Eldena, our Mann homeland

 As someone who has been researching my family history for such a long time, I found a treasure of a find today. On my mother's side, I've long believed that many of the Mann ancestors came to the US from the same place and around the same time, landing in Luverne, Minnesota. However, tracing the names "John Mann" and "William Mann" haven't been the easiest.

In 2000, I had the pleasure of searching through the St. John's Lutheran Church records in Luverne, and was mesmerized by the number of times the same surnames popped up over and over. Over time, I've identified many US marriages linking together these families; however, that's not rare that people married people from their community and church. 

But today, I found a single page of history that shows that so many of the Mann ancestors did live near each other in Germany prior to emigrating to the United States. Below is a copy of this fascinating record: the 1876 baptismal records from Eldena, Mecklenburg, Deutschland. Right click on the image and "Save As" to zoom in.

That year, 1876, is after my 3x-great grandparents Ahrendt came to the US in 1855 and before my 2x-great grandfather Wilhelm Mann came to the US in 1884. The Ahrendts were married in Eldena, and Wilhelm Mann had lived in Kaliss, less than 10 miles from Eldena. And thus, searching Eldena records and finding Manns, Ahrendts and Weinrebens was expected.

And on row 48, I found the record I was looking for today: the baptismal information for the daughter of Lisette Amalie Dorothea Weinreben. Lisette is a Weinreben from Eldena who I am trying to prove her relationship to my 5x great-grandparents Johann Weinreben and Maria Massman. Weinreben is an extremely rare surname; the website Forebears.io  shows there are only 3 Weinrebens in the world as of 2014.

A normal, sane, less-obsessed researcher might have stopped there. But I always look at the entire page when logging data, and that's when the page turned in to a fascinating find.

Row 39 had the surname "Baack". From my other research, I also knew "Baack" is a rare surname: only ~2,000 people in the world bear that surname. The daughter I was researching whose record I found above, Alvena Schulz, married a US-born Baack in 1895. So even though Alvena immigrated at the age of 9, she married in Iowa a US-born man whose probable relative's baptismal record was listed on the same page as hers. 

Additionally, Alvena's son later married a descendant of my Ahrendt 3x-great grandparents referenced above. Taking a deeper look at one of the descendants, Harold Baack, shows how the Baack family is connected to the Weinrebens on both the maternal and paternal sides. 

The above ancestor view of Harold Baack also shows that his maternal grandmother, Lucine Ahrendt, was a descendant of two different Jastrams. Jastram is also another rare name with globally less than 1,000 persons bearing that name currently. And, what did I find on the same baptismal record page? Jastrams.

And then one more surprise. I also found on the baptismal record two listings for the surname Jauert. There are only about 500 Jauerts in the world now. My family tree currently has 34 people with the Jauert surname. Once in the US, several descendants of Christian Jauert married Ahrendts. As well, one of my Krabbenhoft relatives, a great-grandaunt, Emma Stroh Goeske, married a Jauert descendant. 

And so, if we now look at my grandmother, Bernice Mann's, ancestor chart, what we find in this single page is the German connection of Eldena linked to all people marked below. Pretty fascinating in my opinion. It establishes to me that Eldena was the Mann homeland.

My mind keeps replaying the line from Gone with the Wind: "You know the Wilkes always marry their cousins". Well, clearly the Mann's did, too.