Fingers Crossed, Good Luck Charms, and Lucky Shirts

 

My husband is wearing his “lucky shirt.”  It’s his warm weather version of the lucky shirt, as there is a flannel shirt that carries the same designation when the temperature is cooler.  Today’s shirt is short sleeved, in kelly green, royal blue, and white.  My husband’s blue eyes look good with these colors. 

I’m not sure when this shirt got designated as lucky. Certainly, it was not in 2016 when I was first diagnosed.  Nor in the spring of 2017 when the swollen orange peel looking mess called for a punch biopsy and an ultrasound.  I know it wasn’t there when I did a follow up MRI in September but by then I had been diagnosed with Lymphedema and had been making weekly 2 hour plus round trips to help the worst of those symptoms.

Did he have the shirt, the following March, when they brought him back to me as I cried quietly on the bench? When they told me that a large number of cell clusters in my breast were too small and too many to biopsy. I would have to wait six months, SIX MONTHS, to reevaluate, to see if any or all were cancerous.

As I am riding in the car today, I reach into my purse to check for the third or fourth time to make sure that the old beat-up eyeglass case that carries my own good luck charms is sitting securely in one of the pockets of the purse.  My friend Jill had sent me a small angel, of clear plastic and purple, that was in the case.  An old, frayed post- it note folded into quarters that my husband had left for me, and I had taken with me to each medical procedure, consultation or surgery ever since, is also in the case. 

We’ve discussed, my husband and I, what the note says.  It has been so long since it was written.  It is too fragile to open and read.  “I love you,” I venture.  “Good luck,” he suggests.  Both? Neither of us remember but it is an important part of the ritual.

“I don’t want to do this,” I say. 

“I know.”  He looks over, reaches out his right hand so he can pat my own hand.

“I’ve been good this time,” I say.  “I haven’t said that as much as I usually do.”

He just smiles at me.

“What?”   “I have said this as much as usual?” 

He keeps smiling.

Since 2017, I have been driving to a center in a larger city, which specializes in breast health.  It had been my Oncologist’s idea.  Twice a year, alternating mammogram and MRI every six months, we would make the pilgrimage. The year of the Big Scare I had an extra mammogram and an  ultrasound.  They tell patients like me, breast cancer survivors, the results right there as you wait. No nervously waiting for a doctor’s call or a letter (though a letter is still sent) to know what they see, good or bad.  Compassion is telling the patient at once. I have hugged and been hugged in those changing rooms at that center.

Covid messed things up.  All medical procedures were cancelled, and my mammogram was delayed because of the closure of the center.  When they started seeing patients again, they called survivors and worked us in first.  It delayed the mammogram by a month.  When I saw my CNP at the breast surgeon’s office, I told her I wanted to forgo my MRI that Fall.  My parents were almost 90 at the time, and the Covid shots were almost a year in the future. I didn’t want to take any chances of infecting them, or let’s be honest, myself, either. My CNP agreed. I didn’t miss doing the MRI – not one bit.  

Breast Cancer, and I did not realize this until my own diagnosis in July of 2016, is an umbrella phrase for a number of different cancers affecting the breast.  If you are diagnosed with BC, then hope that they diagnosis you with something called DCIS – Ductal Carcinoma in Situ.  It means the cancer started in the milk ducts of your breast and has STAYED inside that duct.  It doesn’t matter how big it is, just that it didn’t pop through the wall and become IDC – Invasive Ductal Carcinoma.

About 20% of diagnosed BC are DCIS.  Yep, you still have to do surgery, maybe radiation, possibly take some pills, and it is not fun, but DCIS does not metastasize.  Of course, now you know your traitorous cells know how to mutate and cause cancer, so that sucks.

Once it goes invasive, however, all bets are off. Stray cancer cells can get into the lymph system.  Your lymph nodes are your body’s way of trying to keep those bad cells from taking a ride around in your lymph system, but once they reached the nodes, you have no way of knowing if they stopped all the cancer cells from getting through to your lymph system. 

Even if those bad cells don’t make it to the lymph system, cancer cells like to form where blood supply can feed them.  There is nothing to say a cell or two or more won’t hitch a ride in your blood vessels, traveling to who knows where.  And the really tricky thing about cancer cells is that they can hide and go dormant, just waiting for the opportunity to wake up and multiply.  That can happen in a week, a month, a year or several decades.

Treatment for breast cancer relies on tumor size, grade, the type of receptors, and whether or not it has the HER2 growth factor.

Breast Cancer can have estrogen receptors (the cancer feeds on the estrogen) and/or progesterone receptors.  You can have anywhere from 0% to 100% positivity in your receptors.  The higher the percentage, the more likely hormone blocking pills will stop the cancer’s growth.

HER2 growth factor, and you are getting this from a patient not a medical person, is a protein that acts like a fire chief at a fire.  Instead of calling for more water, the protein demands more cancer cells.  It probably won’t surprise you to know that this is a very aggressive form of cancer.  Somewhere in the vicinity of 15 to 20 percent of BC has the HER2 growth factor.  About 10% of all BC patients have estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, and the HER2 protein. This is called Triple Positive cancer.  Did I mention it is aggressive?  Triple Positive is my type of cancer.

(Just a note:  If you are thinking that you would vote for having none of those receptors or HER2 because it must not be aggressive, you would be wrong.  Triple Negative is aggressive and right now, it has less therapies to throw against it than the other cancers. 10% of all diagnosed BC is Triple Negative.  Research is needed! Now!)

Because I had surgery to remove the tumor before I had seen an Oncologist, the treatment plan was going to be adjuvant (after surgery) rather than neo-adjuvant (before surgery).  In the case of HER2 positive cancers, they like to do the chemo and targeted surgery plan first so they can decide how effective the treatment has been.  My Oncologist, who was supposed to be my second opinion but I absolutely loved her, proposed the following treatment plan - six rounds of chemo – 2 different types- every three weeks.  At the same time, I was to be given two targeted therapies for the HER2 positive part of the cancer.  One would be for 6 sessions, the other for 18 sessions. Radiation after chemotherapy and hormone blocking pills for 5 to 10 years.

The notebook I was given said that I would feel the effects of the chemo for 3 or 4 days of each three-week cycle.  Nope, not me, I was sick for 16 days of the cycle. Many days all I ate were nibbles of potato chips and sips of lemonade, as that was the only measure we tried that stopped the nausea.  I ended up going in a few times for fluid IV’s and finally, my Oncologist said we would be stopping the chemo after 4 cycles.  She said to me, “We’re trying to cure you, not kill you.”  I didn’t argue.

One of the targeted therapies I was given was a drug called Trastuzumab, or Herceptin.  It targets a part of the gene for HER2.  It almost didn’t get a clinical trial, it almost didn’t make it to market, and it wasn’t until 8 years after being approved for metastatic HER2 cancer that it finally was approved for people like me.   The movie “Living Proof” (2008) and the documentary “I Want So Much to Live” (2009) tell the drug’s journey to the marketplace.   I think of it as a tiny miracle and it came very close to never existing!

The drug, however, did have drawbacks.  Before it could be administered, I had to have an Echocardiogram to prove my heart could manage the drug. Then, I had to have an Echo every six to eight weeks while I was on the drug.  It took a year, but I completed the 18 infusions.

I lost my hair – not just on my head, but eyebrows, nose hairs (I really missed them), and I now can pluck my leg hairs as opposed to shaving them.  I lost all my fingernails.  Not all at once, and not only one time.  My toenails bit the dust and my gastrointestinal track has never been the same. One day while I was at my desk barefooted, I looked down and thought that my whole heel had come off. It hadn’t.  It was the calloused part of my heels that had fallen off thanks to chemo. But my feet were very soft for a long time after that.

Two people who were 9 months and 16 months ahead of me, with the same cancer and treatment had reoccurrences early on. It’s not uncommon.  One before the BIG SCARE and one during. They had to do the chemo and targeted drugs all over.  I was devastated for them and terrified for me.

One of the women on the forum I inhabited, was cancer free from the neck down, but HERS2 likes the brain and that was where her cancer reoccurred.  She left behind two very young sons.  

A very sweet woman who was Triple Negative, who was diagnosed shortly after me and had a tumor about the same size as mine and no cancer in the nodes like me, metastasized.  She was such a good person and she shared research of all types of Breast Cancer. One day when she was having a rough time, I let her know how much her research and posts had meant to me. She answered me back and told me I had made her cry but in a good way.  We lost her in August 2022, and I still think of her often.  

My cancer was mentioned on an organization’s blog. The writer wrote that it “seemed” that I had “beat cancer.”  It angered me when I read that but it also hurt. She casually invalidated everything I had been through.  Every time I have an ache or a pain, extra tests are run on me, because of my history.  Last year, I had surgery on my eyes and the surgeon had the debris evaluated, to make sure there were no cancer cells present.

Blood work and annual scans cause me a lot of anxiety.  It always will.  I have no idea if the cancer will come back or if the drugs, I took may have damaged some other part of my body that will end up killing me.  Beat cancer?  You do not beat it.  You just keep showing up and doing what you have to with fingers crossed, good luck charms and lucky shirts.

On this day, I go in and have the mammogram while my husband waits in the reception room.  I am always trying to read the tech’s expression to see if I can tell anything.  The wait when she goes to show the radiologist my films is interminable. 

My husband tells me later as I come through the door to the reception area, I have a big smile on my face and I give him a thumb’s up (honestly, I  didn’t know I did that) and he knows without a word that I have received a NED verdict – No Evidence of Disease.  For today then, I am relieved.   Tomorrow is another day.

© 15 May 2024, Teresa L. Snyder, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged

My Stolper Roots: Making Use of Existing Records to Increase Your Ancestry DNA’s Common Ancestors

 

I have read that some Ancestry DNA subscribers have over 100,000 matches to their accounts.  I can’t  imagine.  I monitor 9 accounts on Ancestry and as of today their total matches range from 18,000 to 86,000.  My own matches are at a little over 28,000.  Even at that much smaller number, this is a lot of information to sift through to find a common ancestor.

Ancestry’s Thru-Lines and their Common Ancestors go back to 5X Great Grandparents. However, the majority of our matches do not fall into these categories, and that interesting match that you have wondered about remains a mystery.

One way to increase the number of known matches is to go back to your 5X Great Grandparents and fill in the names of their children and complete their genealogy to the present day. Do that for each generation.   This will make a hefty but knowledge rich environment, and that will help Ancestry identify more common ancestors in your match list.

It sounds simple enough, but if, like me, you have a significant chunk of your ancestry that resides in another country, the information is not that easy to come by.

My father's generation is the first full generation to be born in this country.  His maternal ancestors came from what was then Germany but is now part of Poland.  After World War II when the German’s were expelled from their land East of the Oder-Neisse line, the majority of vital records for this area were lost. Those records that survived were scattered to different institutions in both Germany and Poland.

Below is a map of the Stolp district in Pomerania where dad’s maternal ancestry lived. The map is from 1794 but the area is the same (outlined in yellow) as it was in 1945.  The city of Stolp had a population of 50,377 in the last full census taken in 1939.  The rest of the district had a population of 83,009 in that same census.  In 1815, Pomerania became a part of the Prussian Kingdom and when the various German states unified into the German Empire in 1871, Stolp's citizens became German citizens.

In 1874, the areas of the Prussian State required civil registrations of births, marriages and deaths. Prior to that, church records were the only source of this information in Pomerania.

When I wanted to add family members to my 3X Great Grandmother, Henriette Bastubbe Gliffe, I was disappointed to learn that there was no birth record or marriage record available for her.  I did however, have a death record which gave me her date of birth.  On the other hand, of her nine children, I had 7 of their births available in Church Baptismal Registers. And that meant there were Godparents listed! 

Sometimes Godparents were friends of the parents.  Sometimes Godparents were grabbed from whomever was available when an ill baby needed to be baptized immediately.  Sometimes the weather was bad on the intended baptismal date, and the original Godparents could not be there. But sometimes the Godparents were relatives of the parents.

I looked at the Godparents for Henriette’s children.  Twenty one Godparents and only one had the last name of Bastubbe, Ferdinand Bastubbe from Labüssow.  Labüssow is a village a the church district of Groß Dübsow. 

As you can see above, I have marked the 4 churches in the area where my ancestors lived.  For the most part they belonged to the church in Budow.  Labüssow, which is located a little north of Groß Dübsow, was a bit of ways for someone to come who was not important to Henriette.  So I started looking at all of the Bastubbe individuals in that church district.  Fortunately, there is an index database online that allowed me to do this.

The remarkable group, Stolper Heimatkreise e.V., has over 5 million names in the index.  Not all the records are available online, but another website, Pommerscher Grief e.V, can tell you which church and civil registers are available, where they are located, which ones are digitized and how to find them on the Internet. This website was updated earlier this year, and they did a beautiful job, making things easier to find on the site.  Both of these organizations are stellar. I used them both extensively when doing my Bastubbe search.

I did not find Ferdinand but eventually, I came across a wedding entry for a Ernestine Luise Bastubbe.  It was her second marriage and it listed a father, a Paul Bastubbe who was deceased, but had lived in Grünheide by Gaffert.  This location was in the Budow district.  When I looked at the Godparents for Ernestine’s children, there were two Bastubbe names listed, Carl Friedrich and Ferdinand.

In the end,(with some translation help from a forum friend) I found three marriage records listing a deceased Paul Bastubbe of Grünheide as the father.  Unless you are related, you won’t care about the details.  However, I made a timeline for each of the siblings, Ernestine Luise Bastubbe, Henriette Bastubbe, Carl Friedrich August Bastubbe, and Martin Ferdinand Gottlieb (who, according to the death record of his son Carl Ferdinand Friedrich Bastubbe, went by the name Ferdinand.)  I made a timeline for the father, Paul Bastubbe.  Then I color coded which events they intersected. 

Below are the five timelines.

You can see the interaction between the individuals.  Ernestine really did turn out to be the key.  She interacted with each member.  The bonus – one of Ernestine’s sons emigrated to the United States.  A descendant took the test and her results were sitting in my match list waiting for me to find her.  My brother had two descendants in his list, but he’s kind of showy that way.

In case there is someone who is related to this family, I am putting the timeline sources below.  KB stands for Kirchenbuch (Church Book). Taufen, Heiraten, and Tote are for the Baptismal Register, the Marriage Register, and the Death Register, respectively.

Until Next Time

Source of  Ernestine Luise Bastubbe Timeline

1.           KB  Groß Dübsow Heiraten, 1840/7

2.           KB Lupow Tote, 1853/37

3.           Standesamt Lupow Heiraten, 1879/3

4.           KB Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1837/56

5.           KB Budow Taufen, 1841/42

6.           KB Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1844/46

7.           KB Budow Taufen, 1844/34

8.           KB Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1847/67

9.           KB Budow Taufen, 1849/5

10.        KB Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1851/1

11.        DNA Test with Ancestry

 

Sources of Henriette GLIFFE geb. BASTUBBE Timeline

1.           KB Budow Tote, 1872/29

2.           KB Groß  Nossin Heiraten, 1859/28

3.           KB Budow Taufen, 1839/4

4.           KB Budow Taufen 1841/54

5.           KB Budow Taufen, 1844/34

6.           KB Budow Taufen, 1846/52

7.           KB Budow Taufen, 1849/5

8.           KB Budow Taufen, 1852/5

9.           KB Budow Taufen, 1855/23

10.        Zurückgeführtes Erstregister, Berlin X A, Heiraten, 1880/231

11.        DNA Test with Ancestry

 

Sources of Carl Friedrich August  BASTUBBE Timeline

1.           Trier Stadt Heiraten, 1846/111

2.           KB Groß Dübsow Taufen, 1837/56

3.           1852 Trier Einwohnerliste Sektion I, 1852/ 210-6

 

Sources  of  Martin Ferdinand Gottlieb BASTUBBE Timeline

1.           KB  Groß Dübsow Heiraten, 1845/25a

2.           KB Budow Taufen, 1841/42

3.           KB Budow Taufen, 1844/34

4.           Zurückgeführtes Erstregister, Berlin II, Heiraten, 1877/675

5.           Berlin  Erstregister Tote, Berlin V A 1909/1

 

Sources of Paul Bastubbe Timeline

1.          KB  Groß Dübsow Heiraten, 1840/7

2.          KB  Groß Dübsow Heiraten, 1845/25a

3.          Trier Stadt Heiraten, 1846/111

  

© 11 May  2024, Teresa L. Snyder, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged

With a Tiara in her Hair

© 9 April 2024, Teresa L. Snyder, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged

Loss

 

Last Year's Christmas Present to Myself - DNA Painter!

Last Christmas, I treated myself to a subscription of DNAPainter.  Before I subscribed, I registered for free. This allowed me to make one map using their Chromosome mapping tool. (Subscribers are allowed to make up to 50 maps.) About thirty minutes into the task, I decided one map would just not do, and paid for a yearly subscription (currently $55.00).

If you would like to see the difference between being a free registered user as opposed to a paid subscriber you can find that information HERE.

Below is my DNA map for my four grandparents. 

As you can see, it is still a work in progress. Each of us, of course, gets 50 % of our DNA from our father and 50% from our mother.  Theoretically that would give you 25% from each of your grandparents. However, in reality, you might get anywhere from 18 to 33% from a particular grandparent.

Doing a Chromosome map of my inherited DNA from my grandparents, the mapping tool keeps track of the percentages.

My grandfathers seem to have donated more of my DNA than my grandmothers.  Of course, it could change a little when (read if) I figure out how to allocate the remaining segments. 

My second favorite tool that you can access for free is the Ancestral Tree.  With your free registered account, you are allowed to import one tree up to 4^th great grandparent level.  As a paid subscriber you can import up to 50 trees and importing ability extends to your entire tree.

You can view your ancestral tree in tree format, fan format or text format.  It also prints you a pedigree collapse report that gives you the number of times an ancestor appears in your ancestral tree.  I have 3 ancestors that appear 3 times in my chart and 30 that appear twice, all are on my paternal line.

Below is the view of the fan format.  On the right-hand side is your maternal line and on the left-hand side is your paternal side. While you can set the tree format anywhere from four generations to “all available” the fan format goes back 9 generations to your 7X great grandparents. 

 You can easily see where the holes are in my genealogy. On my father’s side I have a “mystery” 3X grandfather, who deserves his own blog post. On my mother’s side you can see the pink area is the most represented.  That happens to be my great grandfather Samuel Henry Hoy’s ancestral line.  Sam’s family in the main were German, and Germans were very faithful in documenting births, deaths, baptisms, and marriages.  It is no coincidence that the best represented on my paternal side comes from my German Great Grandfather, Leo. Again, faithful documentation saves the day.

When you hover over an entry, the information you have included appears within the white half circle. 

You can see the information that my gedcom imputed for Frances.  Frances happens to be one of my ancestors that pops up a total of three times.  It is a little difficult to see, but it shows you the three different routes that connect her DNA to me.  Though the fan format only goes back to my 7^th great grandparents Frances appears on my family tree in two different generations, two of those being an 8^th generation place, and that information is also noted. 

Recently, I found additional ancestor information that I did not have when I initially made my tree.  In the tree format, it is very easy to update manually.  What happens if you find an error in your tree?  Again, you can fix it manually, or if the mistake impacts a large portion of the tree, you could delete your first tree and add the corrected gedcom, instead.

There are filters and something called dimensions that can be used to help visualize different aspects of your tree. 

Interested in finding out which of your ancestors might have contributed to your XDNA?  There is a filter for that. It works on both the tree and fan formats.  Below is what the filter looks like on my fan format.

Want to know how long your ancestors lived?  There is a dimension for that.  Of course, this only works for the ancestors that have both a birth and death year.  

The Ancestral Tree tool also gives you a Tree Completeness Report.  The report goes back to your 10^th Great Grandparents (that’s a whopping 12 generations back from you!)

As you can see, I have 0 of a potential 4096 10^th Great Grandparents.  And that mysterious 3X great grandfather stands out like a sore thumb (at least to me) where I have 31 out of 32 3^rd Great Grandparents, giving me a 97% completeness at that level. It doesn’t bother me, though. Okay, maybe it bothers me a little.  

I don’t think that everyone who gets a DNA test needs DNA Painter tools, but if you are like me – curious, committed to understanding your ancestral inheritance, and need visual cues to aid your understanding, DNA Painter is fantastic. (And I’ve only scratched the surface!) Besides, the colorful maps and charts are eye poppingly gorgeous.

Until Next Time

© 3 December 2023, Teresa L. Snyder, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged

An Ironic, Quirky Footnote to my Jeremias Schröder Posts

Okay, in an ironic, quirky footnote to my last two posts, I have this. When I was about 9, my mother, who had a collection of various figurines, took my sister and I aside, and told us we could pick a figurine to start a collection of our own.  I don’t remember for sure, but I think my sister, who was younger and therefore had first choice, picked a dog.  As my hand started toward a pair of identical figurines, my mother warned that if I chose them, it might be challenging to find more of the same animal for my collection. As it turned out, my mother was correct.  These animal figurines were only present during a specific time of the year.  However, her telling me it would be a challenge only made me more certain of my choice.  I chose a twin set of little bunny rabbits.

 

Below is a portion of my collection. 

Jeremias Schröder was a renowned rabbit hunter.  His 7X great granddaughter is an avid rabbit collector. Ah, Irony, you are not always a heartless bitch.  Sometimes, you are a wry wit.  

© 29 October 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

 

My Stolper Roots: Jeremias Schröder, the Rabbit Hunter - My 7X Great Grandfather, Part 2

 

Sometimes, what isn’t part of an ancestral record can be as informative as what is. Particularly, when you combine that with known historical facts. You and I don’t live in a vacuum, and neither did our ancestors.

Let’s start with the facts. From the genealogy that was compiled somewhere between 1935 and 1944:  

1. We know that Jeremias Schröder was born in 1648.

2. We know he died, 1 May 1724.

3. We know he was buried on 4 May 1724.

4. We know that he had a son named Anthonius Schröder.

5. We know he was a Jäger (Hunter).

6.  We know he was a renowned Rabbit hunter. The fact that this is part of the genealogical record is interesting. Normally, saying he was a hunter would have been deemed sufficient. At the time of Jeremias’ passing, a father and son duo were administering to the Parish, Rev. Martin Dreisow, Sr and Rev. Martin Dreisow, Jr. One of them felt this fact had special merit.

7. From the 1717 Hufenklassifikation. (The Hufenklassifikation was a survey undertaken from 1717 to 1719 in the Hinterpommern to assess land values for taxation purposes. The Prussian King, Frederick William I, ordered the survey.)

A Jeremias Schröder is listed as a halbbauer. He is the only Schröder listed in Budow and the only one listed in any of the villages that the Budow Parish served. (These villages included: Budow, Gaffert, Gallensow, Goschen, Groß Gansen, Jammerin, Klein Gansen, Kottow, Muttrin, Nippoglense and Wundichow.) It is possible that this was the hunter Jeremias’ son, but more likely, it was Jeremias himself as he was still very much alive at the time. 

1648, the year of Jeremias’ birth, was also the year that The Thirty Years’ War ended. It is estimated that eight million people died as a result of that war. They died from battle. They died from disease. They died from trying to save their homes, their livestock, their crops. And they died from starvation. Pomerania suffered heavily from the war with historians estimating that up to two-thirds of the population either died or fled the area.

The war, at least in the beginning, was a Religious War. After Martin Luther, a priest, nailed the 95 Theses on the Wittenburg Church Castle door in 1517, a religious movement was started. Protestantism was born. The original fighting between the Protestants and the Catholics came to end in 1555 with the signing of the Peace of Augsburg, which guaranteed the right of religious freedom.

Below you can see a map of the Holy Roman Empire from 1618, at the start of the war. The areas in orange represent Protestants and the gray area represents Catholics.

When Ferdinand II, the Archduke of Austria, was named heir apparent of the elderly, childless, Holy Roman Emperor Matthias, trouble began to brew. Ferdinand was known to be a staunch Catholic, and when he came into power, he declared the Empire to be Catholic. You can see by the map; his religious stance would disenfranchise a large number of his subjects. War became inevitable.

For the first 9 years of the war Pomerania, for the most part, was spared. However, in 1627, Ferdinand moved to house some of his imperial troops in Pomerania. The troops lived off the land, which meant confiscating livestock, food, and demanding payment in the form of taxes. This led to the burning of farms and villages, to rape, to torture, to death.

While the war initially started as a religious war, it quickly turned into a power grab, a means of filling coffers and confiscating property. Other potential combatants, alarmed at the power being accumulated by their contemporaries, jumped into the fray.

In 1630, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, a Protestant, landed in Pomerania. One would think that a combatant on the same side as the Protestant inhabitants of Pomerania would have brought some relief. The Swedish troops were every bit as demanding and imperious as the troops of Ferdinand II, and the Pomeranians continued their suffering under these “friendly” troops.

Finally, a series of peace treaties were signed. Known as the Peace of Westphalia, the treaties effectively ended the war. In 1653, as part of the terms, most of Pomerania was given to the Margraviate of Brandenburg, with the remaining portion in the West, given to Sweden.

Below is the map of the area in 1653.

War was over, but oh, the cost. In 1590, almost three decades before the start of the war, it was noted that the Parish of Budow had 161 farms. In the year 1710, sixty-two years after the end of the war, there were only sixty-eight.

In 1655, Friedrich Wilhelm, the Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, required an assessment from the landowners of the state of their holdings. Various members of the Von Zitewitz family-owned different parcels of land in the villages surrounding the church in Budow. The information from these reports was documented. Below are some of the remarks reported.

From Friedrich von Zitewitz:  He reported that on his 3 Muttrin farms, they were unoccupied except each were “inhabited by a strange man.”  He complains that the soil is poor, and that he must provide new seed every year.

From Martin von Zitewitz:  Among other things, he reported that he had two unoccupied farms in Nippoglense. In one of those farms lived, “a poor, miserable person who lacks bread even before Christmas.”

From Gneomar von Zitewitz:  He told of the miserable plight of his farmers in Klein Gansen. He said he had to pay for all their seed, taxes, food, etc. otherwise, he is afraid they will leave for Poland, like so many of the other farmers have done.

From Johan Adolf von Zitewitz:   In Budow, three of his farmers had run away to Poland.

From Gerd von Zitewitz:  Gerd had a fair number of complaints. He complained that the soil was so poor, that a family could not live from what they produced on the farm. He told of the hunger of his farmers. He said he hadn’t sold a sheep in 20 years, even though he would buy them but the land couldn’t support them. To add to his sheep herding woes, he complained that to get and keep a proper Shepherd you had to promise them whatever they demanded.

In other words, they reported that their farms should not be taxed at the rate they had been previously, because things had deteriorated thanks to the war.

 It would not be until Frederick the Great came into power that a concerted effort was made to repopulate the areas decimated by the war. It is said that in the first decades of his rule, Frederick imported 5312 families from Bohemia, Palatinate, and Saxony to colonize these areas of Pomerania. This, however, would not happen until 1740.

 In the meantime, Fredrich Wilhelm tried unsuccessfully to demand that those peasants and serfs who had fled to Poland be returned to the areas from which they fled. The next step was the issuance of The Servants, Farmers and Shepherds order of 1670. 

This order curtailed a peasant’s right to move from one place to another. It was illegal to leave the farm he inhabited to move to another place without permission. The punishments for doing so were severe. A peasant farmer was also required to render services, fees, and other goods to his landowner at specified times. The peasant could own his home, his livestock, his equipment but not the land. All these requirements of the peasant farmer were passed on to his children.

Frederick Wilhelm I (King of Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg, 1713-1740) passed the Edict of 14 July 1718 and the Edict of 10 Nov 1722, which among other things, curtailed craftsmen from living in the rural villages. Only tailors, blacksmiths, weavers, carpenters, and wheelwrights could live in a village. All other craftsmen, except for millers, were required to live in the cities.

All of this presents a problem when it comes to Jeremias. I believe that Jeremias and his son, Anthonius, came from outside the parish villages of Budow. Let’s compare the information that we have about Jeremias to that of his contemporaries.

While his contemporaries, like Jeremias, were not given a specific birth date just the year born, the others listed in the same genealogy, done through the same church, with the same minister, during the same years had listed along with their birth year, the place they were born, the names of both of their parents, and the date of their baptism. Jeremias had none of those things. We also don’t know when his son Anthonius was born, where Anthonius was born or who his mother was.

We know that Anthonius died in 1733 in Budow, that he married Trin Liese Potratz in 1724 and that they had a son, Johann in 1725. Did Trin Liese remarry? When and where was she born? Did she and Anthonius have more children? Who raised Johann? While it’s possible that the pages that would have contained these facts were missing from the Budow Parish when the genealogist did his work, it seems more likely that they are missing because these events did not take place within the Parish of Budow. My guess is that Jeremias and Anthonius came to the area sometime before 1717 (when the Hufenklassification was done) but after Anthonius’ birth. But where did they come from, and how did they get there?

Was there a swap from one landowner to another for a service that was needed? Jeremias, after all, is listed as a renowned rabbit hunter. Did Jeremias come from an area that was not subject to the Farmer and Shepherds order of 1670? Questions, questions – all I have is questions. 

I fantasize that out there somewhere, in a forgotten text, tucked away on a dusty shelf is a sentence or two about a famous rabbit hunter who came with his son and settled in Budow. I know that there is only the tiniest of possibilities that my fantasy is true. I know that is only the teeniest tiniest of possibilities that should that text exist, that it somehow falls like a ripened fruit into my lap. But even the teeniest tiniest of possibilities is still a possibility . . .

Until Next Time

 

© 28 October 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder

 

Map Attributions:

“Holy Roman Empire 1618” By ziegelbrenner - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6054043.

By Astrokey44, section cut by user:Skäpperöd - This file was derived from: Holy Roman Empire 1648.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12363902.

 

Sources:

1.           Archiv ostdeutscher Familienforscher, “Schroeder,” 1998 5/6, P 175

2.           Rolletiofe, E. Editor:  Ostpommersche Heimat 1933, “Aus der Geschichte des Dorfes Budow,” No. 17, P 4, Accessed 14 August 2023.

3.           v. Livonius, A.:  "Die Bevölkerung der Kreise Stolp, Schlawe und Rummelsburg kurz nach 1700", Ost-pommersche Heimat 10. - 15. Fortsetzung 1939, Folge Nr. 10-25, http://digibib.studienstelleog.de/sdo/sog/PM.livonius-nach1700.pdf, Accessed 29 Oct 2015.

4.           Pommerscher Grief e.V., “Einführung (Die Blankenseesche Hufenklassifikation)”, https://www.pommerscher-greif.de/hufen/. Accessed 12 April 2023.

5.           History.com Editors: “Thirty Years’s War,” https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/thirty-years-war . Accessed 23 August 2023.

6.           Burke, Frederick: “Pommern History,”  Pommern Regional History Group, https://www.prgmn.org/cpage.php?pt=17,  Accessed 10 April 2023.

7.           History.com, Editors : “Martin Luther posts 95 theses,” https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/martin-luther-posts-95-theses, originally published 24 November 2009, Accessed 14 October 2023.

8.           Sellke, G., “Villages in Eastern Pomerania following the Thirty Years’  War.” Original Post, Ostpommersche Heimat,  No. 35 -39  with included notes. https://sites.rootsweb.com/~mnprgm/Stolp/30YearsWar/index.html, Accessed  12 April 2023.

9.           Heyden,  Helmuth: ”Zur Geschichte der Kirchen im Lande Stolp bis zum 18.” Jahrhundert, 1965.

10.         V. Stojentin, Max : Geschichte des Geschlechts von Zitzewitz, Teil 1: Urkundenbuch., Stettin, Herrcke & Lebeling, 1900.

11.         Bottke, Karl: Heimatbuch des Landkreis Stolp, Albrecht, Stolp, 1926.

12.         Kuchenbecker Report, “17. Jahrhundert”  Accessed 23 Oct 2023.

13.         "Churfürstliche Brandenburgische Gesinde- und in etzlichen Punkten revidierte Bauer- und Schäffer-Ordnung im Hertzogthumb Hinter-Pommern und Fürstenthumb Cammin”, Titulus IV: Von den Bauernren und dero Weglaufenfen, von 1670.

14.         Stolper Heimatkreise e.V., “Gesellschaftliches und politisches Leben,” https://www.stolp.de/krussen_ortsgeschichte/articles/krussen_gesellschaft.html, Accessed 24 Oct 2023.

© 28 October 2023, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder