I know it might sound daunting, but I have tons to write about for today as well because today I found out tons of information on the Tobe family. After breakfast we went upstairs and I pulled up the email I'd saved to a word-type document. As I copied the information down on a piece of paper for reference that day I informed Ahmee why I'd saved it on the word-type document: so that I could pull it up at any time. She exclaimed that that was a very smart idea! Since I was distracted all I said back was, "Yep!" It made her laugh. While I continued to copy the email that my dad had sent me regarding information on the Tobe family I barely overheard a slight grumpy overtone. Ahmee and Poppy first started talking about how they wanted to visit the museum and check out the towns that were mentioned in my email. Then they started talking about the next day and how they were going to head to where the Clausens had come from. Ahmee said that Poppy had not taken enough notes at all and Poppy sharply replied. This tone is what I emerged out of my copying into to report all that had been in that email (my dad had sent me an email he'd received from someone else).
The email (leaving out who sent it) was this:
I hope this information is helpful to your daughter.
The Tobe/Thobe families were located in North West Germany. The biggest town in the area is Cloppenburg. Cloppenburg is about 110 KM (50 miles) from the North Sea and about 50 KM from the Netherlands. The Tobe church records are at Cappeln. Cappeln is about 10 KM from Cloppenburg
Dingel (Thobe's) and Bokel (Tobe's) are two very small towns where the Tobe's/Thobe's lived and are about 3 KM from Cappeln.
The church is Cappeln has a wonderful thatched roof. Cloppenburg has a very nice museum that has all of the old houses, barns and etc. Actually have one of the buildings that was a home and barn combined - it was common to have the home and animals living in the same building.
The Tobe home no longer exists. The Thobe home was owned by a Mr. Beckermann and we visited him one afternoon and that was in 1990.
If you daughter does think she may go to that area, Gerry could possibly try to get some names and addresses. Rita Hoying from Minster is probably in contact with some of these people in Germany.
I am sure your daughter will enjoy her trip to Germany.
Take care. Contact us if we have be of any more assistance.
OK THIS IS NOW RACHEL'S BLOG AGAIN, NOT THE EMAIL.
Have to do that. I hate it when you can't tell in books which character is talking.
We went down to the car and Ahmee asked where I wanted to go first: to the museum that displayed what life was life back then, or to Cappeln. I said that since we didn't know how long the museum was going to be open we should go there first and then check out Cappeln. What I didn't mention was that I wanted to see what old farmhouses looked like, so that I could picture it if/when we found the area where the Tobe's lived.
To this day (this is just the next day) I'm glad we went to the museum first. There were tons of various buildings that contained plenty of information (in German and in English) on how people would've lived back then. There were a few houses where you could tell the owners had money. These were the ones that decorated. While pretty rooms make me happy, the cost it took for those rooms didn't make me happy. There were wee cottages where the farmers lived, often these were connected to the barn. There were three different types of windmills. There was a small church. There were blacksmith shops, pottery shops, and woodcarver shops. There were large, ornate barns that contained room for many many animals, for miniature mills, for tractors, for carts, and for many other things. These barns where built to last, and they often were connected to the families living quarters. There were also large buildings that were made for the farmhands. These people didn't have their own section of the barn for eating and washing and sleeping. Their beds were, like in the main house, cupboard beds (hidden behind a sliding door in the wall), and their fireplace was in the middle of the barn (there was no chimney and no open hole so it must've gotten incredibly smokey in there).
While we were there several large school groups going around. The children went in their own separate groups around the open-air museum. It was fun watching them run from place to place, and even more fun watching them play on the really fun playground that had been set up in the middle of the museum (outside the restaurant). I decided when I saw that playground that I wanted to design one. I have too much fun looking at them anyway.
Towards the end of the visit to the museum there were a few things that happened that weren't so great. First, Ahmee and Poppy both had to make a dash for the bathroom (Ahmee didn't realize it until Poppy had gone and then she became desperate and practically ran to the bathroom), I started to freeze, and I started getting hungry (it was 2 in the afternoon when we started making our way towards the exit).
We ate outside the museum at a little cafe that was just between the museum entrance and the parking lot. Shortly afterwards we got in the car and headed towards Cappeln to look for a catholic church with a thatched roof. I wasn't sure we'd find this though because let's be honest, how many catholic churches have thatched roofs? They like their churches to be grand displays. When we got there and looked at the map on the information bulletin and saw that there were only two churches in Cappeln, I had a good idea that we wouldn't find the thatched roof church. The huge church we saw coming in to the town was definitely catholic, but definitely didn't have a thatched roof and the church that we walked to didn't have a thatched roof and wasn't catholic. When we discovered this I discovered that Poppy was getting grumpy. The tone of his voice told me that he wasn't very happy. He didn't like the idea of us walking back to the main church, and he seemed annoyed when we discovered that we'd walked so far to find a church that wasn't catholic whenever there was one right there. We told him we were looking for a thatch roof, because my information had told us to look for one. At any rate we walked back to the information bulletin and looked one more time to make sure that there were only two churches in Cappeln. Once we were certain of this we walked over to the huge Catholic church that we'd seen when coming in to Cappeln. We went to this church hoping to find someone who would direct us to their archives. We found no one. I caught a glimpse of a whole lot of flowers next to the church and was about to investigate when Ahmee and Poppy called me over to them.
Together we walked across the street to the pastor’s house. This house was very old and had quite a rose garden. We knocked on the door, but no one answered. While I waited for someone to answer the door, I walked through the rose garden, stopping to sniff one every now and then and to take a few pictures. Then a door opened which surprised me and made me jump. Out of the house came a woman with short, blonde hair and a look to her that said she could bite us in two. We asked her if the pastor was home. She didn't understand much English, and we don't understand German, so we said our goodbyes fairly soon after she came out and went back across the street to the church. There, I decided I wanted to look at the flowers. I discovered that there were mini-gardens over the gravesites in this graveyard. It was magnificent. What astounded me was that each family took care of their own little patch of land there in the graveyard. All of the stones had some sort of garden with it. It was a lovely sight to see. When Poppy huffed at me taking a picture of the garden graveyard I became absolutely certain that he was disgruntled. What puzzled me was why and with whom.
We walked back to the car and headed to see if we could find anything else in the two smaller towns that were mentioned in the email. The first one we checked out was Bokel. It turned out to have maybe a total of 5 homes there, and no one was out but a few boys who were enjoying themselves on their trampoline. We then tried to make our way back to Dingel with what I could remember from the map on the information bulletin. We ended up getting directions later from someone in a gas station.
The man in the gas station told us that Dingel was most likely not even labeled. We decided we'd look for a cluster of houses and stop and ask. When we arrived at the area we thought was Dingel we pulled into a nursery and stopped. Poppy and I got out of the car and asked the woman who was helping two other ladies if this was Dingel, if a Mr. Beckerman lived there, and if the Tobe's had once lived here. Course there were a few other things that were included in that that I think just confused her. She told us to wait and she'd get her son. As we waited I looked around at all the gorgeous roses and fruitful trees that were planted around the house and were being sold. When her son came, or the guy I supposed was her son since he came striding around from the back side of the building, Ahmee got out of the car and asked Poppy and I, "So are we in Dingel?" One of the women, finally understanding, said, "Oh yes you're in Dingel!"
My two goals when I had gotten out of the car were to find out if we were in Dingel and to find out where Mr. Beckerman lived. When the man walked up I said hello and made sure we were in Dingel again, then I asked where Mr. Beckerman lived. Ahmee told me I needed to tell him what I was up to, so I explained that my grandfather (don't know if there are any greats and if so how many) lived in the area, that I was looking for information on the Tobe family and I'd been told by people who had visited in 1990 that a Mr. Beckerman would have information on them. He said, "Well the Mr. Beckerman they visited in 1990 is dead now. I'm his son. Did you say the Tobe family?" At this I brought out my little sheet of notebook paper and showed him the two names: Thobe, and Tobe. At this he said that the Tobe's lived there, on that farm. I was so excited at this news and quite astounded! I didn't even think we were in the right town, let alone the right house! I didn't get a chance to talk to Mr. Beckerman more though, he said he had to get back to work, but he invited us to his house later that night at 8 o clock.
We went back to the hotel to blog for a bit (while I did this Ahmee and Poppy when out and got Bourbon) and then went down to eat. All of us were astounded that yet again we'd gone right to the area of our ancestors. I was incredibly happy that the land that my family had once tilled was now being used as an orchard and a nursery for such wonderful plants. When Ahmee asked me if I felt at home I replied, "I always feel at home in a nursery Ahmee!"
At dinner we hurried through our food. Ahmee and Poppy both finished their wine and then we rushed upstairs to grab a few last minute things.
When we arrived at the house we got out of the car just before Mr. Beckerman walked out. It was quickly getting dark and he said he wanted to show us a few things outside and then we could head inside. Before the tour began Ahmee said, "Well we got something for you!" and handed out the Bourbon. In the dark I'm not sure he could make out the print very well on the bottle, but I know he knew it was an alcoholic drink because he clasped his hands and was very happy that we brought him a present.
After that the history tour began! Even though we didn't start with the Tobe family history, I will. The Tobe's lived there and owned the farmland (called the Thoben farm) that's now the nursery and the orchard, and the land that was across the road (which is now a corn field), their house stood behind where the house today stands and it had a barn attached to it where they had a few pigs and other animals. The Tobe's began to run into some major financial problems though and ended up having to sell their house and most of their land to the landlord. The Tobe's then moved over to where the cornfield now stands and started anew. They had to work with the land because before it hadn't grown any crops, and now they only had a small house and the field. After living there for two years they decided they'd all move to America. Mr. Beckerman said that the reason why they did this was in that area you passed your land down to your son, and it's normally the LAST thing to sell whenever you're in financial trouble. Selling the farm left a blackmark on the Tobe name there, and they also had a hard time with what little land they had. The farmland was still called the Thoben Farmland, even when it was owned by the landlord. The back neighbor later bought the land, and then the Beckermans got the land as a wedding present from a brother to a sister (who'd gotten married).
Mr. Beckerman showed us the cornfield where the Tobe's had to move and start anew, he showed us where their old house used to be (there were many stones that indicated this), and he showed us the original gate for the Thoben farm.
We then went inside and got to meet Mr. Beckermans wife Ana (squigly over the n), and their two daughters Anna and Christina (Anna was 10 and Christina was 12). The girls got to stay up late and watch and listen as their parents, who had learned English in school, talked to the Americans. The girls were learning English in school and when Ahmee would ask them simple questions they'd answer (Christina spoke up the most). We all sat down around the table, me at the head, Mr. Beckerman and Ana on my left, Ahmee and Poppy on my right, and the girls at the other end. The table had candies and sandwiches all sitting out, and after a few minutes they brought in some really killer beer for Ahmee and Poppy. I say it's killer not because I had any, but because Ahmee ended up drinking more than one (she normally doesn't drink much beer). While we sat Mr. Beckerman showed me papers that showed the land the Tobe's had owned, when it had passed, the name of the Tobe who sold it (Joseph Tobe) and the name of the landlord they sold it to, the names of the Tobe family members who all left to go to America and when they were born, and a map of the farmland and where the houses used to be. We also talked to them about school, about bourbon, about marigolds and how they help roses (marigolds kill parasites in the soil that stunt roses growth), about their family history, about what they do, and about languages. We only got to stay about an hour, but we had such a wonderful time while we were there! Ahmee was getting slightly tipsy and was beginning to talk endlessly (she does that when she's drunk), and Poppy's face was slightly red when we left. Not that that means much, just shows that they enjoyed the conversation and the beer.
Once we got back to the hotel I immediately jumped on the computer. I had and still have an assignment that I have to get done. I got incredibly tired though, so I grabbed my pj's, washed my feet in super hot water (this warms them up-otherwise they're frozen and I can't sleep at all), and then climbed into bed (with one foot just fine, and the other throbbing slightly as if I'd just woken it up from being numb.
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