CROSSING THE OCEAN
Following the completion of my book on my Kolberg family and the complimentary responses from many of my cousins, my quest to further my research intensified. I was fairly satisfied with the information I had gathered on the five Kolberg brothers who had immigrated to America. I had their families, including children and grandchildren, nearly 100% documented. There would always be gaps to fill in, new marriages to add, new children to add, etc., but with the assistance and cooperation of so many cousins I had documented these lines up to the present generation with statistics, photos, census images and vital records.
Now my attention turned to tracing the descendants of the remaining two Kolberg brothers, Friedrich-Wilhelm, Jr. and Johann, who had remained in Germany. This would be challenging since knowledge on "this side of the ocean" was pretty sketchy.
The most I knew was that Johann Kolberg was to have moved to Berlin where he had a family of "at least six children" according to cousin, Walter Kolberg. Walter also had memories of his uncle, Friedrich-Wilhelm Kolberg, Jr., remaining on the family farm in Klein Tuchen and that he also had "at least six children". I had a photo of Friedrich-Wilhelm Kolberg, Jr. and his wife but no photo or other information on Johann Kolberg.
At this time in 1980 I was an avid reader of the Genealogical Helper magazine. I happened to see an advertisement where a person could send to Germany for a listing of people with a specific surname in a designated location and then would receive addresses from that telephone directory. Off went some of my money (I don't remember now how much) and a request for a listing of ALL Kolberg names in Berlin. I was convinced that someone had to be remaining from the family of Johann Kolberg and I was hopeful that this might be a way to connect with those descendants.
The list came to me with 110 names of Kolberg individuals and their addresses in Berlin. I then drafted a simple request letter and had it translated into German. Basically it stated that I was searching my family history and that my great-great grandparents were Friedrich-Wilhelm Kolberg, Sr. and Amalie Kautz of Klein Tuchen, Bütow, Pommern. I further stated that I was searching for any descendants of their son, Johann Kolberg, who lived in Berlin from approximately 1890-1930 and who was to have had at least six children. I included the specific dates that I had already gathered, made 110 copies of this letter and mailed them off to each of the names on my list along with an International postal coupon to cover their cost for return postage.
Amazingly, over the next 18 months, I did receive 87 responses to my letter which were very gratifying and exciting. All responses were in German, of course, and I had to have them each translated. But unfortunately there were no connections. People were very gracious and willing to share their own personal line of ancestry with me but nobody was even remotely connected with my Kolberg line. I was beginning to think that Kolberg was as common of a surname in Germany as Smith, Jones or Miller are in the US.
At the same time I also placed a similarly worded advertisement in two different Berlin newspapers that offered a listing free of charge. But, again, two years went by with no response to those ads. Success with genealogy research, in those years, was a long, long process before the use of personal computers, the Internet, Google, e-mail and instant responses. So, wait I did - but not patiently I might add!
During that period of time I continued to tweak the data that I did have on the five branches of my Kolberg line and kept questioning cousins as to any memories they might have of the German branches.
It was, therefore, in November, 1982 that I was totally surprised by a letter that I received with a German postmark and fancy stamps. This letter was to be the start of a correspondence that would last only a few years but would give me my first direct German connection. While it was NOT a connection with either of the families of Johann or Friedrich-Wilhelm Kolberg, Jr., it was actually a connection taking me back more generations.
This letter came to me from Hemmingen, a village near Hanover in Germany, and was written by a woman who informed me that, while she had not personally seen my advertisement in the Berlin newspapers, a friend of hers had and he shared my ad with her. She explained that from my data in the advertisement she could inform me that HER great-grandmother, Carolina Wilhelmina Colberg, and MY mother's great-grandfather, Friedrich-Wilhelm Colberg were indeed brother and sister emphasizing to me the correct spelling of the surname was Colberg.
To say that I was excited with this connection is an understatement. Of course, initial pleasure was tempered by the fact that the letter had to be sent off for translation. During these years, I was fortunate to have a wonderful woman in California who did all my translations for me and translated my English into German and then translated the German responses back into English. I wish now that I had kept a tally of just how much money I spent on this Kolberg research but, perhaps, it is best that I don't know. However, without these expenditures I would never have gathered the information that I did.
My correspondence with my newly discovered cousin in Hemmingen spanned a short period from 1982 until her death in 1989. During those seven short years we had twice/monthly correspondence and I even made a trip in 1983 to visit her and meet other members of her family. After only about two months of correspondence her letters changed from German into English and she explained that she hated to see me spending my gelt (money) on translators so she would attempt to use her English skills from her school days. Actually her English was near perfect and there was never any difficulty with communication.
It is amazing to me, even now, to go back and re-read all the materials, data, maps, newspaper clippings and vital records that she shared with me. She told me that on two different occasions she had personally driven in her own car into Poland to visit Groß Tuchen and view the Evangelical church books that were still housed there in the "now" Catholic church. This was in the 1960's and 1970's and was long before the Berlin wall came down. She stressed that these trips were dangerous but she was determined to obtain all the information she could. She was a very forceful woman and it was obvious when I visited her in Hemmingen that she meant business and I am sure any travel difficulties into old East Germany and then into Poland were difficulties that she handled easily.
From this cousin, Liane vonJutrczenki Koppe, and her extensive amount of research materials, I was able to take my Kolberg ancestry back several more generations as follows:
My great-grandparents: August Kolberg and Bertha Kramp
My 2nd great-grandparents: Friedrich-Wilhelm Colberg, Sr. and Henriette Amalie Kautz
My 3rd great-grandparents: Johann Jakob Colberg and Katharina Pliske
My 4th great-grandparents: Martin Colberg and Catharina Schlutt
My 5th great-grandparents: Jakob Colberg and Dorothea Schlutt with Jakob Colberg having been born in approximately 1737.
This was certainly more detail than I had ever imagined.
When I look back and remember the 110 letters that I sent off to Berlin and the two advertisements that I placed in Berlin newspapers with such high hopes of a match, it is obvious that a genealogist never knows what connection is going to appear. I did learn from Liane that my chances of a connection were probably hindered by the fact that our family Kolberg was actually spelled Colberg originally (but not always!) and that I had missed a whole contingent of listings in the Berlin telephone book under the spelling of Colberg. She also explained that I would have done better to extend my search into East Berlin as well.
These suggestions would prove to be correct and would actually help in my journey to finally make one of the connections I so desperately sought. But that is another subject for another chapter in this series and would take another 17 long years to come to fruition.
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Heinrich and Ottilie (Kramp) Kolberg Family Photos:
Copyright 2010, Cheryl J. Schulte
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