Wilderman Family (3) - Colonists and Pioneers

Part 3 - From Frontier to Settled Territory
Find Part 2 of the Story Here . . .
Find Part 1 of the Story Here . . .

Note, this post has been revised. The original 2-Part Wilderman Family series has been updated and more information has been added. The series has been expanded to 3 Parts with most of the new information in this part.

Jacob Wilderman and Johann Meyer, and family left their small village in Baden, Germany and came to Colonial America in 1751. Jacob would marry Elizabetha Meyer and make his home in Maryland. There he would raise a family, farm, fight in the revolution and live out his live. After the Revolution, his son George would marry and head to western Pennsylvania to live in the company of other Pennsylvania Dutch settlers. Later he would pick-up once more and venture into the frontier of the Northwest Territory and settle just east of the Mississippi River in what is now Illinois.

The Wilderman Cemetery in the countryside on Section 8 in the Town of Freeburg.
James Wilderman, Sarah Jarvis and a number of their children are buried here.

Jurgen Goth - Short Biography

Jurgen Christian Goth, Mecklenburg Exodus

The underdeveloped and unenlightened principality of Mecklenburg saw large numbers of its population flee during the 19th Century. Some came to Dane County, Wisconsin including two sets of my Great-Great Grandparents. One was David Hermann and family and the other was Jurgen Goth and his wife, Maria Fredericka Grandt. It seems unlikely that the two families knew each other in 'Old Country' but two of David's children would marry two of Jurgen's children, creating a strong family connection in America.


Jurgen Goth and Marie Fredericka Grandt

Frederick "Fritz" Ostenberg - Short Biography

Frederick Ostenberg, German Immigrant

Several of my German immigrants came to southern Wisconsin around the middle of the 19th Century. One of the first to arrive was Frederick Ostenberg from Elberfeld, Kingdom of Prussia. Frederick was born in 1816 and was the son of Heinrich Dietrich Ostenberg (b.1785, d.1860?) and Elizabeth Strackbein (b.1790, d.?). The Strackbein family has been traced back another seven generations to Hen, who died in 1475. Elberfeld is a village in eastern Germany in an area historically known as the Rhineland. By the time Frederick was born, the Rhineland was under the control of Prussia, which by then had become the most powerful of the German Principalities. Heinrich and Elizabeth reportedly had six children, of whom two would come to America. To date, no other information about the life of the Ostenbergs in Elberfeld has been found and the family has not been traced past Heinrich.

Both the Frederick (section 9) and Charles (section 16 & 17) Ostenberg
farms can be seen in this partial 1873 map of the Town of Blue Mounds,
Wisconsin. Also, in the upper left corner is an advertisement for
"C. Ostenberg, Dealer in Dry Goods, Groceries, etc."

Wilderman Family (1) - Colonists & Pioneers

Part 1 - German Colonist is the New Word

Note, this post has been revised. The original 2-Part Wilderman Family series has been updated and more information has been added. The series has been expanded to 3 Parts, with most of the new information found in Part 3.

There is a lot of German ancestry in my blood, on both my mom's and dad's side of the family. They are from many different parts of Germany and most settled in the Midwest (namely Wisconsin) in the middle of the 19th Century. The Kahl, Ostenberg and Bilse families were in Blue Mounds; the Goth family in Middleton, the Hermann family in Verona; the Goldner family in Chicago (possibly via Michigan); and the Pazel and Ebersold families, also in Chicago. These are typical of the ethnic Europeans that came to American in waves from the 1840s right through to the first World War. There is, however, another German family in my ancestry that came to America much earlier. They arrived before the country existed and settled in the British Colonies in the middle of the 18th century.

Colonial Philadelphia Street Scene.

David Hermann - Arrived - Part 1

Note, this post has been revised. The original David Hermann article has been updated and more information has been added. Because of its length, it has also been split into two parts. There is some new information in the report below, but most of the new stuff is in Part 2.


Part 1 - Mecklenburg, the 'old country'

My Mom's Great Grandfather, Friedrich David Julius Hermann, who went by the name David, came to America and settled in Dane County, Wisconsin in the summer of 1862. I did not know of him prior to starting my family research and I don't think my mom did either. His story is a typical immigrant saga and he arrived around the same time as a number of my northern and central European ancestors.

Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1856. The Goth
and Hermann families came from the northeast area of Mecklenburg.