miles in order to keep their roots, their habits, their united families and the kind of future they wanted for their families. They did not wait passively for their roots to be broken, to be sure; yet they were conservatives, who acted radically in order to preserve, and who journeyed to another world to keep their homes." (Walker, Mack, GERMANY AND THE EMIGRATION 1816-1885, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1964, Page 69, as transcribed by BonnieMargaret Jacobs on pages 77 and 78 of her manuscript).

Johann married Maria Dorothea St?hle on 20 Nov 1822 in Schneiderhof, Waldhausen Parish, Welzheim, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. Maria (daughter of Georg Friedrich St?hle and Anna Maria Leins) was born on 5 Jan 1800 in B?rtlingen, G?ppingen, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 22 Oct 1853 in Transit to America, Lost At Sea. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

On "January something" in 1983, Bonnie Jacobs wrote "A search for some years has finally yielded information for me. As you have probably heard, the last of the 10 Benkelman children to emigrate from Germany were the four girls and their mother [Dorothea, age 52, and daughters Dorothea age 23, Catharina, age 21, Maria, age 13, and Lena, age 7]. We had heard from family legends that the mother died at sea and I have pursued that information for years. I have finally retrieved it. It is a painstaking process to get the facts, but I finally found an obituary that identified the port of entry as Baltimore---a stroke of luck since Baltimore was one of the few American ports of entry that did have a Customs passenger list. I have retrieved the film from the Archives in Washington--but it has brought a new mystery. It is remarkable that finding the answer to one question almost always raises another. Missing from the party of four daughters and the mother is the second eldest daughter, Catharina. She was released from the Empire with the others on 20 September of 1853--but there is no record of her having arrived in Baltimore!

At least I have a death date on the mother now. She died at sea on 22 October, barely a month into the voyage. The ship arrived in Baltimore on December 15. Can you imagine being packed into one of those filthy sailing vessels for six to nine weeks? Try to imagine the day to day living with no privacy, no way to bathe or attend to personal needs and only buggy, dried food to eat! Our ancestors suffered much. I will go and try to retrieve the Captain's actual report now that I know the ship and the Captain--to see if a cause of death is listed. Cholera was rampant that year, but I think it was not the cause since the part of the list I have seen shows only one other death during the voyage."

BonnieMargaret Jacobs shows her, on her transcription of the familienregister page of the Benkelmann family, as a daughter of George Friedrich St?hle and Anna Maria REIK or RECH. However, Anna Maria REIK is actually the mother of Dorothea's daughter-in-law Catharina Schaufele, who married Dorothea's son Adam Benkelmann. Kathy Bonnell, on her transcription of G?ppingen church records, shows her mothers maiden name was LEINS. BonnieMargaret appears to have been simply confusing the two Anna Maria's. Additionally, the family register for the family of Georg Friedrich St?hle, listing his wife and children, shows his wife Anna Maria was born to Georg Friedrich Leins, a farmer.

On the Oberant Welzheim Emmigrants list, 1818-1891, She is listed as Maria Dorothea, Witwe (widow) des Bauers Johann Leonhard Benkelmann von Schneiderhof, Gd. Waldhausen geb. den 5ten Januar 1800. Their guarantor was Johann Georg St?hle, Bauer von B?rtlingen.

(BonnieMargaret's full source citation was: Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg, "Verzeichnis der Auswanderung aus dem Oberamt Welzheim 1818-1891" F 214 B?schel 91 Fortlaufende Number 42 [or possibly 47] ).

Notes:

Married:
BonnieMargaret and her husband Bruce visited Germany in September, 1980. In a letter to Ben and Avis dated October 13, 1980, she shared the following information "Then we were on to B?rtlingen, where Adam and Catherine were married. The church there was built in 1484 and is one of the most beautiful we saw anywhere. I decided to see the village of Breech--for no particular reason except I that I'd heard Elsie Anthes speak of it and it had turned up in various records. WE had no real family association there--but it was nearby. What a stroke of dumb luck! Without that decision we might never have found the Schneiderhof, where Adam and his siblings were born and lived until they emigrated. The Schneiderhof is not a town and is not on any map. It's just a cluster of about 4 houses and supporting buildings, just down and across the road from Breech, and if you were looking away for just a second, you'd miss the sign to it.

I cannot tell you my excitement! ...There is nothing new there. Adam would recognize it as if he had never left. The tools and equipment are there as they have been for who knows how long. It is surrounded by orchards (apples) and small plots of vegetables. B?rtlingen is on a hill and is lovely with good views. The Schneiderhof is on top of the world, looking out on miles of hills and valleys and villages. It is incrediably beautiful. Again I found myself out in some cabbage patch, trying to explain to some farmer that this was my family heimat (home)...Clearly Americans are accepted as eccentric and harmless!...Vocabulary doesn't reach the beauty of that hilltop and its vistas out over hazy valleys, looking at other hills where red tiled houses form little villages. I can just imagine it at night--looking out over perhaps two dozen sparkling little villages on other hills around. One climbs from B?rtlingen to the Schneiderhof. But going down the back side of the mountain, through dense forest, the trail winds back and forth across the mountain into Waldhausen--which the Schneiderhof also looks down upon. This is the trip the family took to get to church, and probably to work."

In her 1981 unpublished manuscript, BonnieMargaret noted that only the top floor of the Benkelmann home shows from the road leading in. The house is three stories high on the back side, two stories high in the front. It was built in 1733, by the state, to provide housing for state licensed artisans who were not allowed in the town as guild craftsmen. Apparently it gained its name from its first inhabitants, since the name literally means "the place of tailors." The official state description of the Schneiderhof in 1845 states that it was a place with 22 Evangelical residents, lying on the mountain top about one-half an hours walk from Waldhausen. The rents were paid to the city of G?ppingen, in 1845 twelve of those residents would have been Leonhard and Dorothea and their 10 living children, others would have included Leonhard's widowed mother and some of her children by Herr Heller, and likely their families. The land was described as rocky and and lying on a mountainside, "even today it is impossible to use machinery to work the land" and that the "people who lived there would have to have outside work." The house itself lies on the very crest of the mountain, with the house built on the downside of the mountain, overlooking Waldhausen. A very small patch of is on the level crest at the top of the mountain. When BonnieMargaret visited the home in 1981, she said it had four or five dwellings in all, and barns and sheds nearby the house and in the orchards. Just west of the house stands the old Bauernhaus, perhaps the homestead of Leonhard's maternal grandparents. The fields to the south were planted in potatoes and turnips, the high production crops that all of southern Germany turned to in the early 1800's. Beyond the westernmost buildings were apple orchards, beautiful and well tended. (pp. 68, 69 and accompanying photos).

BonnieMargaret also noted that German life centered in the family. Even today we're told that day to day life included few close relationships with people outside the family. Certainly they were cordial and friendly with neighbors and cooperating artisans, but the joy of living was carefully protected within the walls of the home. Country people had no protection but each other, and the trusted "other" were kinsmen. Unlike the towns that were structured to protect the citizens from difficult times, the country folk were on their own, in good and bad times. Parents carefully nutured the bonds of affection and caring, and though they may have experienced the sibling rivalry that modern children do, it was not expressed in the German home, where only mutual caring and consideration were approved and encouraged.

Names and birthdates for this family were from the Waldhausen Parish Kirchlichen Familienregister Band I, Blatt 244, Dekanat Welzheim, Schw?bisch Gm?nd. BonnieMargaret noted that all the family information shown on pages 95 and 96 of her book were certified by Pastor Rau of the Ev. Pfarramt Waldhausen to be the complete record of the family of Johann Leonhard Benkelmann, with the exceptions of the dates of death, which were included by BonnieMargaret from other sources. They had one stillborn child, neither name or sex listed, on 4 July 1838. She also noted that they were married on November 20, but the year was illegible.

The family register for the family of Georg Friedrich St?hle and wife, Anna Maria Leins shows that Maria Dorothea was the fifth of their 15 children. She was married at the Schneiderhof on 20 Nov 1822, approximately 10 months after the birth of eldest son Friedrich.

Notes:

In her 1981 unpublished manuscript, BonnieMargaret Jacobs writes that "Johann Jacob (III) grew up in Pl?derhausen with his sister and his cousins, but his father had died a year before the son would have begun his apprenticeship, thus he could not follow in his fathers trade as wannanmacher. He apparently apprenticed with his Uncle Christianius to become a weaver. When he was 20, perhaps in his wandering years as a journeyman, he met Maria Katharina Bauer, whose family had been citizens of Breech, in B?rtlingen parish, for several generations. There is, of course, no record of how the young couple felt about each other or what their intent was. But it was not long before they were faced with a difficult choice [because of Catharina's pregnancy]. Under the restrictive marriage laws of the time, it would have been economic suicide for young Jacob to marry Katharina, he would have had to forfeit his imminent promotion to master status. Katharina was pregant with no husband, and while her unfortunate situation was not unusual, it was still difficult. Though the illegitimacy rate in W?rttemberg was high, so was the infanticide rate. Many young women tried to hide their pregnancies and dispose of their children, but she did not. She would have been called before her pastor to explain the circumstances of her pregnancy and identify the father. In this case, both Katharina and Jacob acknowledged their relationship. In many other cases, that didn't happen and the child would bear his mother's surname. If the father was identified, and acknowledged his paternity, then the child would bear the name of his true father. (p. 56).

Johann married Maria Catharina Baur. Maria was born about 1776 in Breech, B?rtlingen Parish, G?ppingen, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; and died. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Katharina's first child, Leonard Benkelmann, was born out of wedlock.

Katharina later married Johannes Heller, and had four more children. BonnieMargaret writes that "Johannes Heller's father was a citizen and farmer of Adelberg, Breech. But Johannes's own parish record identifies him as a citizen and S?ldner (mercenary soldier), but this would naot have been by choice. His actual occupation was listed elsewhere as steward to the state forester. Johannes Heller died August 3, 1817, and the parish records do not say where or under what conditions except that he was then impressed into the military service of the Prince." (Jacobs, p. 70). BonnieMargaret cites the records of Johannes Heller as being in the Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Waldhausen, Dekanat Schw?bisch Gm?nd Auszug aus dem kirchlichen Familienregister Band I Blatt 242 Schneiderhof.

Notes:

The family church registry records indicate he was a bailiff.

Georg married Anna Maria Leins on 4 Nov 1794 in B?rtlingen, G?ppingen, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. Anna (daughter of Johann Georg Friedrich Leins and Eva Herb) was born on 7 Aug 1769 in B?rtlingen, G?ppingen, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 24 Dec 1846 in B?rtlingen, G?ppingen, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Married:
May have instead been married in December. They had 15 children in all.

Notes:

BonnieMargaret Jacobs writes that Jacob followed his father and grandfather into the trade of wannanmacher. She added that almost certainly the men of Pl?derhausen were farmers in addition to their trades, because trade alone was not large enough to support a man without land to grow his own food. BonnieMargaret noted that cabbage, millet, poppy, beets, clover and flax were all raised in the area (p. 53). BonnieMargaret also stated that the death record of Jacob showed his cause of death at the young age of 36 was attributable to 'delirium-fever.'

BonnieMargaret found records of Johann Jacob Benkelmann's death inventory in Pl?derhausen records. She explained that "upon death, every item belonging to the married couple was inventoried and the guilded artisans placed a monetary value on each thing owned by the parents. The property and inheritance of the wife would be deducted from the estate and the remainder would be divided equaily between the widow and living children. Since the widow would immediately receive possession of her own clothing, only the clothing of the deceased would be itemized"

Jacob's death inventory included the following property:

"one half of a two floor house and an additional building and yard under one roof, down in the lower part of the village besides Friedrich Bose and Christoph Gries", following the house there is a list of vineyards, meadows and garden. No cash is listed, but the couple owned one prayer book, one hand Bible and one hymnal. Furniture and household items consisted of: a bed, clothes wardrobe, hat box, milk box, trunks, child's bed, old trunk, hardwood table, two chairs, one footstool, bells and tools (household), garden tools, axe, field fork, scythe, one container of seed, foodstuffs (potatoes, etc), craftsman's tools, one pistol. His clothing consisted of one blue jacket, one waist cloth, one black pair leather pants, one pair deer leather pants, one hat, one blue chest cloth, one white cloth vest or jacket, one pair shoes. The inventory also itemized every kitchen tool, and the longest category in his inventory were the household linens, five pages in total of linens alone. The total inheritable property was valued at 1312 florins and 30 kreutze, and after re-listing all the property, the inventory specified who got what. It was signed by Eva and her curator, and by the curator of the children's interest. (p. 64).

Johann married Eva H?fner on 2 Feb 1773 in Pl?derhausen, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. Eva was born on 27 Nov 1752 in W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 29 Dec 1829 in Pl?derhausen, Jagstkreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

BonnieMargaret Jacob's refers to her as "the daughter of the farmer of Aichenbach." (p. 53). The parish records transcribed on page 91 show her parents as Joh. Jacob H?fner, Bauer in Aichenbach, and Magdalena B?hler.

She stated that Eva H?fner remarried in 1789, a year after Jacob's death, and it appears she may have married a relative, and in 1795 she was divorced, apparently by a husband who preferred a woman who would be (and was) willing to bear his children. On page 93 of her manuscript, it is shown that Eva's second marriage was to Jacob B?hler, employed as a vintner.

In a footnote, BonnieMargaret said that German law on hereditable properties provides a possible explanation for Eva remarriage and subsequent divorce. Citizens did not own their land, but it was the lease of that land that was heriditable. In some areas of Germany, a widow had to be remarried within a year of her husband's death to retain the tenenancy on the land. Her remarriage falls within that time frame, and her divorce was at the time her son Johann Jacob achieved master and citizen status. Thus it is probable that the marriage, apparently to a relative, was a marriage of convenience to retain the land tenancy for her children at their ages of majority. (p. 54).

Notes:

Married:
BonnieMargaret Jacobs, on page 63 of her 1981 manuscript, cites DEKANAT SCHORNDORF, BAND I, BLATT 25 for the parish records detailing the makeup of the Johann Jacob Binkelmann and Eva Hafner family.

Christoph married Barbara Fritz about 1752 in Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. Barbara was born about 1732 in Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 1 Mar 1788 in B?rtlingen, G?ppingen, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Kathy Bonnell shows Frey, but a scan of the actual record appears to read "Fritz."

Notes:

He was a farmer. On birth and death records he is listed as Johann Friedrich and on the marriage record he is listed as Georg Friedrich. But no other Friedrich Liens is listed between 1784 and 1826, so it is assumed they are the same person.

Email from Dot Williams, dated May 23, 2005:

A belated Thank you for mailing me the German Family Church Records. Several years ago you forwarded some of these that you had received by e-mail (I think it was) from a man in Germany. I took my copies with me when I went to Salt Lake City that year, and asked for help reading them from a lady who worked in the International Department. The Old German was very difficult to read, but she did it as if she was reading the morning paper. I was amazed. Anyway, I compared what she had read for me, with this information from Kathy Bonnell, and found 3 places where we did not agree.

1) Adam Benkelman was born in 1825 not 1835.

2) (Generation 3) Christoph Stahle married Barbara Fritz not Frey. I just took another look at the original record, and it sure looks like Fritz to me.

3) (Generation 5-last page) Georg Friedrich Leins was born 25 January 174(5)?. There is a line in the copy that goes right over the last digit but it looks like a 5. But it certainly was not 11 Apr 1740 (as per Kathy Bonnell). The death date was correct. I'm not going to change my information, because I truly think it is more accurate than hers. But it is a good summary of the Benkelman collateral lines, and Thank You for sending it to me.

Dot

Johann married Eva Herb on 26 May 1767 in Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. Eva (daughter of Conrad Herb and Maria Catharine ???) was born about 6 Aug 1748 in Unterberken, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany; died on 13 Sep 1826 in B?rtlingen, G?ppingen, Donaukreis, W?rttemberg, Germany. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Might also be GERB?

Notes:

Married:
They had a total of 13 children.