Lebensphasen von Andersen Hans:
| Wohnort: | 1845 Schiffsreeder auf der Ballastbrücke/Flensburg, Nr. 143. |
Notizen zu Andersen Hans:
von Tom Bearie am 30.1.2008; E-Mail: tbearie @ hotcircuit.net:
Hans Andersen
father: Hans Andersen (b. ca 1757)
mother: Agneta Amalia Jurgensen (b. ca 1763)
b. 03 Nov 1796 - Sonderborg
d. 11 Apr 1873 - Flensburg
m. Ingeborg Otzen
b. 11 Nov 1798 - Twedt
d. 15 Jan 1866 - Flensburg
Hans Andersen
Jacob Andersen b. 04 Nov 1825
m. Juliane --?-- b. 30 Nov 1855
Andreas Wilhelm Andersen
b. 31 Dec 1829 - Sonderborg
d. 08 Nov 1880 - Flensburg
m. Engla Margrethe Edstrom
b. 23 Aug 1847 - Norrtelje, Sweden
d. ? - Stockholm, Sweden
Andreas Wilhelm Andersen
b. 31 Aug 1871 - Westeras, Sweden
d. 11 Jan 1947 - Riverside CA, US
m. 30 Jun 1898 - Bridgeport CT, US
Mary Wippert
b. 08 Aug 1875 - Rockfall CT, US
d. 10 Dec 1954 - Riverside CA, US
Christian Theodore Andersen
b. 14 Jun 1905 - New York City NY, US
d. 09 Jan 1952 - Detroit MI, US
Esther Caroline Andersen
b. 30 Dec 1906 - New York City NY, US
d. 01 May 1999 - Riverside CA, US
Johannes Frederick Andersen
b. 31 Mar 1908 - New York City NY, US
d. 17 Aug 1973 - Chicago IL, US
Carl Wilhelm Andersen
b. 25 Sep 1909 - New York City NY, US
d. 17 Jan 1985 - Bristol WI, US
Ellen Margrethe Andersen
b. 19 Nov 1910 - New York City NY, US
d. 12 Nov 1999 - San Jose CA, US
Amalie Caroline Andersen
b. -- Dec 1835
d. < 1910 - US
Hi Helmut,
Many thanks for your reply and for the genealogical data.
I'm sorry that this letter is so long, but since all these topics are inter-connected it wouldn't have made sense to leave any of it for separate emails. I understand it will take some time for you to interpret my English message, but know that I eagerly wait for your response to what I have sent - or to any part of it.
Please don't go to any extra trouble on my account with Clausen genealogy; I'm not trying to account for all possible ancestors - I barely have enough time to study the ones I already know about. And anyway, I'll probably be causing you enough trouble with all the questions I'm going to have regarding your site, the Adelby residents, and translation problems.
> Language
I can read German fairly well. The only problems I usually have are with words that I can't find in my dictionary, and with idioms.
I think we'll be able to communicate ok if I write to you in English and you write to me in German. I may have to ask you to explain some things, and you'll probably have to ask me for clarifications too. I'm so accustomed to English that I don't even realize when I'm using a figure of speech. I suspect that almost everything I write is in that category.
> Me
My wife and I live near Watertown, Minnesota. I don't have much good to say about either Watertown or Minnesota at this time of year. -30C this past weekend, and -50C wind-factor. We expect the same tonight.
I am a son (I have one brother) of Ellen Margarethe (Andersen) Bearie. I'm working on an Andersen family website. It will contain what little information we have about our ancestors, and a lot of biographical information about my grandfather, A. W. Andersen. With luck, the website may help us to discover distant relatives.
> The Andersens
(Sorry... no gedcom file. I've never used any computer programs for my genealogy projects; I never found one that satisfied some very complicated requirements I have. But in this case, there's not enough information available to make such a program useful anyway.)
My great-grandfather was a "Sea Captain". My grandfather was born in 1871 on a voyage from Malmo to Norrtelje. His mother, who was Swedish, died when he was an infant. He and his father moved to Flensburg in 1876, then to Copenhagen in 1878, and back to Flensburg in 1880. His father died there a few months later. He lived with his Aunt Caroline in Flensburg until 1888 when he went to college at Kropp. He entered the seminary at Kropp in 1891, graduated in 1894, and emigrated to the U.S. where he had a long and successful career as a minister in the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church.
I didn't know anything further about Caroline until a few months ago. I had previously assumed that she had died in Flensburg, but I found the listing for my grandparents in a 1900 census, and Caroline was living with them. According to the census, she had immigrated in 1898, which is the year my grandfather was married; so he must have asked her to come as soon as he had a proper home.
Grandfather refered to his aunt as "Caroline" - but in the census she is listed as "Amalie." Now that I know she was in this country, hopefully I'll be able to find out more about her.
I don't know anything at all about Hans Andersen Jr., and I only have the birth date and place for Jacob.
Hans and Ingeborg appear to have been married in Flensburg (I assume at the Adelby church), but they must have moved back to Hans' home in Sonderburg, because that's where at least two of their children (Jacob and Andreas) were born. I don't know when they returned to Flensburg, but according to my Grandfather's record in the family bible, that's where they both died. I also don't know whether their children all moved to Flensburg with them. But I have a photo of Jacob and his wife, and it was taken at a Flensburg studio.
(If Hans and Ingeborg were married at Adelby, would there be any further information about them in the marriage record? or would it be just the basic facts?)
> The Four Pictures
It's been several years since I even looked at those photos, and at that time I couldn't read the handwriting at all. I thought then that the problem was due to poor handwriting. But since then, I studied old-fashioned handwriting in order to translate some old documents for my wife's genealogy project. So when I recently looked at those photos again, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that the writing seemed quite obvious!
I don't know, though, exactly what kind of writing it is. It looks as if Jürgensgaarde is spelled "Jÿrgensgaard". I don't recall ever seeing anything with a "ÿ" before. Is that the way you read it too? If so, does that provide any useful information about the date or about the writer?
I also had one other change of opinion when I recently looked at the photos. I previously believed that J2 and J3 were the same person. But now when I look at them, I can't imagine why I ever thought that. Looking at them side by side, I don't see any resemblance at all. So, for the moment, I'll have to disagree with your identification of J3.
I had been hoping that you might have other photos of these individuals, which would help to identify them. If I knew who they were, then it would be easier to understand why my grandfather had the photos. But perhaps it works the other way around, too: the fact that he had the photos may help determine who they are.
The photos were all taken before my grandfather was born. So they must have originally been given to his grandparents, Hans and Ingeborg, or to his father A. W. Andersen, Sr. One other possibility would be his Aunt Caroline.
The only connection (that I know of so far) between the Andersen family and the Lassens is Marie Lassen geb. Jost. It might be that Caroline knew her cousins Marie and Ingeburg well enough to have exchanged photos with them. But if one of the unidentified photos is Marie's sister Ingeburg, then it must be the oldest of the set, since she died in 1860. Also, one of the unidentified photos might be Caroline herself.
I'm very hesitant to give much weight to that theory. But if the pictures are not of Jost family members, then it would be very difficult to explain why the Andersen family had them. I'm assuming that photographs were not very common in those days; and that it would be very unlikely for anyone to possess photos of non-relatives, or to pass such photos on to their descendants.
The photos do appear to be a set. They are very small, about 6,3 x 10,5 cm. (So the 640px image is as large as they can be scanned. The photo of Ingeborg must have been larger; I'm not sure of the size because my brother has the original.)
> Other photos
In addition to the set of four photos and the photo of Ingeborg Jost, my grandfather had several "baby pictures" of himself and photos of his parents which were all taken in Sweden. He also had one photo of his father and one of his mother which were taken at a studio in Flensburg.
There were only two other photos in this small collection. One was of his uncle and aunt, Jacob and Juliane, together. He wrote their names (but not her maiden name) and their birthdates on the back.
The other one shows a man wearing what I thought was probably a Prussian military uniform. The photo is of the same type as all the others, the same size, and appears to be the same time period. I assumed - and it seemed to be a perfectly reasonable assumption - that this was the other uncle, Hans. So I put these photos on a temporary webpage to show my brother, and I labeled this one "Hans Andersen."
But then I did some further research, to see whether I could identify the time period by studying the medals on the uniform. To my great shock, I found a different photo of the very same person on the internet. But it didn't say "Hans Andersen" - it said "King Christian IX" !!!
My brother and I still laugh about that; but it would not have been funny at all if I had proclaimed my ignorance so loudly to the whole world on the internet!
Needless to say, I have been very very cautious about making such assumptions ever since then.
> Other items
1) (This isn't relevant to our topics, but...) My grandfather visited Flensburg in 1929 (when he attended the Lutheran World Convention in Copenhagen) and conducted a service at Helligaandskirken. His album of photos (from his pastoral work) included several photos from that visit. The inside and outside photos of the church appear to be "post cards", but there was also a photo of the pulpit. It's a beautiful pulpit, but my brother and I couldn't understand why anybody would go to Flensburg and return with only a photo of a pulpit. A very odd souveneir. My brother discovered the answer from a historical brochure published by the church. The pulpit had been a gift from the Danes in Chicago, organized by my grandfather.
2) I have only one other photo which might possibly be relevant. I'm not sure that it was originally with the other photos my grandfather had. I'll send it soon in a separate email.
3) Grandfather had a copy of the "Stammbaum der Familien Lassen-Jost" zusammengestellt von Heinrich Lassen.
Thanks again, Helmut, for your help; I am very interested in my family's history, and greatly appreciate your assistance.
Regards,
Tom
P.S. While looking through my files to make sure I had my facts straight in this email, I discovered a photo I had forgotten all about. This is a picture of me that I sent to my brother from Flensburg, Minnesota; it's a very small town, with not much resemblance to the city it's named after, but it looks like it would be a good place to live.
