I am re-posting this old entry with updates to the Koppel ancestry and data about their house before and after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Eckebrechts Schwarzburg
UPDATED 5/14/23 – Niedersachsen and Thuringia Place Names and Surnames
A surname list I published in 2018 has been updated.
Please email me cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net if you feel we have connection. Thank you for visiting.
31 Day Genealogy Challenge – Day 15: Share a Baby or Child Photo
Today I share a photo of my great grandmother Caroline Eckebrecht Leies. She appears to be around age 10, dating it to abouty 1886. I think her hair was dark, like her father’s – Fritz Eckebrecht. Her mother Katherina Schuttler was said to have had red hair.
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31 Day Genealogy Challenge – Day 13: Share a Land or Property Record
Today this challenge is a toughie. I do not possess any land or property records for anyone in my direct lines. I have transcribed descriptions of land transfers my French and German ancestors made in the early 1700s near Rodalben, Germany. They are not the actual records. In collateral lines I have land records, but not in my direct lines. So I am sharing a copier-made image of my immigrant second great grandfather Fritz Eckebrecht’s business card from the era he owned a butcher shop in Chicago. There is family speculation that this butcher shop property was owned with his brother Wilhelm and that is was built by Wilhelm, Fritz, and their father Quirinus Eckebrecht, who was mentioned on Day 10 of this challenge. I do not have the date of this business card. On the 1880 Census, Fritz’s occupation was listed as butcher.
Do you have any corrections, additions, or are we related? My email is cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.
31 Day Genealogy Challenge – Day 10: Share a Population Schedule/Census Record
Today I share the 1870 census record of my immigrant third great grandparents Quirinus Eckebrecht and Marie Louise Koppel. They had been in America for 4 years and were living in Chicago at this time. This was the year before the Great Fire. Quirinus was working as a laborer. Note that on this record, that he and his wife and sons Charles, Henry, and Edward are all recorded as literate. We know this, as my second great grandfather, their son Fritz, kept a diary of his life, and that was likely started in his teenage years. Marie Louise’s father owned mill properties in her village. The census taker called their birthplace Saxony. It was Thuringia, Germany.
Do you have any additions, or comments? Are you too descended from Quirinus and Marie Louise? I would love to hear from you! Please email me – cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #20: Nature ~ 10th Great Grandfather Johann Andreas Koppels ~
This week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge is Nature. My feature ancestor for this week is my 10th great grandfather Johann Andreas (Hanschen) Köppels.
For the past few weeks I have been discovering more and more ancestors in Thüringen, Germany. With actual images of church records my Ancestry subscription pays for, I have traced back 5 more generations in a branch of my 3rd great grandmother’s Marie Louise Köppel’s ancestry. I have previously written about my immigrant 3rd great grandmother in this prior post and the fact that her father owned mills. For further clarification, she was the mother of my 2nd great grandfather Frederick “Fritz” Eckebrecht.
So long story short, I found a bunch of new ancestors in the area around Sondershausen, Thüringen, Germany. And just on Friday, I found out that my 9th great grandfather on a connecting branch was the Schultheiss (magistrate) in a little town near Sondershausen called Berka in 1705.
Back to the featured ancestor ~ My 10th great grandfather Johann Andreas Köppels was born around 1639, possibly near Sondershausen, Germany. His father may have been named Hans Paul and could be the man with that name that worked at Sondershausen Palace as a smith. His mother’s name is unknown at the time of this writing.
Around 1662 Johann Andreas married my 10th great grandmother Susanna Margaretha. Her last name is unknown. Unfortunately, the marriage records for Sondershausen start on Ancestry after Johann Andreas and Susanna Margaretha started to baptize their children in the 1660s.
In early 1666, when Susanna Margaretha gave birth to my 9th great grandfather Hans Abraham, Johann Andreas was a harness-maker at Sondershausen Palace and a linen weaver. Harnesses require cowhide and linen comes from the flax plant. Both professions rely on nature, don’t they?
Count Anton Günther I was the count at the palace at that time.
All in all, Johann Andreas had at least 15 children to at least 2 wives. I counted at least 12 of them to my 10th great grandmother Susanna Margaretha.
At the time of his death in 1726, while my 9th great grandfather Hans Abraham was working as a brewer at Sondershausen Palace, Johann Andreas was recorded in the church death records as being a Meister Leinenweber (master linenweaver.)
If you would like to read more about Sondershausen Palace in English, some history of the structure is featured by clicking here.
It has been enjoyable finding these revelations in Sondershausen in my ancestry. I look forward to digging deeper into these newly discovered branches and sharing more about them.
Do you have any comments, additions, or corrections? Please email me at cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.
My Thüringen and Niedersachsen Surnames and Place Lists – Updated 5/14/23
Thüringen, Germany
- Schwarzburg: Eckebrecht, Schutz, Grabe
- Grossmehlra: Eckebrecht, Dorre, Hinse/Heise, Grabe
- Clingen: Dorre, Mästrad, Muhlstadt, Engelhardt
- Rockstedt: Dorre, Engelhardt
- Hohenebra: Seebuss
- Berka: Beckern
- Wollersleben: Eckebrecht
- Koerner: Koppel, Grabe
- Rothenberg bei Neustadt: Koppel
- Sondershausen: Koppels, Seebuss, Kronenberg, Krohnenberg, Beckern
- Vieselbach: Gerbing/Gorbing, Engelbrecht, Wizlaber
- Obernissa: Korner
- Niederzimmern: Nicolai, Topf
- Utzberg: Nicolai, Hildebrand
- Grossmolsen: Hildebrand
- Gutendorf: Topf, Zipprodt
Niedersachsen, Germany
- Grossen Molzen: Wizlaber
- Hannover: Kirsch, Fehlig
- Sankt Andreasberg: Kirsch, Kutscher, Schroder, Geselle
- Grohnde: Fehlig, Mahlstedt, Wedekin/Widekin(sp?)
- Borry: Fehlig
- Marienrode: Fehlig
Links
Louis F. Kirsch, born in Hannover in 1862
Fritz Eckebrecht, born in 1848 in Schwarzburg
Louise Gerbing, born in 1836 in Vieselbach
Thank you for visiting!
-cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net
Today’s Anniversary ~ Third Great Grandparents Quirinus Eckebrecht and Marie Louise Koppel ~
On today’s date in 1843, my immigrant third great grandparents Quirinus Eckebrecht and Marie Louise Koppel were married in the Lutheran church in Clingen, Thüringen, Germany.
Marie Louise Koppel was born in 1817 in Koerner, Thüringen to mill owner Johann Christoph Koppel and his second wife Anna Dorothea Maria Grabe.
Quirinus Eckebrecht was born in 1816 in Grossmehlra, Schwarzburg, Thüringen to Johann Heinrich Eckebrecht and Anna Elisabetha Dorre.*
Marie Louise and Quirinus had 6 children, all born in Germany:
Carl Johann (Charles)
Auguste
Wilhelm Freidrich (Fritz) – my ancestor
Wilhelm Carl (William)
Heinrich Ferdinand (Henry)
Eduard (Edward)
*See Peter Heckert’s website (Of note is that in 1847, Clingen had its last chief justice before the office moved to a different town and he was a Dorre.)
-cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net
Immigrants #38 – #40 ~ Marie Louise Koppel Eckebrecht (mill owner’s daughter), Johann Quirinus Eckebrecht (baker), and Wilhelm Carl Eckebrecht (saloon keeper) ~
Updated February 24, 2024
My 3rd great grandmother Marie Louise Koppel was born in Koerner, Thüringen, Germany in 1817 and came to the United States in 1866 with my third great grandfather Quirinus Eckebrecht and 5 of their 6 children. Wilhelm Carl Eckebrecht was one of these children.
Great Uncle John and his first cousin Frank Eckebrecht researched the Eckebrecht roots for decades. Some of the information contained in this post comes from their research. They did the hardest stuff before the internet was born.
Marie Louise Koppel
Marie Louise Koppel was born at 1:00 a.m. on August 2, 1817 in Koerner to miller Johann Christoph Koppel and Anna Dorothea Maria Grabe. According to the good folks in the Thüringen Ancestry group on facebook, Grabe is a common surname in the areas surrounding Koerner.
I spent some time examining the microfilms for Koerner that were available from Family Search before the Latter Day Saints discontinued microfilm ordering. I was able to locate the marriage of Marie Louise’s parents in 1816. Anna Dorothea Maria Grabe was the daughter of Johann Christoph Grabe. Her mother was unnamed in the available records, although an indexed record on Ancestry, transcribed by volunteers, says that her mother may have been Sophia Maria Schuts.
*I don’t have faith in indexed records on Ancestry or Family Search in which I cannot see the original document. In this case, as with many of this line of Germans, the original record is not available to American researchers without being a member of the Latter Days Saints or at one of their computers.*
The microfilms contained the first marriage of Marie Louise’s father Johann Chrisoph Koppel and revealed that he was from Rothenberg bei Neustadt, Germany. Which no longers exists on a map. There is a Neustadt about 30 miles away from Koerner.
Johann Christoph Koppel owned at least two mills in 1812 Koerner when he married his first wife Anna Elisabeth Schaefer. One was the Mahlmuhle which was a corn mill. The second mill he owned at that time was called Lochmuhle.
In 1816 Marie Louise’s father married her mother Anna Dorothea Maria Grabe. On that record and on the baptismal records of Marie Louise in 1817 and her siblings, he was noted as the owner of the Reithmuhle.
There is a beautiful genealogy group on Facebook called Genealogy Translations. A translator kindly translated Marie Louise’s baptism for me and then scanned for me a book about the history of Sondershausen area mills!
The genealogy angel in the translations group proceeded to translate the portion of the book for me on the Reithmuhle!
Reithmuhle was the new name of the Lochmuhle in Koerner. Koerner is on the River Unstrut. The Reithmuhle is at the west end of the village on the Heuberg Hill, on Notter Creek and the mill was still there in 1900.
Remember the mills because they come up later.
I found at least 5 other Marie Louise Koppel siblings in the records for Koerner and Clingen.
I traced the Koppel line back to my 12th great grandfather Claus who was alive in the late 1500s in the Sondershausen area of Thüringen. Of that information, I only know his name and estimated birth year. His grandchildren were servants in Sondershausen Palace and a Mayor of Berka. I know nothing of the life of Marie Louise Koppel’s mother and her parents beyond their names. Perhaps that will change with my Archion subscription.
Johann Quirinus Eckebrecht
Marie Louise Koppel married my third great grandfather Quirinus Eckebrecht on December 27, 1843.
Frank Eckebrecht had this data. It was in my tree on Ancestry. On Ancestry I kept getting a hint for a man named Johann Auerinus Erbeborn marrying on that same date in the same area of Germany to a lady with the same name of my third great grandmother. These transcription indexes are done by volunteers and reviewed by two other volunteers before they are published on Ancestry.
Auerinus Erbeborn comes in second to the volunteer transcription of the ship manifest for his son Grity Eckebrecht for Fritz. Another oldie but goodie was the transcription error from the ship manifest for Augelo Ferarco (Angelo Ferraro.) This is why I do not trust the indexes on Ancestry, ESPECIALLY WHEN I CANNOT SEE THE ORIGINAL RECORD!
According to Frank Eckebrecht’s research, Quirinus was born in 1816 in Grossmehlra, Schwarzburg – Sondershausen, Thüringen to Johann Heinrich Eckebrecht and Anna Elisabetha Dorre. He had at least 5 siblings.
Frank traced this Eckebrecht line back to Wollersleben, Nordhausen, Thüringen and a Christian Eckebrecht, my 7th great grandfather, born in 1660. He was a commoner. Through volunteer transcribed indexed records on Ancestry, again, if they are accurate, I traced Anna Elisabetha Dorre’s line back to my sixth great grandfather named Heinrich Christoph Dorre. Because these are only indexes, I know nothing of this line except names and dates. Perhaps that will change with my Archion subscription.
On May 25, 1866, Quirinus, Marie Louise, and 5 of their 6 children arrived at the Port of New York on the ship the Jenny. Here the index transcribers have Quirinus named as Oerenuos. They sailed from Bremen on a trip that would have taken 2 and 1/2 to 3 months to sail. The occupation of Quirinus was listed as baker. Uncle John said they left to escape the growing power of the Kaiser.
The family’s destination was Chicago where the oldest son, Immigrant #8 ~ Carl Johann Eckebrecht, Grocery Company Owner, Saddle-Maker, Carpenter, and Foreman had already arrived.
These are the children that came in 1866 with Quirinus and Marie Louise:
Immigrant 6 Auguste Eckebrecht, domestic servant
Immigrant #28 ~ 2nd Great Grandfather Frederick “Fritz” Eckebrecht, Carpenter and Butcher (the one that spent time with the Comanches)
Wilhelm Carl (William)
On the 1870 Census, Quirinus, Marie Louise, sons Carl Wilhelm, Henry, and Edward were living in Chicago’s 17th Ward. Quirinus was listed as a laborer, while Marie was listed as keeping house. Carl Wilhelm was a carpenter, Henry was a laborer, and the youngest Edward was still at school.
NEW: In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire consumed large portions of the city. Like the Schuttlers I have written a lot about, the house of Quirinus and Marie Louise at 218 North Avenue did not burn. Their son Charles lived across the street and his house did not burn either. 218 North Avenue was just outside the burn district. After my second great grandfather Fritz was widowed in 1915, he moved into 218 North Avenue.
In the 13 years Marie Louise was alive here in the United States, she suffered from asthma, according to her death record. She passed away in 1879 and was buried in Wunders Cemetery in Chicago.
Frank’s research data relates that she was the owner of the Rottermuhle in Germany when she passed. My first theory is thus: there was an American misspelling on the estate document and she may have been the owner of the Reithmuhle. Would this mean her parents and siblings were deceased? I cannot locate any records about them in Germany on Ancestry.
My second theory involves Quirinus. Since he was a baker when he came here, he may have worked at a mill, maybe even Marie Louise’s father’s mill, or his father owned a mill as we have seen in Grandma’s other German mill owning ancestors, that sons and daughters of mill owners often marry each other.
The Chicago City Directories listed Quirinus as a laborer in the years leading up to the 1880 Census and in the year’s after it. In 1880, when I found him on the census indexed by an Ancestry volunteer as Kareneus, he was listed as a widower, living with his oldest son Charles (Carl), and again was listed as a laborer. He died in 1884 and is also buried in Wunders Cemetery.
William Eckebrecht
William (Wilhelm Carl) Eckebrecht, as mentioned before, arrived here in 1866. He was born in 1851 in Schwarzburg, Thüringen. In 1870, as stated before, he lived with his parents and was a carpenter.
In 1874 he married another German immigrant named Maria (Mary) Wilhemine Johanna Kohlmorgen from Mecklenburg – Vorpommern. She was the daughter of Christian Theodor Kaspar Kohlmorgen and Julie Marie Sophie Hill.
On the 1880 Census, he was working as a harness-maker.
By the mid-1890s, William was a saloon-keeper. I found a newspaper clipping suggesting that William was in the saloon business with his brother Edward. Unfortunately I don’t know the name of the saloon. William passed away young in 1899 leaving behind his wife and three children:
Otto Eckebrecht, owned an engraving business m. Viola Legare
Hugo Charles Eckebrecht m. Ottilia Fischer, a Pomeranian German immigrant
Martha Eckebrecht m. Paul Emil Schultz, a Pomeranian German immigrant
Were other Eckebrechts already here before the oldest son Carl Johann Eckebrecht got here? Were there other Koppels already here? The Eckebrechts followed their oldest son to America, making that classic chain migration as I have seen with my other German ancestors. Who did he follow?
I have at least three Eckebrecht photos. Two are from the 19th Century and one is from the 1960s. Please email me for copies.
Thank you to those distant Eckebrecht cousins that have sent me messages and encouraged me to keep swapping and sharing data! I have finished posting about all of the immigrant Eckebrechts that we could find. If I find more, I will post about them here! For the descendants of Fritz, there will be one more post about the Multi-Faceted Man.
Do you have any updates, edits, or corrections? I would love to hear from you. Because WordPress does not always alert me to your comments, please send me a message at the email address below. Thank you!
cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net
Sources:
Sondershausen church records via Ancestry.com
Koerner baptisms and marriages via the LDS
Indexed Clingen District baptisms via Ancestry.com
Schlotheimer Kurier, Amtsblatt der Verwaltungsgemeinschaft
Indexed Selected Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials from Thuringia via Ancestry.com
Uncle John and Frank Eckebrecht
New York Passenger Lists
Chicago City Directories
Federal Censuses
Cook County Birth, Marriage, and Death Indexes
Newspapers.com
Find-a-Grave
The immigrants left in this family history challenge are: some of the Italians on my paternal side, more on Louis Kirsch, all of the Gerbings (Eeeeeeee!), Martha Nicolai, and my mystery wagon-guy Johann Schuttler.
Immigrants 21 and 22 ~ Fritz’s brothers Eduard Eckebrecht of the 4th Cavalry Regiment and Heinrich Ferdinand Christoph Eckebrecht a Druggist
My great great grandfather Fritz Eckebrecht had 5 siblings. Carl, Auguste, Wilhelm, Heinrich Ferdinand, and Eduard. His brothers Edward and Henry Ferdinand arrived in New York City on May 25, 1866 aboard the Jennie with him. Edward was the baby of the family. You can see him on the far left of this photo taken sometime between 1868 and 1875. Henry is likely the tallest pictured in the middle back OR the gentleman on the far right.
Edward Eckebrecht
Edward was born in 1859 in Schwarzburg, Thuringia. He was only 6 or 7 when he came to America with his family. He looks very young in the above photo! By 1880, he was living with his brother Wilhelm and working as a harness maker because his mother Marie Louise, seated above – middle, was already deceased. His father Quirinus, seated above, was living with his oldest son Carl. On September 27, 1880, at the age of 21, Edward enlisted in the United States Army in St. Louis, Missouri. His profession was recorded as harness maker and he was listed as 5’5″, having blue eyes, light hair, and possessing a light complexion. He was put into the cavalry, naturally, because he was a harness maker. Of the 41 enlistments on the page I found him, he was 1 of 19 men born outside the United States.
Edward was part of a famous regiment – the 4th Cavalry Regiment, Company B. Edward would have enlisted at the time the United States was engaged in various struggles with Native American resistance in the West. In fact, Edward enlisted in the 4th Cavalry Regiment at the time they had been sent to Colorado to “subdue” the Utes and then to Arizona to “subdue” the Apache. In Company B he would have served directly under then Colonel Ranald S. McKenzie, aka “Bad Hand/No Finger Chief”. In October, the 4th Cavalry under MacKenzie was sent to New Mexico to “subdue” White Mountain Apaches, Jicarilla Apaches, Navajos, and Mescaleros. Edward deserted the United States Military on May 5, 1881. About 1/3 of the page of enlistments where I located his name had deserted.
I find it incredibly interesting this Eckebrecht tale was lost to my side of the Eckebrecht family considering the fact that about ten years earlier his brother, my great great grandfather Fritz, was a “captive” of the Comanche in Texas. Uncle John had doubts about the word “captive” too. See: The Multi-Faceted Life Of Fred Eckebrecht 1848-1920 If Fritz was a “captive” I never understood how he was allowed to visit a German family for Sunday dinner once a week. Don’t forget the tale about our Fritz… during a civil case before a judge he spoke with his thick German accent. A lawyer told him to speak more clearly – more “real American.” Fritz replied in Comanche. The lawyer asked him what he had said. Fritz said, “That was real American, from the people who were here before we came…”
Nobody views desertion positively, right? Since Edward was part of a military unit that at that time was forcing the Native Americans to reservations, there is no fault in his desertion… That being said, unless the digging pans out with the potential brother of Johann Schuttler, a.k.a. “The Gigantic Brick Wall” ancestor, Edward was the first of the first in the Ferraro ancestry that served in any capacity in the United States Military.* Edward Eckebrecht was an immigrant that enlisted to serve his new country. He deserted for a reason we will probably never know.
*My 3rd great grandfather Johann “The Gigantic Brick Wall” Schuttler made wagons for the Union Army but never served. I am on the trail of a potential close relation to him that served in the Civil War for Illinois as a wagoner.
After he left the army, Edward married Mary Ruebhausen, a German-American. They had two children: Loretta and Elmer. By 1900 Edward was a machine engineer for a bank. He had a stepdaughter through that marriage – Sophie Eckebrecht. Sophie married Gerald Brown. Edward died in 1926 in Chicago.
Henry Ferdinand Eckebrecht
Researching Fritz’s brother Henry Ferdinand Eckebrecht gave me a hint about the migration of the Eckebrecht family to Chicago. I always thought the Eckebrechts stopped off somewhere between arriving in NYC in 1866 and appearing in Chicago on the 1870 census. I found the confirmation of Henry Ferdinand in the St. Paul’s First Lutheran Church in Chicago with a date of April 5, 1868. So Quirinus and Louise Eckebrecht already had the family in Chicago by 1868. I believe at this point that our Fritz was wandering around the Post-War South picking crops.
Henry Ferdinand was in the medical profession, the only sibling of Fritz that didn’t work in a laboring capacity. He was a pharmacist. In fact, he was comfortable enough in the 1900 census to have a servant. Henry Ferdinand married a German-American born in Wisconsin named Theresa Louise Engleman. They had three children: Henry Frederick, Theresa, and Albert. Henry Ferdinand has many descendants on the West Coast today. Below is a photo of his son Henry Frederick that I retrieved from his Seaman’s Certificate application on Ancestry from 1918.
Fritz has one sibling left. Wilhelm. He will be featured later in the year. Follow this link to read about his brother Carl. Follow this link to read about his sister Auguste.
Researching Edward Eckebrecht was a surprise for me. You have to read everything on a military record! I have not found any biological descendants of Edward alive after 1920. I would like to research more about Edward’s time in the United States Army to find out what his Company did while he served.
Sources:
New York Passenger Lists
Chicago City Directories
United States Federal Censuses
Chicago Birth, Marriage, and Death Indexes
United States Social Security Death Index
Chicago 1892 Voter Registration
National Archives, U.S. Army Register of Enlistments
Newspapers.com
Father John G. Leies (Uncle John)
St. Paul’s First Lutheran, Chicago
Wikipedia – Ranald S. MacKenzie
Wikipedia – 4th Cavalry Regiment
Coming: Carmine’s sister Elena Ferraro Scarnecchia.
I do plan to do write-ups on the Gerbing immigrants (the family of my third great grandmother.) Her siblings had huge families, who had huge families, who are now allover the country. They may likely come last.
-cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net
Cinziarosa's Descendants (c) 