|
|
The "KAMMANN
STORY"
A JUST-FOR-FUN SEARCH ON
THE INTERNET
Did you already pay a visit to the
emigration case of the Kammann family on our I. M. A. R.
homepage?
Certainly you will remember the
bureaucratic application procedure for their wedding and emigration,
as well as the punishment because of the birth of their illegitimate
child. We know from the files in the Schwerin archives that Carl
Kammann from Kavelstorf and Caroline Rutenick from Stavenhagen got
married just before their emigration in 1864.
However, little is known whether they made
their fortune in America:
Carl Kammann started running a successful
carpentry business there; Caroline Kammann gave birth to a second
child Sophie in 1865. We assume that she died soon after that.
You want to know where it came from?
Last summer - only some weeks after we had
put the Kammann emigration case on the internet - we got an e-mail by
a Karl Kammann and his son in the US as follows:
"When my son and I recently did a
simple just-for-fun search on the internet for the name Kammann, we
were very surprised to see ... your information about my Urgrossvater
and Urgrossmutter, Carl A. Kammann and Caroline Rutenick..."
"Your presentation about their life in
Mecklenburg, their problems, their marriage, etc. was very interesting
and well-done..."
"The part you have reported which is
new to me, are the various wedding applications, refusals,
dispensations, applications for emigration, etc..."
"Now, I am very curious as to whether
you were aware of my book "The Kammanns of Mecklenburg and America",
published in 1991..."
Remark:
The above photo of the Kammann family was
also taken from this book.
(Will be continued by Ingeborg Lorenz,
I. M. A. R. Rostock)
"Large numbers of Americans who would
like to trace their ancestry from Germany have been handicapped from
doing so in two respects. One has been the language problem. The
other, more serious problem, is that most don't know where in
Germany their ancestors came from. I was fortunate in both respects
-- my family not only saved records from my great-grandparents'
immigration, but my interest and profession made it advisable for me
to learn German. Even so, back in the 1980s while being in
full-time employment as a research chemist, it took me nearly 10
years of spare-time searching to come up with a reasonably complete
family history. Today, however, family history research is made
much easier as a result of the I. M. A. R. Through my studies
and theirs, I have learned that if one's ancestors came from Germany
during the great wave of immigration in the mid to late 1800s, and
were of Protestant religion, there is at least a 50 percent chance
that they came from the Mecklenburg region of northern Germany, or nearby
areas. This makes it well worth contacting the I. M. A. R.
people (who are bilingual), and who with their remarkable abilities
are usually able to come up with extensive family facts and records
in a relatively short period of time."
|
|||||||
|
|
|
  |
