A Breakthrough in Pommern!
One thing leads to another
I was approached by the Pomeranian Special Interest Group (based in California) to do a presentation via Zoom on Pomeranians in Australia on Saturday afternoon January 22 their time or Sunday morning 23 January Brisbane time.
After a quick introduction to the history of European settlement in Australia and the arrival of significant groups of Germans from 1838 onwards, I spoke about a number of "sample families" from the former Kreis Lauenburg in Pomerania who had settled in Queensland: Kopittke and Rehbein who migrated to Maryborough but settled in Bundaberg and intermarried; Paradies who migrated to Bowen and moved to Charters Towers; and my own great-grandparents Daniel and Charlotte Kopittke, their son Gustav and daughter Auguste who migrated to Brisbane and settled at Geebung, now a Brisbane suburb.
To my utter surprise, Uwe Kerntopf from Germany posted a comment in the Chat section "Daniel KOPITTKE and Charlotte born JESCHKE married 1838 in Garzigar, County Lauenburg." Now these were indeed my great-grandparents! But why did I not already have the details of their marriage?
When Daniel died in 1880 in Brisbane, my grandfather Gustav was the informant for the death certificate and gave Daniel's age as 70, that he was born in “Poman, Prussia”, and that he had married Charlotte at Lauenburg. When Charlotte died in 1884, Gustav was again the informant and gave her age as 73, that she was born in “Gotzlow, Pommern, Prussia”, and that she had married Daniel at “Masson, Pommern, Prussia”. I thought that “Masson” might be a corruption of Klein Massow, but with Gotzlow being near Stettin, I thought that to be an error.
The information from the marriage record now told me that at the time of marriage (6 April 1838), Daniel was described as Knecht in Zelasen (servant in Zelasen) aged 27, Charlotte as Magd in Belgardt (maid in Belgard) aged 24, daughter of George Jeschke verstorbener Tagelöhner in Chotzlow (deceased day-labourer in Chotzlow).
This would seem to solve the issue of Charlotte's birth place - apparently Chotzlow had been wrongly heard as Gotzlow - Chotzlow is now known by its Polish name Chocielewko and lies about 12 km by road to the south-west of Garzigar which is now known as Garczegorze. Belgard, now known as Bialogarda, lies about 9 km north-north-west of Garzigar; and Zelasen, now known as Żelazna, lies about 18 km to the north-east of Garzigar. I wonder how they met!
Uwe directed my attention to the database at Stolper Heimatkreise e.V. which contained the details of my great-grandparents marriage.
https://www.stolp.de/globalindex.html?
With some 4½ million records in the database, this site is well worth a visit. With the use of wildcards, _ replacing any one character and % replacing any number of characters, the string "K_p%t%k_" entered in the surname field produced 1562 hits which could be variants of the surname "Kopittke".
So a big thank you to Uwe Kerntopf for reminding me of the Stolper Heimatkreise site, and for the record of the marriage of my great-grandparents. And another big thank you to the numbers of volunteers who have contributed to the Stolper Heimatkreise site!
