oldenburg-l - Nachricht 2006-08 00079

[APUND <APUND(a)aol.com>]

Hi, Margot, I'm glad to see you're still hunting for family members.
 
Did I ever give you the meaning of "Leibzucht" from Ernest Thode's German  
English Genealogical Dictionary?
 
It says that "Leibzucht" means life estate [granted by the local lord or  
church]. Where the word seems, in the old records, to refer to a  building, I 
suspect that is only a way of saying "in the dwelling of the  holder of the 
Leibzucht." There could have been more than one family living in  the main house. 
 
My experience in reading the old records leads me to believe that  
"Leibzucht" after a person's name meant he was the head of that farm. Some of  the other 
people dwelling on the farm were sons or descendants of a previous or  
current owner, some were from other farms.
I doubt that there were many cases of a farm 'owner' passing his farm to  his 
son before he himself had died. 
 
And there was for some times and places little unrest  apparent amongst those 
who did not inherit. They went on for generations  being listed as 
Heuerleute. They were probably culturally conditioned to accept  their lot. Some began 
"cottage industries" to supplement their income. When  those dried up, there 
was migration. 
 
Thode also defines "Heuer" as haymaker, "Heuerling" as renter, tenant,  
"Heuerleute" as tenants, "Heuermann" as lessee, tenant and  "Meyer" as  "farm 
administrator or tenant." The use of "Meyer" in the records seems to  indicate the 
head of a farm and is perhaps one of those occupational terms which  became 
surnames.  
 
You wrote:
"Were all the many Bergmanns, Handorfs and Rusches (whose names are  
found in the Damme church records) the descendants of landless younger sons  
of a previous owner? I had been under the impression that they were 
heuerleute",  i.e. that they were tenant farmers and not related to the land owner. If 
the  latter case is true, would "Holzgrefe" 
(Holzgraefe/Holzgreve) have referred  to the name of the owner of the land 
and, by extension, the heuerleute? In any  case, what kind of farm would it have 
been? Was it, as I have seen it once or  twice referred to, a collective farm?
"Johann Bernard Handorf und Katharina Maria Rusche, are listed in the 1859  
Damme Kirchspiel as living in the Holzgreven Leibzucht i.e. a pensioned living  
arrangement)."
 
Some of the Bergmanns, Handorfs, and Rusches may have been chief  farmers 
(heirs to a farm) in earlier records. Some of the non-heirs may  have become 
heuerleute on the same estates or on other estates. The  ones on the Holzgreve 
estate may have had some relationship  to the  Holzgreve family, perhaps through 
a daughter, or maybe not. In any case, it was  the Holzgreve family who had 
the Leibzucht, the rest were Heuerleute. A search  of the records would be 
needed to see whether or not there is a family  connection.
 
I have never seen the farms referred to as collectives. And that  term 
doesn't seem to fit since one man (or couple if the wife was the heir)  was the 
chief and the others were tenants or servants. A group of nearby farms  formed a 
farming community, called a "Gemeinde." That is perhaps where someone  got the 
idea that it was a collective farm.
 
I am interested in your Rusche findings. My husbands' family goes back to  
Rusche in Damme in 1770. The marriage record doesn't say whether or not  
Catharina Rüsche was Heuerleute or a daughter of the owner of the farm. There  was a 
Rusche farm somewhere.  If you have anything from that era, would you  send it 
to me, please. 
 
I have the book 700 Jahre Haverbeck. It has in it a listing  of possibly your 
family of Klemens Bergmann/ Agnes Krapp (married 1901). If  you want the 
information about them from the book I will send it to you. They  were both from 
the Steinfeld parish (in Schemde), but lived in Haverbeck, which  isn't very 
far from Steinfeld.
 
Nancy Pundsack