When we were working on last week’s post about Henry and Anna Vonderhaar, I was interested to note that their parents had all immigrated at about the same time. I started looking at where they were from and discovered it was very likely they knew each other before they moved to Iowa. They were all from the area near Ankum, Germany.
We knew that the Wellmans were from the area in and around Ankum, Germany. The software that we use will provide a list of all the places we have entered. So I started a list. These are the names of family who lived in the Ankum, Germany area.
- Wellman
- Heil
- Kuhlman
- Terborg
- Steinkamp
- Sperveslage
- Hoemme
- Vonderhaar
- Peterschmidt
- Kaiser
- Kruempelmann
- Kroeger
- Brinker
- Halft
- Haverkamp
- Lammerding
- Mellage
- Sperveslage
- Scherder
- Kreinest
Now there are plenty of other families from Germany in our history, but all of these families lived within about 15 (24 kilometers) miles of each other. Many of them would have been found on this map. It is entirely possible that these families knew each other before they came to the United States.
It’s common for immigrants to move to areas where there are others from their native areas, and southeastern Iowa was a gathering point for German families.
Going just a bit farther afield (around 25 miles, 40 kilometers), you can add Boeding, Kleinpauler, Bergman, Korte
Other German family
If you head south in Germany, near Bieringen, in the Baden-Württemberg area, there are several more families. Fischer, Gaus, Sauter, Knaisch, Truffner, Biegelmeier, and Straub all lived in this area. In this post, I discussed members of the Sauter and Knaisch family traveling on the same ship!
In between these two groups, the Links came from the area around Oerlenbach.
There are also the families Armbruster, Breuggenerth, Tritz, Buscher, Goerlich, and Limbach from other areas in Germany.
And not all of these families are on Walt’s side of the family tree! These are limited by the information I have. There are many more families that we haven’t traced back enough to see where they traveled from.
So it might be interesting to look at where your family is from and see how many people came from the same area!
John Pomberg
I am interested in knowing where my great great grandfather Heinrich pomberg lived in Germany he settled in st Paul Houghton area.
Thanks for any info
Michelle
Hello John. I haven’t been able to find out exactly where Heinrich Pomberg was from in Germany beyond Prussia. Prussia was the northern part of the country, just south of the Baltic Sea. I will continue to look and see if I can find anything further. I did find the ship’s manifest for when he came to the United States. He traveled from the port of Bremen on the Fides. He arrived in New Orleans on the 20th of November,1854.