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MARY'S FAMILY - ZARNOTH / PREY / KIECKHOFEL
This page contains brief family summaries for one
of Mary's
ancestral branches, the Zarnoth, Prey, Kieckhofel, and
related families from Kreis (County) Regenwalde,
Pomerania
(now Poland), Germany.
The Family Summaries pages, such as this one, do not
contain
complete listings of ancestors or their siblings or descendants.
They are just intended to help you determine if you want
to search
the Detailed Genealogies or Ancestors pages
of this web site.
Contents of this Page:
Links to Other Pages on this Web Site:
ZARNOTH, KIECKHOFEL, LOOSE, SEEGER, and ZUGE Families:
Once upon a time in Kreis Regenwalde on the road from Plathe to the city of Regenwalde, there existed a place, a small place, called Neuenhagen, not on the main road but off to the south a bit. Exactly what it once was I do not know, but it is now just a collection of scattered buildings in a flat open field, inhabited but with signs of disrepair everywhere. What draws us to this desolate spot are certain barely-readable scrawls on a few old documents saying that the ZARNOTT’s, my maternal ancestors, once lived here -- only a few short kilometers from where my husband, Andy’s were from! So, in the late summer heat of the millenium year, we head for Neuenhagen.
Regenwalde is now Resko, Plathe is Ploty, and what is left of Neuenhagen is called Czarne. We turn south off Highway 152 onto a sideroad and proceed a kilometer or so across flat terrain being marginally utilized for agriculture (although in the fall, it is a little hard to be sure what the crops looked like in summer). The sign says we are in Czarne but where the center of town is, is not clear. To the right are the remains (occupied?) of an old manor house (Gut). To the left is a still-functioning distillery.
Our old topo map showed a rectangle with two crosses inside (the symbol for a cemetery), connected to the town by a lane to the south. We carefully measure and scale distances from still existing landmarks and conclude that a barely-passable trail is the lane. It leads right next to a house. We are hesitant to go down it without asking permission, but our guide Henryk assures us it is a public path. We eventually come to the conclusion that the concepts of private ownership and of public domain are much different in Poland than we are familiar with in the States.
We drive down the lane past a shed or two, and past curious heifers. We park the car when we are close to the indicated spot of the old cemetery. We walk ahead to a small pine woods. We, of course, have no expectations.
Barely inside the woods, we knew we had the right
spot! A limestone marker, the top broken off, still stood, albeit somewhat
crookedly. Limestone or not, it was, after rubbing off some lichens,
still readable. The first name was broken off, but it ended in an “a”
and the second to the last letter ended in a downstroke:
“.…..a EHLERT, geb. MEDENWALD, * 1.2.1887, + 8.6.1932”.
Also listed on the same stone was: “Auguste MEDENWALD,
geb. DUMMANN, * 3.9.1848, + 19.12.1933”, “Ruhel Sanft”. (Rest
in Peace)
We do not know who they were -- perhaps a daughter and her mother. This lone surviving stone may not be there much longer, but at least we now have a record of what it said
This tombstone was at the head of, for lack of a better word, a sarcophagus, buried in the ground. The rectangular cement outline of the top walls were visible above the soil. Seven additional of these structures were present, in a line to the south of the first. None of the others had a tombstone. We assume the bodily remains are still present inside the structure --as they appeared undisturbed.
Ancestral Villages for Mary's Family in Kreis Regenwalde, and Andy's in Kreis Schivelbein
Neuenhagen is were my great grandfather Johann Karl Friedrich (born 1846) & his siblings were born.
Their father, Erdmann ZARNOTT (spelling found in early documents in Germany) b.1805 in Gardin, Pomerania, Kreis (County)Regenwalde, Germany married in 1829, Friedrike Charlotte Sophia KIECKHOFEL, b. 1810 in Pommern. Gardin is a small village very near Neuenhagen. (see map)
Erdman and Friedrike’s children were all born in Gardin
or Neuenhagen: Friedricke Wilhelmina b. 1830, Johanna Christine b. 1832,
Friedrika Charlotte b. 1835, Martin Friedrich b.1838 [ZUGE], Johann
Henrick b. 1840 [SEEGER], Johanna Emilie b. 1843 [LOOSE] , Johann Karl
Friedrich b. 1846 [PREY/PREI]. We do not know anything about the first
three children, but Martin Friedrich, Johann Henrick, and Johanna Emilie
married in Pommern and emigrated to Wisconsin in the 1860's.
Johann Karl, my g-grandfather, married Wilhelmina PREY
and came to the USA in 1883 with five children. He was known as “Carl” in
the States. They farmed in the Hayton, Charlestown (Calumet County) Wisconsin
area where they had four more children. The nine children in birth
order are: August (born 1870) [LOOSE], Carl (born 1872) [KLEIST]; Fred (
born 1874) [VOIGHT], Gustave (born 1879)[NASS], Annie (born 1882)[1st: BARTON,
2nd: REICHERT], Bertha (born 1884) [SCHWANZ], Emil (born 1886)[HAENSGEN],
Mary (born 1888)[MUNKER], Albert (born 1891) [SPANN].
My grandfather, Emil born 1886 married Mary HAENSGEN in June of 1912. They had two daughters, the oldest of whom died at a young age. Emil and Mary lived in the area of Marytown, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, then moved to near New Holstein Wisconsin about 1914. He was employed at the Lime Kiln’s for several years and the family lived in the company houses across the road. The names listed above in square brackets [IN CAPS] are the surnames of the spouses. |
Johann Karl (Carl) Zarnoth (b. 1846) and his wife Wilhelmina Prey (b. 1848), & their nine children (L to R): Frederick (Fred), August, Emil, Annie, Carl, Mary, Gustave, and in the front, Albert and Bertha. A better quality photo is available. |
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PREY, ERDMANN, HAFEMANN Families:
Little is known about my great grandmother Wilhelmina Prey. Information about her place of birth & her parents names are high on my list of wanted information. We assume her place of birth was in or around the Neuenhagen (by Plathe) Pommern, as record of her first son is found in the Neuenhagen documents in 1870. This first child, August Bernhard, was born before her marriage to Johann Karl Friedrich Zarnott, but August did later go by the name Zarnoth.
We know that in 1905 her sons Emil and Carl Zarnoth went to a funeral of an uncle of theirs in Wausau. A definite connection has not been found as yet but it is believed that Wilhemina's sisters lived in Wausau, Marathon County. They would be Mrs. Ulrike (Franz) ERDMANN & Mrs. Emilie (August) HAFEMANN. It would be a husband of one of them whose funeral the men attended.
The names listed above in square brackets [IN CAPS]
are the surnames of the spouses