Another one of my long-standing brick walls was the origin location of my second main surname, Thielke, my maternal grandfather’s line. For the longest time, the most detailed origin location we had was Schwerin, Germany, which by itself is a city, but also can be considered a larger area. Though, another record indicated Baden-Württemberg which is on the complete opposite site of Germany.
Searching in some of the old 1819 Mecklenburg-Schwerin Census records did find some Thielkes, but nothing else to go on. At least we knew roughly the general area.
Last night, since I was working on some of the other Thielke lines to try to pad things out, I decided to run another FamilySearch search on my furthest ancestor, Henry Peter Thielke. I used WikiTree’s RootsSearch option which just makes it easier by automatically plugging in all of the vital data for me and searches FamilySearch.
Lo and behold, a bunch of old German Lutheran church records showed up on the list and at first glance, names and dates lined up really well with what I knew. Every Thielke child born in Germany was accounted for along with a few more that probably died early. There was also a marriage record that lined up, too, surnames and all.
Their original German location is very near Schwerin, in between it and Rostock in a village named Bernitt (as always, the German Wikipedia entry is much better but needs to be translated).
For now, I was able to get or confirm exact birth and baptism dates for all of the German-born Thielkes in that family before they emigrated in about 1855 and added two more sons that must not have lived long. I have also confirmed the marriage date of Henry and his wife Marie (and also Marie’s father’s name.)
My great-great-grandfather’s name shows up as Hans Joachim Martin Thielke which lines up with his marriage record that lists him as Hans J M Thielk, though he was almost always known as Johann or John.
One take away is to always re-search ancestors again on sites like FamilySearch. It’s a never-ending process. They are constantly transcribing old documents and adding new records. Unfortunately, I can’t view the original records unless I’m physically at a Family History Library. (Ugh, don’t get me started on that weird data rule.)
The research continues!
