©Loretta
Willems, 4/12/2013
ANCESTRY: HEINRICH H.
ZIMMERMANN
Part I. Zimmermann Family Line Records
1).
The Global
Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online:
“Zimmermann family name: Zimmermann, a Mennonite family name found in
West Prussia and South Germany, is also regularly found in North America as
well…. It is most probable that the West
Prussian Zimmermann family was originally called Timmerman (Dutch for
‘carpenter’) and that Timmerman was the form used until the 18th
century in the Danzig area.”[i]
This
article, which cites a long list of places where the name Zimmerman was found
in Mennonite church membership lists, makes absolutely no mention of the name Zimmermann
among Mennonites in South Russia—which helps explain why the only instance of
the name “Zimmerman” in South Russia records that Tim Janzen found is the one
below.
2). *The Benjamin H. Unruh Immigration
Records, Die niederlandisch-niederdeutsche Hintergrunde der
mennonitischen Ostwanderungen im 16., 18. und 19. (Jahrhundert.
Selbstverlag, Karlsruhe),1955, p. 385:
Molotschna, 1845
Entry # 14, (p. 385): -Heinrich Zimmerman, born 23 April 1817 Elbing: farmer: [moved] to Halbstadt [Molotschna]; died
1892?; married Penner, Anna, Sörquitten1
[Prussia], born
17 October 1814 Schulwiese2, [moved] to Halbstadt [Molotschna,
S. Russia]; died 7 August 1889 Mewe3,
West Prussia.
Children: Heinrich,
born 10 January 1843; Wilhelm,
born 26 February 1844, Arnsdorf [Prussia];
Emilie Maria; born 23 March 1845, Sörquitten [Prussia]; Antonie, born 20 November 1850 Halbstadt, [Molotschna].
________
1Sorquitten,
Olsztyn, Poland is located sourth and east of Elbing, now Elblag, Poland.
2Schulwiese,
Gdansck, Poland is located south and a tiny bit east of Danzig, now Gdansk,
Poland
3Mewe
is a town in the Marienwerder Kreis, Poland
___________________
*(Translated by
Peggy Goertzen on behalf of Loretta Willems, 3-16-2009)
Heinrich Zimmerman b. 23
April 1817 in Elbing, Prussia, found in the
Immigration Records collected by Benjamin H. Unruh, is very likely my
great-grandfather H.H. Zimmermann’s grandfather. His son, Heinrich Zimmerman, b. 10
January 1843 in the village of Sörquitten, West Prussia, would then be HHZ’s
father. Heinrich Zimmermann (b.10 Jan
1843) would have been 23 in 1866,
the year my great-grandfather HHZ was born, the year the young father died.
Twenty-three years, a short life.
The
return of Heinrich’s parents to Prussia would help explain why there is no
mention of Zimmermann grandparents or other Zimmermann relatives in HHZ’s Zionsbote letter.
Part II. Dever/Defehr
Family Line Records
1). Molotschna
School Records for 1853-1855: Lists
Anna, daughter of Jacob DeFehr, Prangenau, age 11, who
missed 23 days in the summer of 1854; 11 days in November 1854.
2). 1858 Census for Molotschna
Colony: #47 is Jacob Devehr
of Prangenau.
3). 1864 List of Families Intending to Settle in the Kuban Colony:
“as
found in the records of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers in
Southern Russia (fund 6, Inventory 5, File 278) in the Odessa Region State
Archives, Odessa, Ukraine.” (Translated by Tim Janzen):
#55 –“Jacob Devehr, age 46, and wife Aganetha,
age 56, from Prangenau.”
The entry states that they had a “a
non-landowners house together with a blacksmith’s shop”.
Their total assets are valued at 635 rubles. [38 out of the 73 families
had less (some had nothing); 16 families had over a thousand rubles—some in the
4,000-7,000 ruble range. Total ruble
valuation for all applicants was 53,767 rubles.]
Jacob & Anna Dever/Devehr
Summary:
Anna’s father was Jakob Devehr,
who was born around the year 1818. Her
mother’s name was Aganetha, and according to the age given in the 1864
document, Aganetha was 10 years older than her husband, thus born around the
year 1808. I do not know Aganetha’s
family name. I have no information about
her other than what is given above.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Part III: GRANDMA
Everything in GRANDMA[ii]
on HHZ’s Zimmermann family ancestry comes from the work done by Tim Janzen in
my appointment with him at the Genealogy workshop at Tabor College in
Hillsboro, Kansas in 2006. That is not
the case with the Dever/Defehr family.
Thanks to Tim Janzen, my great-grandfather Heinrich H. Zimmermann is
linked through his grandfather Jacob Dever to a lineage that reaches back to
the time before there were people called Anabaptists or Mennonites. It goes back to the origin of the De
Fehr/De Veer name, to Jan De
Veer born 11 Aug 1521 in Veere, Zeeland, the Netherlands. The
name “De Veer” simply means from/of “Veere.”
Jacob Dever/Defehr Ancestry
(The chart below reads from
top-down, from son to father in descending order.)
Jacob DeFehr, b. Abt 1817
m. Aganeta ?
!
Cornelius Benjamin “Knels” De Fehr, b. 7 Nov 1784, Prussia
m. Sara Reimer b. abt
1784, Prussia
!
Benjamin De Fehr, b. Abt 1733,
Klein Mausdorf, Gross Werder, Prussia
m. Anna Bergen, b.
1736, Prussia
!
Benjamin De Veer, b. 1696,
Danzig, Poland
M .Elisabeth Wiens b.
2 Jul 1709 Danzig
!
Cornelius De Veer, b. Abt 1663,
Danzig Poland
m. ?
!
Gysbert De Veer, b. 23 Feb 1640,
Danzig, Poland
m. Catharina von Roy
b. abt 1639, Danzig
!
*Gysbert Gijsbertsz De Veer, b. 7.
Nov 1600, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland,
Netherlands
m. Maria van Dijck,
b. 31 July 1606, Danzig
!
Gysbert Jansz De Veer, b. 14 May 1556,
Schiedam, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
m. *Deboral
Claesdochter Harnasveger, b. 1560 Amsterdam
!
Jan De Veer, b. 11 Aug, 1521,
Veere, Zeeland, Netherlands
m. ?
*The GRANDMA
ancestry chart for Jacob DeFehr actually goes back further than Jan De Veer, b.
1521. On that chart is a Jakob Harnasveger born
between 1480 and 1500 in the Netherlands, who is a
great-grandfather of Gysbert Gijsbertsz De Veer b.7 Nov 1600 in Amsterdam. Below is Gysbert’s lineage
through his mother’s line:
*Gysbert Gijsbertsz De Veer, b. 7.
Nov 1600, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland,
Netherlands
!
Debora Claesdochter
Harnasveger b. 1560 in Amsterdam
!
Claes Jakobszoon Harnasveger b. before 1541, the Netherlands
m. Weyn Pieters, b. bet 1530 - 1540
!
Jakob Harnasveger, b. between 1480 and 1500, the Netherlands
m. ?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Mennonite Encyclopedia
All the names written in
red are included in the
GRANDMA ancestry chart for my great-grandfather Heinrich H. Zimmermann. He is their direct descendant. There is now a direct link between my family
and the earliest days of Mennonite history.
“Dever/Defehr family name: (de Veer, De Fehr, Fehr, Defehr, Devehr,
Dever, Devaehr, Du Verre) “A widely ramified Mennonite
family of Dutch origin, de Veer has been found among Mennonites in the
Netherlands, Prussia, Russia, and North America. The first member of this family was Gysbert Jansz de
Veer, b. 14 may 1556, at Schiedam, South Holland. He was a grain merchant, who ca. 1580 may
have settled at Danzig, Prussia, moving back to Amsterdam a bit later, where he
obtained his citizenship in 1601, and finally back to Danzig again, where he
died on 17 May 1615. One of his sons was Nicolaes (Claes) de Veer (1583-ca.
1650), who was a merchant at Amsterdam and married Margareth Looten. Other sons of Gysbert were Abraham de Veer,
who lived at Danzig, and *Gysbert de Veer (Amsterdam 1600 – Danzig 1646),
who was married first to Anna van Buygen (Bergen/), then to Maria van Dijck. Gysbert de Veer, a son of Abraham and
grandson of the original Gysbert, was a cloth merchant at Danzig. Cornelius de Veer (Danzig 1636- Neugarten
1699), a son of the latter Gysbert had a lace business at Danzig. His brother, Gysbert, is the ancestor of a
Mennonite branch in Prussia, Canada, and Mexico. A son of Cornelis was the Mennonite elder of
Danzig, Isaac de Veer. …
“In Amsterdam the de Veer
family came to great wealth. Some of its members were deacons of the church and
a few served as preachers…
“In Prussia the de Veers were found mostly
at Danzig, but also at Elbing, Rosenort and Konigsberg. Among the first emigrants from Prussia to
Russia was Benjamin
De Veer in 1793. He settled
at Neuendorf in the Chortitza settlement.
Members of this family emigrated from Russia to North and South America
after 1874. Cornelius A. DeFehr[iii] of
Winnipeg was a lay leader of the Mennonite Brethren Church.”
The Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Onlline[iv]
[i] Bender,
Harold S. and Ira D. Landis. (1959).
Zimmermann family name. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia
Online. Retrieved 09 April 2013,
from http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/Z565ME.html.
[ii]
Database: Grandma 7:03: Mar 2013; Grandma’s Window, V2.32. Rev. 1d; Kenneth
Ratzlaff, 11/2000, 11/2008, 8/2011
[iii]
Cornelius A. DeFehr of Winnipeg: His
grandfather, Abraham DeFehr was a brother of HHZ’s grandfather, Jacob
Dever/DeFehr.
[iv] Van der
Zijpp, N. (1959). “Veer, de (De Fehr,
Fehr, Fehr, Defehr, Devehr, Dever, Devaehr, Du Verre).” Global
Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online.
Retrieved 15 September 2006 <http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/v447me.html>
