silk town through the centuries

I have written about the Krefeld clan on various occasions, but somehow didn't have a piece on Krefeld in the first series of #lostcities. The direct ancestors of my great-grandfather Julius Düsselmann are recorded there from 1764 to 1924. Descendants of Julius's cousins still live there to this day, so it's about time for an entry, which will lead us deeper into the past than anything in the first season.

Under William of Orange, Krefeld had a record of welcoming religious minorities that were persecuted elsewhere, including Mennonites and Quakers. One Mennonite family, the Von der Leyens, transformed the history of the town by running an extremely successful and lucrative silk weaving industry, for which they were awarded a monopoly by the king of Prussia in 1763. At that point, Krefeld had only 4756 residents. With the silk boom the town grew explosively and became relatively wealthy, even though it also had its share of social conflict including a weavers revolt in 1828. In 1888 it passed the 100,000 mark making it officially a city. Politically, the town had fallen to Prussia in 1702, became part of France from 1801 until 1814 (Arrondissement de Crévelt), and fell back to Prussia after Napoleon's defeat. On the 200th anniversary of Krefeld joining Prussia the first time, emperor Wilhelm II visited the city and promised to station a cavalry regiment there, which he delivered in person, four years later. More about this mildly amusing episode here. The K in today's spelling of the name only became official in 1925.

Rheinstrasse cuts across the rectangle defined by the four former city walls, so it's easy to find and I vaguely remember how it looks now. I'm assuming the view here is from the top of the St Dionysius church.
Source.

What happened - just to sketch the broad outlines (essentially everybody named here was born and died in Krefeld unless specified otherwise):

1764 Christophel Wilsberg from Hamm married Anna Sybille Wolff from Mülheim in Krefeld

1788 Johann Georg Wilhelm Düsselmann from Dortmund married their daughter Margarete Wilsberg in Krefeld (he had previously married Anna Christina Lohr in 1782, also in Krefeld)

1796 Jacob de la Strada from Fachbach married Margarete Giesen (born in Krefeld although her parents married in nearby St. Tönis, today Tönisvorst) in Krefeld

1804 At the birth of their son Wilhelm, Johann Georg Wilhelm Düsselmann and Margarete Wilsberg lived at Auf dem Alten Kirchhoff (see list of locations below). JGW Düsselmann did not sign the certificate as he was unable to write. The certificate is issued in French by the Mairie de Creveld, and dated according to the calendar of the French Revolution, 25. Thermidor XII = 13.8.1804.
At the birth of their daughter Elisabetha, Jacob de la Strada and Margarete Giesen lived "devant la porte de St. Antoine". 26. Frimaire XIII = 17.12.1804

1826 Protestant silk weaver Wilhelm Düsselmann married Catholic Elisabetha de la Strada in Krefeld. They had 13 children and brought up the boys as Protestants and the girls as Catholics. Their descendents are the Krefeld Clan listed here. The survival rates and long lifespans bear witness to the wealth that the booming silk business brought to the ordinary people of Krefeld. Compare and contrast with Wilhelm's grandfather Christophel Wilsberg, who had died from malnutrition in 1781, aged only 52.

1841 At the birth of their son Carl (later written as Karl) and his twin sister Maria (7th and 8th of the 13 children), Wilhelm Düsselmann and Catholic Elisabetha de la Strada lived in the Peters-Strasse, house number 1559 (I'm assuming this is the old numbering system, when one sequence of numbers covered the entire town, as opposed to one sequence for each street)

1883 Julius Düsselmann born as the fourth of six children of Karl and Elisabeth (Karl also had a son from a previous marriage) - sadly no address given on the birth certificate.

1890 The much bigger city gets a professional fire brigade. Its founding director is Karl's brother August Düsselmann, who previously led the volunteer force. As of 1882, at the birth of his adventurous son Walter, he was still a decorator (Anstreicher) in his day job, and lived at Elisabethstrasse 95.

1924 The residence of my direct ancestors in Krefeld presumably ended soon after the death of my great-great-grandmother Elisabeth Catharina Imig who died October 2nd. On her death certificate, her and her husband's address is given as Alte Linnerstrasse 2.

1927 Her husband, Karl Düsselmann survived her by two years and a half, but as he was well over 80 and then died in Neukirchen-Vluyn, where his daughter Alwine lived with her husband Willi Esser, I reckon Karl will have lived with her family for the last two years of his life. He died 11.4.1927 aged 86. The death certificate reports he was resident of Vluyn, without a street address.

Locations:

• Alte Linner Straße 2. The Alte Linner Straße begins at the Ostwall, the Eastern long side of the rectangle, but it is numbered the wrong way round, with the lowest numbers furthest away from the centre, so number 2 is a lot further out than I have ventured so far. On google streetview the house looks like a 1950s redevelopment.
• Auf dem Alten Kirchhof doesn't exist any more as a street name, but the protestant church in the old town is still the Alte Kirche, and the street describing a U-turn on the Western side of the church is called An der alten Kirche, so I guess that's where the address must have been.
• "devant la porte de St. Antoine" it took me a while to realise that this must be the gate to St. Tönis, which was the Western gate of the old town. I don't think the gate survives, but it must have been where today's St. Anton-Straße crosses what was then the Western boundary of the town, the Dionysius-Straße. Just Southeast of that place is the Dionysius church, from which the Rheinstraße projects Eastwards, as seen in the postcard above.
• Elisabethstraße 95 Not far from the Alte Linner Str., above. The house no. 95 appears to have been merged with 97, to create more garage space on the ground floor, with only one entrance for humans, and five for cars.
• Petersstraße. This street is actually a major axis inside the rectangle of the former city walls, the first parallel to the Ostwall. Will have to work out how the house number translates to modern numbering.

In August this year, I visited Krefeld for the second time, got to meet some of my relatives who live there, and had a bit of an architectural trail. See the photos of the places I saw in my flickr album. I need to revisit to look up the street addresses mentioned above.

Previously in the #lostcities series:

1. Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
2. Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
3. Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
4. Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
5. Rheydt 1923 - 1935
6. Königsberg 1935 - 1945
7. Aachen 1936 - 1940
8. Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
9. Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
10. Würzburg 1961 - 1968
11. Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
12. Bonn 1929-1934
13. Lorsch 1890-1938/1973.

NB I have now added a second end date to the cities where other family members stayed on after the direct ancestors died. So far, that is the case for Minden, Bad Nauheim and Hamborn.

The Mastodon thread for season 2 starts here.

Update 8.12.2024 I've added the list of locations as a new feature which I am planning to introduce across the series (if and when any specific addresses are known at all). If only to make sure that the next time I visit the place I know exactly where to look for the footprints of my ancestors.