Foreword s er elm e A el, f d

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1 Foreword Often, one of the most challenging discoveries for Americans of European descent is locating the origin of their ancestors. Many Americans with German ancestors mistakenly believe they came from Bremen or Hamburg. This assumption is natural enough since those cities were frequently the port of embarkation of the vessels that brought millions of Germans to America. The birthplace of 1 st generation immigrants was often listed on U.S. census forms. However, more often than not, the entries merely list the state or region such as Prussia or Hesse-Darmstadt. While this is helpful it still does not lead one to the village or town that was the birthplace of their ancestor. The Aspelmeyers are no exception to this rule. For several years I was at a loss as to the birthplace of my Aspelmeyer ancestors. All I knew for certain was that Friedrich Wilhelm Aspelmeyer came to Baltimore from Germany i. He appears in the 1850 and 1860 United States Census, listed as an immigrant from Germany. His final appearance in the 1870 census lists Prussia as his birthplace ii. Prussia in 1848 was spread all over central Europe. So I needed a little more information to determine the origin of our Aspelmeyers. While assigned to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California I became friends with a colleague, Paul Horlacher, whose brother worked as a researcher at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. Vera and I met his brother, Gary, in Salt Lake City on a Saturday morning during a crosscountry trip in June At the library, Gary asked me what surname I wanted to focus on since we had only a few hours for research. Aspelmeyer was my answer. I wanted to pursue my grandmother s line since we knew so little about her line of descent. That sounds like a Westphalian name to me, said Gary. We walked over to one of dozens of bookshelves in the basement. He quickly located the book he was searching for on one of the top shelves. There were several entries in the index for Aspelmeyer. On the third try I found the listing for my 3 rd great grandfather. The book, Beiträge zur Westfälischen Familienforschung (BZWF), is a twovolume work that lists legal and illegal emigrants from Westphalia in the 19 th Century. A researcher at the State Archives in Detmold culled the information from court documents. Many of these records are the results of Prussian Army recruiters searches for missing recruits. The officer would interview family or neighbors to determine what happened to someone who failed to appear for service in the Army. It seems that the Prussian Army went to Lübbecke to find Friedrich in 1853, a full five years after he departed for Baltimore. His mother gave the details to the Prussian officer who duly noted the information in his log. 6

2 It was this proclivity for proficiency that allowed me to finally determine the origin of my 3 rd great grandfather, 147 years later. 7

3 Auf der Suche (in search of). My Aspelmeyer lineage begins with my maternal grandmother, Margie Maley Aspelmeyer. She is my link to the Aspelmeyer line that arrived in America in Although my interest in family history was sparked in the 1970 s when I watched Alex Haley s Roots on television, it was not until over twenty years later that I began to research my own roots. Although I knew Margie better than any of my other grandparents, that is not really saying much. I have a few memories as a small boy at her home on Mountain Road in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. I recall her dog and a cat as well as her kindness towards my brother, my sister and myself. At that time she was a large woman who seemed to be friendly and engaging. I m not sure what happened to her in the ensuing years as I grew up and found myself living all over the country in different Margie Aspelmeyer (Aug. 1937) circumstances. I saw Margie only on rare occasions until she moved to Ohio to live with us in 1981, shortly before I graduated from high school. She had lost a great deal of weight and seemed to be rather surly by the time she joined us in Ohio. At that time I was a typical teenager, more interested in my own self and getting on with my life. Although we talked, I had long since lost my interest in genealogy and never really asked her about her life growing up. In retrospect, this is something I will always regret. She began to develop Alzheimer s disease (though I don t recall anyone knowing what that was at the time) and her memories and personality slowly began to fade away. Now in my thirties I can only reflect and wonder what she could have shared with me that last year in high school. I am certain that I would have gained a much better understanding of the abject poverty she experienced prior to the depression and what life must have been like in the Depression and on the Home Front during the Second World War. Instead I must try to recreate the story of her life and her German ancestors in Baltimore. I do so without the benefit of any oral history, memories or family myths. Discovering the Branches of the Family Tree, a Beginning As a young man I had always heard that we had German ancestors, yet I never had the time or opportunity to research this for myself. I knew very little of my grandmother s life and even less of her heritage. Finally in the spring of 1997 I bought Generations Family Tree software and began to research my 8

4 German roots. I had to rely on the Internet since we lived in Italy at that time. In short order my mother and I (almost at the same time) found our cousin Jerry Guercio through his web site posted on Web TV. Jerry had already completed a great deal of family research on our common roots. His grandmother Dorothy and my grandmother Margie were sisters. We later met and shared our research. Jerry also gave us a tour of Baltimore cemeteries where our ancestors are buried. At this point I had contributed very little to the body of research on our Aspelmeyer family history. I Chris at Grandma s (1967) was finally able to contribute something after a visit to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City in June 2000 when we met with Gary Horlacher. He quickly pointed out that Aspelmeyer sounded like a surname from Westphalia. We found a reference book that identified Friedrich Aspelmeyer s hometown in Germany. We departed Salt Lake City with a destination in mind: Lübbecke. Vera and I flew to Germany in July 2000 for a vacation en route to Tunisia. I took the train to Bremerhaven to pick up our car and then drove to Lübbecke. I visited the Lutheran church, the church archives, the city archives and surrounding communities where the Aspelmeyers live today. I found numerous entries in the microfilmed church records and discovered the location of my 4G- Grandfather s house. I returned to Lübbecke for more research in late July with Vera. I visited once again in November These visits and the research I completed were instrumental in completing the story of our Aspelmeyer ancestors. Lübbecke is located in Northern Germany in what today is known as the state of North-Rhein Westphalia. It s a beautiful medieval town. Wandering the narrow streets I found myself wondering what the city was like when my ancestors lived there just 150 years ago. Life in the 19 th Century must have been very different from life in 21 st Century Lübbecke. Lübbecke today is a prosperous, beautiful little town tucked into the north side of the Wiehengebirge ridge in Westphalia in Northern Germany. Poverty is rare in Lübbecke, even among the immigrants (legal and illegal) who reside there today. The situation in the 19 th Century was much different. Poverty was widespread until the 1960 s and contributed to unstable population growth. The population today, 15,853 iii, is much larger than it was in 1818 (2,613). The current population is also stable. 9

5 Two separate events changed the history of this area. The first was the transfer of Westphalia to Prussia in 1815 and the other was rapid population growth brought on by industrialization and agricultural transformation. These factors were, in large part, responsible for the departure of Friedrich Wilhelm Aspelmeyer in 1848 for Baltimore. However, I am getting ahead of myself Origins on the Aspel (am Rande des Moores) Grosses Torfmoor, July 2002 (by Chris Wyatt) So where did the Aspelmeyers come from? This is a fair question, one that has an interesting answer. The man who arrived at the Port of Baltimore in 1848 descended from an old Westphalian farming family. Aspelmeier, literally the Meiers on the Aspel is a family surname whose origin is the ancient swamp just north of Nettelstedt in Westphalia, Germany. The Aspel itself is a small, slightly raised plain originally surrounded on three sides by the Grosses Torfmoor, a bog filled swamp north of the Wiehengebirge ridgeline. The Wiehengebirge serves as a natural southern boundary for the North German Plain, a vast lowland covering most of northern continental Europe from Holland to Poland. The Aspel has been home to dozens of generations of Aspelmeiers over the past several hundred years. 10