CONNECTING WITH GROß TUCHEN
The year was now 1983. In the near ten years that I had been researching my Kolberg ancestry I had learned much and made some great discoveries. The biggest discovery was the connection I had made with a distant cousin, Liane, in Hemmingen near Hanover, Germany. In numerous letters back and forth, we both shared data with each other and I am sure I was the lucky one in receiving far more data than what I was able to share. In genealogy, though, that doesn't matter as I believe this cousin was just as pleased to have made a connection with family in the US.
It was at this time that Liane suggested I try my hand at writing to the Priest at the Catholic Church in Tuchomie, Poland where she knew the Evangelical church books of Groß Tuchen were housed. I decided I would give this a whirl and see where it would lead me. I first had to search for a Polish translator and found one through the German translator that I had used. I then drafted a letter to this Priest, had it translated into Polish and sent it off to Tuchomie. I had decided to start small and asked only for the birth records of my great-grandparents, August Kolberg and Bertha Kramp, their marriage record and the birth record of their first born child, Hedwig Kolberg. I had all the appropriate dates and used both spellings of Kolberg/Colberg in my letter and was hopeful that would make the search by the Priest much easier.
Within six weeks of mailing the letter, I received what would be the first correspondence between myself and Father Josef Kornaus with our correspondence lasting eleven years. In this letter, Father Kornaus sent me three records - the birth record of August Kolberg, the marriage record of August and Bertha (Kramp) Kolberg and the birth record of my great-aunt, Hedwig Kolberg. He apologized for not finding the birth record for Bertha Kramp who had been born in the neighboring village of Borntuchen. He explained that Borntuchen was not a part of the diocese that Groß Tuchen was and, thus, there were no records from Borntuchen at his church. In any case, I was thrilled with the letter from Father Kornaus and the three records. While the data on the records did not provide me with any more information from what I already had from Liane, these were absolute proof that the information I had been given was accurate.
Over the next eleven years, I had a steady stream of correspondence with Father Kornaus and his secretary including Christmas cards and continuous records that they extracted and sent me. Yes, I did send small donations of money which they never requested but for which they thanked me each time. In addition each letter from them had the offer to search for more records if I was interested.
With the information I received from Father Kornaus I was able to fill in more family lines of my 3rd, 4th and 5th great-grandparents including the addition of many children and extended family members. While some genealogists will scoff at researching all collateral lines in a family, I am here to say that this additional knowledge has aided in many connections that I would not otherwise have made. I was very pleased with this correspondence, and while I did have to use a Polish translator for the letters we exchanged, I was able to decipher the records. It was amazing to me to see these Evangelical German records come to me translated into Polish (or occasionally Latin) and with the stamp of the Catholic Church of Tuchomie.
In 1993 I made a trip to Germany to visit my brother and his family. My brother was stationed in Hanau, Germany and we had determined that we would make a genealogical research trip and visit the 16 villages of our ancestors that I had discovered. This would take us through the former East Germany, into Poland and on to what had been Pommern. I arranged for a guide to meet me in Gdansk, Poland and he drove me to the villages of Groß Tuchen, Klein Tuchen and Borntuchen where I met several Polish individuals who invited us into their homes and talked about the times at the end of WWII when the German inhabitants had been forced out of their land and became refugees. Many years had passed since my Kolberg ancestors had lived there and nobody knew any former Kolberg residents. This was to be expected.
Groß Tuchen, Kreis Bütow, Pommern - 1993 - now Tuchomie, Poland:
We also visited nearby Klein Tuchen and were invited into people's homes as well where they were more than eager to show their hospitality and talk to the American visitor. It was a wonderful experience for me and very emotional as well.
The only disappointment I had on that trip was that Father Kornaus had just been transferred out of the Catholic parish there in Groß Tuchen and I was unable to meet him. When I returned home I wrote him a letter at the address that I had been given in Tuchomie and expressed my appreciation for all of his help and told him I was sorry I had missed him during my recent visit. I received an answer immediately from him. He expressed his disappointment over not being able to meet me and stated that the Catholic diocese had decided it was time for him to be reassigned.
My correspondence with Father Kornaus was now at an end but I truly appreciated all the help he had given me with information that would have been difficult to ever find elsewhere. As an interesting sideline, residents in Tuchomie had informed me that their new Priest was totally uninterested in helping researchers and this has been true as letters I sent to the church after this were never answered. In any event, I believe that I received an enormous amount of help and information from Father Kornaus and I am truly pleased with that.
Even though my initial quest when I began my research was to search for descendants of the two remaining Colberg brothers, Johann and Friedrich-Wilhelm, Jr., I had still not achieved that. However, it was amazing to me just what I WAS able to uncover in 15 years of research.
From 1994 until 1999 my research on my Kolberg family languished due to the illness and death of my father, my move across the state of Michigan back to my home town of St. Joseph with my mother, beginning a new career, buying a home, etc. During these years I did manage to finally computerize all my Kolberg data into my Family Tree Maker program (which took over a year of steady computerizing) but I made no progress in uncovering any information on the descendants of the elusive brothers Friedrich-Wilhelm, Jr. and Johann Colberg.
1999, however, would prove to be a successful year in more ways than I could ever have imagined!
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