oldenburg-l - Nachricht 1997-06 00015

[W. Fred Rump <fred(a)...]

Also sprach EDUGR4(a)... on 29 Jun 97 at 20:28 about JANSING 
family:

> I am interested in any information about the JANSING family from
> Lingen.  I know that the family was from St. Bonafatius Parish which
> is a Catholic Church.  Johann Heinrich was born 26 Nov. 1819 and he
> married Anna Gesina KUHR.  They emigrated to the U.S. in 1854.  They
> had 3 children in Lingen.
>  Anna Catharina born 4 Mar 1954; Johann Heinrich born 9 Oct 1849;
>  and Johann
> Wilhelm born 4 Oct 1851.  My ancestor is Johann Heinrich who moved
> to Indiana.  I am interested in any of the other siblings or parents
> of the eldest Johann Heinrich and Anna Gesina.  
> 
> I would also be interested in any information about the area of
> Lingen.

Paula,

I'm not sure if I suggested this group to you because of the Jansing 
name but realistically Lingen is not in Oldenburg (the name occurs 
there though). 

Lingen is smack in the middle of the Hanoverian Emsland. This region, 
until a generation ago, was still considered the poorhouse of 
Germany. The land alternated between what is called a sandy Geestland 
and the moors. The peatbogs/moors lay roughly 3 to 5 meters deep but 
have all since been farmed to extinction and laid dry. Today, 
discovery of oil and gas has along with modern farming methods have 
made the area fruitful and rich. 

Historically the biggest slice of the Emsland used to be part of the 
Grafschaft Calvelage-Vechta-Ravensberg but back in 1252 the last 
countess first offered the place for sale to the Bishop of Osnabrueck 
and when he couldn't come up with the money, she sold it to Muenster. 
It stayed that way until 1803 and this is why you might find the area 
under discussion in westfalen-l too. During the secularization in 
1803 the land went to the house of Arensberg which had property in 
France and belgium too. In 1815 it was given to Hanover but this did 
not prevent the local Arensberg administration from developing the 
land and modernizing farming and peat digging methods. 

Now, to confuse the issue, the Lingen territory was sort of an 
exception in the Emsland. It stayed as a part of the Grafschaft 
Tecklenburg in the middle ages and even was its own little 
country known as the Niedergrafschaft Lingen as of 1493. Tecklenburg 
lost this land in 1548/51 to the Habsburgs who owned the nearby 
Netherlands. In 1633 the Netherlanders included the territory as a 
part of their new Republic. Later the Grafschaft Bentheim got to 
include the Lingen area and in 1702 Prussia took over this 
exclave near Holland. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 Prussia 
ceeded the Niedergrafschaft to Hanover and as of then the entire 
Emsland united under Hanover.   

Lingen's history was quite totured from a religious standpoint as the 
Protestant Dutch tried mightely to compete with the powerful house of 
Muenster for the faith of the people. In addition there were all the 
wars. In 1548 the whole town burned down. In 1597 and 1605 the city 
was smashed to smithereens as it was attaccked and had its 
fortifications destroyed. The oldest house that survived all this was 
built in 1583 and is called the Haus der Kivelinge. The name 
itself goes back to 1372 when the young boys of the town saved the 
place from defeat in yet another attack from outside and thereafter 
they became known as the Kivelinge and have been celebrated aver 
since. 

The original church in Lingen is St Walburgis which was converted by 
the Dutch into a reformed church. William III of Orange even built a 
University in Lingen to combat the Catholic Church and Muenster in 
1697. It was able to carry its tradition through till 1819. 

In 1717 the Catholics were permitted to practice their faith again 
and the Lutherans could do this as of 1727. The Lutherans build their 
church (Kreuzkirche) in 1733/37 and the Catholics could finally 
build their own church in 1835/36 designed by the famous builder of 
classical churches. That became St Bonifatius.    

I do not know where the Catholics went to church before that, but I 
suspect that there weren't many of them in the early 19th century. 
The Catholics probably came from the nearby RC lands to the South 
Muenster Oberstift or the Niederstift to the East.

I will crosspost this to the hannover-l list as that is where this 
really belongs.

Fred
Fred Rump             http://www.k2nesoft.com/~fred
26 Warren St
Beverly, NJ 08010        fred(a)... or
609-386-6846             fred(a)...