Prose and Passion: revisiting the Siepmann family

Back in 2009, I made a blog entry about the Siepmann family, based on the very detailed church record of the death of my ancestor Anna Elisabeth Siepmann who died in 1788 and on this occurrence of the name in an old book I found in a skip:

The ancient Siepmann post has been very popular, and this month I had another comment on it bringing the total to 18. A lot of new information has been contributed by the correspondents, so it's time to organise all of this into new post, working towards a family tree.

This will be a story of four parts that are not connected yet:

(1) family of Doris Siepmann from Bristol, UK, whose book inspired the old blog entry
(2) Siepmann families immigrated to the US in the 1870s to 1910s coming from Oberhausen, Germany
(3) early Siepmann families in the eastern Ruhr area, Germany, around Hattingen, Bochum and Herne and possible origins of the name (see the map below of how the name was distributed in 1890).
(4) the immediate family of my ancestor Anna Elisabeth Siepmann and her husband Henrich Tüselmann who lived first at Strünkede (Herne) and then Dahlhausen (Bochum) where they ran a mill.

(1) Doris's family

So let's start with Otto Siepmann, language teacher at Bristol and dad of Doris - I am quite excited to have found out just now that his letters to his son Harry are archived here. What if he writes about his ancestors in those letters? That could be really useful to the Otto descendants who have commented on my old blog entry.

Right now, my understanding of Otto's extended family now is looking as follows:

August Siepmann (1835-1908) oo Wilhelmine Henriette Hasenbach (1836-1891)
The eldest of 9 surviving children is:

1. Otto Siepmann * 1861 Waldbröl (east of Cologne, south of the Siepmann heartland in the Ruhr area) +1947
oo 1889 Grace Florence Baker (1858–1937)

They had three daughters and three sons:

Harry - the letters to him from his father while he was at school and at uni date 1902-1913.

one son missing here ?!

Edith Alicia aged 9 on census day 31.3.1901; oo Bankes-Jones

Phyllis aged 6 on census day

Doris (1895-1988) aged 5 on census day (owner of the book that inspired the blog entry of 2009, see her autograph and rubber stamp above)
oo 1920 Percival Waterfield (1888-1965), senior civil servant involved in the creation of the WW2 motivational posters like Keep calm and carry on.
son: John Waterfield (1921-2003), diplomat

Charles (1899-1985)
oo Charlotte "Dolly" Tyler (according to wikipedia) and/or oo Janey (according to an anonymous correspondent to the earlier blog entry)

Another son of August and Wilhelmine appears in Gedbas (the mother is called Hansenbach in this entry but that must be an error, there are multiple Hasenbachs in the right area and only this one occurrence of Hansenbach):

2. Gustav Heinrich Siepmann * 26 Sept 1870 Waldbröl, + 16. August 1948
oo 11. 2. 1902 Hamburg Gisela ROOSEN ,
Ricardo SIEPMANN 6. 1. 1903 + 1948
Hans-Werner Heinrich SIEPMANN 14. 7. 1908 +1984
Ursula SIEPMANN 1. 11. 1913 + 1990

(2) Transatlantic Siepmann connections

Several people have contributed infos on immigration of Siepmann families to the US. The farthest back in time is the 1870s wave of catholic Siepmanns (everybody else in this story is protestant as far as I know) coming from Oberhausen, which is in the western part of the Ruhr area, but not too far away from the Hattingen/Bochum area where I think the nameline may have originated in the middle ages. According to Elianah we have:

Wilhelm and Catharina Lang Siepmann

Catherine Siepmann Hartgenbush,
Wilhelm (?),
Friedrich (Fred)Siepmann,
Joseph James,
Gertrude Siepmann Page,
Mary C Siepmann,
Frances Siepmann, and
Peter August Siepmann.

Elianah writes:

"The first to arrive was Wilhelm in Buffalo, NY. He eventually made it to Iowa. As far as I can tell, all of the other siblings came to Iowa directly, settling in Cedar, Linn, Johnson and Benton Counties. From there, the descendants went to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, California, Washington and Oregon."

As Elianah also mentions, Oberhausen was a city made up of various towns and villages in 1862, so the Siepmanns coming from there may not have Oberhausen on their birth record but one of the places we now know as a district of Oberhausen. Note also that in the reorganisation of the area some historic units were split up, so we now have districts called Styrum and Borbeck in Oberhausen as well as in neighbouring cities (Mülheim and Essen, respectively).

In Gedbas.de I can't find any Siepmann in Oberhausen or any of the preceding towns and villages. The closest match would be this Wilhelm Siepmann born in Mülheim.

Debra has written about a separate lot of Siepmanns also coming from Oberhausen

"My grandfather Wilhem Siepmann sailed to the port of Boston on the Willehad from Germany, arriving sometime in August 1914. He came from a family of 11 siblings who were mostly teachers and musicians. His family was also from Oberhausen in Westfalia. My grandfather settled in New Jersey and is buried in Brielle, N.J."

Re Siepmanns in Oberhausen, note that there is a street called Siepmannstrasse in Oberhausen Dümpten, not far from Müheim, named after a Siepmann family who had their farm there before industrialisation.

(3) Early Siepmann families

We're going further back in time now to look for the origins of the Siepmanns and for potential relatives of my ancestor Anna Siepmann who died 14.12.1788 at Dahlhausen (now in the southwestern part of the city of Bochum) aged 82 - see further details under (4).

The distribution of the name in 1890, shown in this map, suggests that it has scattered from one origin in the general area of Westphalia. (Map is a screenshot from this site.)

Three separate lineages are going back to the 16th century, two from Schwelm, one from Hattingen. Schwelm is half way between Waldbröl and Dahlhausen, so a plausible departure point for the radiation of the later Siepmanns. I'll give the founding fathers of each name line capital letters starting with A (not strictly chronological):

(A) Johan Sipman / Im Siepen * 1590 + 5.1.1657 Schwelm, Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis, lived "am Zipp" in Schwelm, which would plausibly explain the origin of the name. Zipp exists still today as a street ca. 2km SE of Schwelm, going off the A 483 main road and serving about 5 houses.

1. Johann SIPMANN about 1620-after 1690
1.1. Hans IM SIPPE about 1650-after 1713
1.1.1. Hans Evert ZIPMANN about 1681-1761 - lots of descendants listed here who seem to have kept the spelling "Zippmann"

1.2. Elsabeth IM SIPPE about 1659-1752

Note how fluctuating the family name still was then.

Two of the oldest Siepmann families I found on Gedbas go back to

(B) Jürgen Sippmann in der Wischen born Schwelm, late 16th century,

Now this is interesting: Henrich Siepmann * 1670 in Hattingen got the name via his mother who is a granddaughter of that very same Jürgen in der Wische from Schwelm, who appears here with a different set of descendants compared to the first lineage linked to under (B). Note also that Henrich married Elisabeth Kistner - his maternal grandmother was also a Kistner

let's aggregate these two lineages leading back to (B):

Jürgen (Sippmann) in der Wischen

1. about 1590 Peter in DER WISCHE

2. about 1600 Hans in DER WISCHE

2.a about 1607 Johannes SIEPMANN these two are the same person as both oo Elsa Kistner 4.11.1622 Holthausen, Borken

children listed for Hans:

2.1. Johannes im SIPEN * 13. 11. 1622 + 11. 12. 1685 Darmstadt, Hessen,

2.2. Elsabeth im SIPEN * 30. 5. 1627
oo 30. 4. 1666 Hattingen ev Wilhelm in DEN BERCKEN

2.2.1.Jurgen SIEPMANN * 1667
oo 8. June 1687 Hattingen ev Christina SIPMAN her nameline goes back to Adolph Sipmann * around 1560 Hattingen, ie the same generation as the founding father of this name line, see under (C) below.

2.2.2.Henrich SIEPMANN about 1670
oo 21. October 1697 Hattingen ev Elisabeth KISTNER Johann Henrich SIEPMANN * 18. 1. 1699 Hattingen ev + 8. 12. 1778 Hattingen oo Catharina Gertrud LEMBECK

2.3. Catharina im SIPEN * 27. April 1631

Catharina and Johannes are listed for 2.a Johannes Siepmann, but with the family name Siepmann / Sippmann, respectively. Both went off to marry in Darmstadt, Hessen, and I think Johannes's descendants may have stuck with the Sippmann spelling.

1. Henrich SIPMAN about 1590-
1.1. Christina SIPMAN 1615-1615
1.2. Johannes SIPMAN 1617-
1.2.1. Christina SIPMAN 1668-
.3. Catharina SIPMAN 1620-
1.4. Maria SIPMAN 1624-
1.5. Gertrude SIPMAN 1629-
1.6. Adolph Sipman EFFMANN 1630-after 1702

2. Cathrina SIPMAN about 1595-
2.1. Everhard WISSMAN 1621-
2.2. Cathrina WISSMAN 1624-1625
2.3. Maria Gertrud WISSMAN 1636-

3. Adolph SIPMAN about 1605-1635
3.1. Henrich SIPMAN 1628-
3.1.1. Margreta SIPMAN

4. Else SIPMAN about 1600-1625

5. Anna SIPMAN -1625
5.1. Margarethe SIPMAN 1623-1625

Other 17th / 18th century Siepmann lineages include:

Hermann Siepmann
oo Margarethe BRÖGELMANN
1. Margarethe SIEPMANN * 3. 8. 1691 Hattingen

Arnold Siepmann
oo 1696 Anna Engels Solingen lots of descendants

Johann Diedrich Siepmann
Johannes Peter SIEPMANN * 1718 (lots of descendants)
Anna Margarethe SIEPMANN * 26. August 1719

Johann Henrich Frielinghaus oo Anna Christina Siepmann daughter 1725
Margarethe Christine SIEPMANN * 1725 Linden (now part of Bochum but next door to Dahlhausen where my ancestor died) + 1805

Henrich Adam Siepmann * 1712 + 21. 01. 1797 Himmelmert
oo Anna Christina Hustadt
1755 Johann Henrich SIEPMANN
1767 Diedrich Adam SIEPMANN

Peter Siepmann * 1730 in Moers.

Looking into the Siepmanns in the German Wikipedia, I found the industrialist brothers Hugo and Emil Siepmann from Hagen (Ruhr area). Their steel works at Warstein remain in the family to this day. Their ancestry is on Gedbas, going back to Peter Wilhelm Siepmann born in the mid 18th century, one generation younger than my ancestor.

Intriguingly, the mother of Emil and Hugo was also born a Siepmann, but Gedbas has her lineage only back to her grandfather Peter David Siepmann, who must have been born around 1800 as he had children between 1827 and 1839. Surely this wasn't a coincidence and the parents were some sort of distant cousins?

(4) Anna Elisabeth's family

Finally, we come to my ancestor Anna Elisabeth Siepmann, whose married life is described in some detail in this churchbook entry from December 1788.

My rough translation:

On the 14th of December, Anna Elisabeth Siepmans, widowed wife of the grain miller Henrich Tüselmann at the Dahlhausen grain mill, at an age of 82 years, after a 14-day suffering with severe chest illness, by death exchanged the temporary for the eternal and has on the 17th been buried with a sermon about the words of psalm 71 verse 9. With Henrich Tüselmann from the parish of Herne she entered matrimony in 1730, wherein she lived with him peacefully for 40 years, and [verb missing] 13 children, 10 sons and 3 daughters, of whom 4 sons preceded their father to eternity. In the status of widowhood she lived 18 years and awaited the salvation of her body.

Unfortunately, nothing about her origins. I'm sure she must be related to some of the Siepmann families listed under (3) but how?

Of those 13 Children we have some further info only about three:

1. Wilhelm Düsselmann oo 1772 Dahlhausen Anna Maria Düppen from Meinerzhagen (He is described as the young miller from the Dahlhausen mill, so I guess he must be the oldest surviving son and heir to the business.)

2. Jürgen Henrich Tüselmann, * 1743 Strünkede, oo 1.9.1778 Dahlhausen Marie Elisabeth Dünnewald

... ten more children ...

13. (Johann) Georg Wilhelm Düsselmann ~30.4.1757 Dahlhausen - the relevant ancestor for my lineage, who moved to Krefeld and had hundreds of descendants. Note that his mother was 50 or 51 at the time of his birth, which is impressive. And he definitely must have been the last of the 13 children.

Just about the only Düselmann person we can't quite account for is

Johann Wilhelm Düselmann, * 27.5.1778 Bochum