ORIGIN OF THE MICHIGAN HOPPES FAMILY

Items #3 and #4 in the Hoppes Generations publication Harry's Ten Most Wanted list indicate:

#3. The Haps Brothers: According to the Churchbook Brombach, Uli Haps had two sons by his first wife Barbara, daughter of the deceased Wolf Preusch. They were Hans Valentin baptized 20 November 1668 and Johann Ludwig baptized 18 January 1674. In 1688, the French invaded the Palatinate and destroyed much of the area around Heidelberg. Valentin would have been 20 at this time and his younger brother Ludwig 14. What happened to the brothers Haps? More clues needed.

#4. The Missing Link: There is a Hoppes clan of considerable size near Westphalia, Michigan descended from a Hoppes family headed by Matthias Hoppes who arrived in the PA about 1852. Matthias Hoppes was born in or near the town of Relingen/Saarburg close to the French border with Germany in 1825/1826 and married Margaretha Schmidt about 1845. He apparently had a sister Barbara born there in 1830 who married Engelbert Esch in Westphalia, Michigan in 1855/1856. The genealogist Dale Calder reports that Matthias' father was Engelbert Hoppes but another publication suggests his father's name was John Hoppes. Our hoppesgenerations colleague Marlynn O'Keefe has ancestors from the same area near the current Germany/Luxembourg/ France border. The oldest Hoppeses she found there are Georg Hoppes married to Regina Knebels, who had a child Anna Maria born about 1764, Peter Hoppes married to Catherine ____ , who had a daughter Catharine born 1768, and John Hoppes who married Sarah Jett on 12 August 1785. Can anyone link the Michigan Hoppeses to Marlynn's Hoppeses? Can anyone link Marlynn's Hoppeses to the Haps brothers in #3 above? More clues needed.

Is there a link between the two sons of Uli Haps and the Michigan Hoppes family or is the Michigan Hoppes family descended from someone else? When the armies of Louis XIV of France invaded the Heidelberg area in 1688, did either of the brothers Ludwig Haps or Valentin Haps survive? From the publication Other European Hoppeses, for example, we know that there was a Paul Haps who was married on January 16, 1731 in Filstroff, France, not far from today’s border with Germany. But from this same publication, we know that there were other Happes families living near Hannover and Leunen, Germany about this time. Can we link the Haps families to Marlynn’s Hoppeses from Grevenmacher near Luxembourg? And can we link the Grevenmacher/Luxembourg Hoppes families to the Michigan clan?

The second question appears easier to answer than the first. In his book, Hoppes and Related Families, Ed Hoppes devotes Part IV to the Michigan Hoppes family. On page 439 of his book, Ed relates:

According to church records in St. Mary’s Church in Westphalia, Mich., John Hoppes was born in 1788 in Prussia and died in Westphalia 10 Sep 1858. A Matthias Hoppes, Jr., born in Prussia, died 21 Sep 1903 at the age of 87 and a Matthias Hoppes, Sr. died 6 days later at age 91. We do not know the relationship of these 3 Hoppeses and we can find no one alive today who can shed any light on our questions. We assume that they are related to each other. . . .

The first generation in America also included Barbara Hoppes who married Engelbert Esch, a widower with 7 children born in Germany. They then had 7 more in Mich. We do not know her relationship to the others but our research shows that she was a citizen of Rehlingen, Saarburg, District of Trier, Prussia. Dr. H. Hoppes, who is fluent in German, will communicate with sources over there and soon we may know more about her and the others.

On January 2, 1982, shortly before Ed’s book was published, I wrote to the a leading source of information about family history, the Heimatstelle Pfalz in Kaiserslautern, Germany, inquiring whether they had any data about the Hoppes family from Rehlingen. On August 18, 1982, I received the reply that such a family was not listed in their file of emigrants and that they had forwarded my letter to the Catholic church in Rehlingen. On October 8, 1982, I received a letter from the county registry for the towns of Biringen, Eimersdorf, Fremersdorf, Fuerweiler, Gerlfangen, Hemmersdorf, Niedaltdorf, Oberesch, Rehlingen, and Siersburg, which stated that my letter to the Heimatstelle Pfalz had been forwarded to them and that a review of the birth, marriage, and death registers revealed no entries for any individuals named Hoppes. The response I received from the county registrar Mr. Collet was based on a search conducted at his request by a private genealogist, Mr. Guido Mueller, who checked the birth records to 1832 and the marriage and death registers from 1833 – 1842.

During a trip to Germany in June 1984, my wife Riki and I visited Rehlingen and the nearby town of Saarlouis. Although we had a pleasant visit, we were unsuccessful in finding any data about individuals named Hoppes/Happes. I was very puzzled at our lack of success and that of the German researchers. After our return home, on August 15, 1984, I wrote a letter in German to Mr. Guido Mueller; the English equivalent stated:

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit the Standesbeamte Rehlingen in search of information about individuals named Happes who once lived there. Mr. Collet indicated that he had already written to you concerning my request for information about the Happes family. I appreciate the assistance you provided to him.

The enclosed photocopy of information from the church book of St. Mary’s Parish in Westphalia, Michigan indicates that Barbara Hoppes married in 1855. Am I correct in identifying Rehlingen as the town mentioned in the church book data? Barbara Hoppes’ father may have been named John and she may have had one or more brothers named Matthias. . . .

On September 20, 1984, Mr. Mueller replied that I had the wrong Rehlingen. He replied that the Rehlingen I was looking for was a tiny village in the County of Saarburg on the Mosel River between the towns of Remich and Grevenmacher. Later I learned that the location I was looking for now is part of the town of Nittel near Grevenmacher. Further follow-up with Mr. Mueller, however, produced no additional information about the Hoppes family.

In preparing this Hoppesgenerations write-up about the Michigan Hoppes clan, I decided to list all the potentially pertinent church book, Latter Day Saints (LDS), Marlynn O'Keefe, and 1900 Census data I had at my fingertips. The results are summarized below.

From the data in the above table, it appears virtually certain that the Michigan Hoppes family is related to the Hoppes family documented in Marlynn O’Keefe’s data for the following reasons:

           (1) The village of Rehlingen where the Barbara Hoppes who was mentioned in the Westphalia, MI church book lived is located very close to O’Keffe’s Grevenmacher,

            (2) The John Hoppes who married Sarah Jett on August 12, 1785 according to the O’Keefe data may have been identical to the John Hoppes who died in Westphalia, MI on September 10, 1858 and who most likely was the father of Barbara Hoppes and the two brothers named Matthias Hoppes,

(3) Marlynn O’Keefe’s data indicate that the parents of the Catherine Hoppes born in 1768 were Peter Hoppes and his Wife Catherine, while the LDS data indicate that on March 27, 1756, Peter Hoppes and his wife Catherine baptized their son Matthias, possibly the namesake of the two Matthias Hoppes brothers who emigrated to Michigan, and

(4) Moreover, the father of Bernard, Gerad., Anna Maria, and Anna Barbara Hoppes was another Matthias Hoppes, who was married to Elisabeth Wallenborn.

But was the Hoppes family from Rehlingen/Grevenmacher and the nearby towns of Ayl, Aach, and Biewer (all near Trier, Germany) related to the Haps family from Filstroff, France (near the town of Metz)? LDS data indicate that in addition to the Hoppes families living between Trier and Luxembourg (and those in the Odenwald related to our ancestor Michael Haps born 1688), there were a dozen other entries in Germany for individuals with the Hoppes surname. In our family’s history, the Swiss surname Haps/Habs evolved to Happes/ Habbes in the Heidelberg area, and then to Hoppes (and other variations) after the brothers Georg and Michael Happes arrived in the colonial US in 1751. But unrelated families, whose surname was spelled and pronounced Hoppes (which in German is different from the way Happes is pronounced), already existed in Germany at this time. Therefore, it appears highly unlikely to me that the Michigan Hoppes family was related in any way to the families established by Georg and Michael Happes.

Item #4 on Harry’s Ten Most Wanted list is now considered closed. But what about Item #3? Unfortunately, we are no closer to a solution here than before. The 10 entries for individuals named Haps from Filstroff, France listed in the table above were all I could find. Moreover, each of these LDS entries with the surname Haps had a corresponding entry for the surname Hap. For whatever reason, the family name Haps does not appear to have prospered in France. C’est la Vie!

Harry Hoppes September 2002

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