FINDING KLEIN TUCHEN
I now knew the birth place of my Kolberg ancestors and set off on a mission to locate these villages on maps. I was really naive about Pommern and its significance and location in German history but I was determined to learn all I could about this area. I had a few German maps but they were too modern and didn't even indicate where the area of Pommern had been. I had a set of encyclopedias that were from the early 1900's that had belonged to my great-grandfather Schulte, but they were very basic and contained general maps of Germany without any detail.
I had only been back home in the Detroit suburbs a short time from my research trip to St. Joseph when I had a letter from cousin, Grace Kolberg Gaul, telling me that she had another cousin in the area who might be able to help me further. She explained that while her father, Otto, and his brothers, August, Heinrich and Paul had come to the US in the 1880's, her other uncle, Ferdinand Kolberg, had actually not arrived until 1910, after he had married and his children had been born all while living in Pommern. She thought that his one son, Walter, and his wife, Iva, would be perfect to visit with as Walter remembered living in Germany and would be happy to share further information with me.
Back to St. Joseph I went where I was invited to the home of Walter and Iva Kolberg. Again, I found these cousins of my grandmother to be delightful and welcome hosts and Walter was a wealth of information on our Kolberg ancestors. He confirmed the birth place of his father's family as indeed being Klein Tuchen, near Groß Tuchen in Bütow, Pommern as I had already been told. He added that his father had moved from the family farm in Klein Tuchen and settled in the neighboring county of Rummelsburg, Pommern where he (Walter) and his siblings were born. Walter could remember the journey to America, leaving Rummelsburg, traveling to Berlin first and visiting with Uncle Johann and his family and then traveling on to New York and from there to Stevensville, Michigan where the family of Heinrich Kolberg met the arriving family and took them to the Heinrich Kolberg farm until they were able to establish their own farm in the area. He had a wealth of stories to share including memories of his grandmother, Henriette Amalie Kolberg. As an interesting aside, he said that whenever his grandmother visited the Ferdinand Kolberg family, he (Walter) was her bed partner and he could remember walking to her funeral when she passed away in 1908 when he was only 8 1/2 years old.
Here is a photo of Iva and Walter Kolberg, ca 1970:
In addition to sharing photos and memories with me, Walter had maps of Pommern which indicated the locations of the counties (Kreis) of Bütow and Rummelsburg within Pommern as well as a map of Kreis Bütow itself with all of its villages:
As with cousins, Grace, Ruby and Edna Kolberg, I was aided tremendously by Walter and Iva Kolberg in getting a jump-start on my research and their assistance was greatly appreciated. All four of these special cousins of my grandmother are now gone but their help was indispensable and their excitement over the fact that I was interested in tracing their family was just the impetus that I needed to continue.
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