Registration Form for World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps
Posted on November 19, 2007 - Filed Under Family history, World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps
We have the registration form ready to go! I just sent it to the printer and will be mailing it out to as many Pulskamp family addresses as I can find. If you want to send me addresses for your siblings, cousins, or other family members, just send me the list. Better yet, you can download the attached form wwgpregistration-form3.pdf and print it out for anyone who needs it.
The price of the event includes meals and the rental of the meeting space. We kept the price as low as possible to encourage everyone to attend. Some of us, coming from California and other distant locations, have a lot of expenses in addition to the family gathering, (airfare, hotels, car rental) so keeping the cost down is really important.
For the Friday night gathering, we plan to have the family trees up to be studied. (I’m sure there will be some mistakes, some omissions, some surprises) and family stories to share. Birgit Pulskamp, from Germany, will present a PowerPoint slide show about the farm in Germany. Saturday we will tour a lot of sites in Franklin County, Indiana that are related to the family history. We’ll take a hay ride, check out family tombstones in two different local cemeteries, and visit the churches and farms where our family worshiped and worked. There will be more artifacts to share and games for the kids.
Next, I’ll try to make arrangements with a hotel nearby for a group rate.
Let me know if you have any questions or need any additional information.
For Sale: Original Pulskamp Farmstead in Indiana
Posted on November 15, 2007 - Filed Under Family history, World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps
The Pulskamp family arrived in New York on July 5, 1845, and just weeks later, on August 9, purchased a farm in Franklin County, Indiana. That farm is now on the market!
The property, located at 3078 Horseshoe Bend Road, Brookville, Indiana, 47012, is listed at $274,000 and includes 31.75 acres. 12 acres are tillable, with the remainder as pasture and woods. There is a new custom build horse barn, 35 x 68 feet with 8 stalls and a hay bale maul with wooden floor for holding up to 1,800 bales of hay. Also, there is a custom built 30 x 50 three car garage with cathedral ceiling so a loft could be added.
The older block farmhouse needs remodeling, but already has a newer gas furnace (5 years old), water heater, natural gas heat, and 200 amp service box. This house is not the original farmhouse, as that burned down, but is instead the second farm house that the Pulskamp family built.
The plumbing to the house is new. There are two wells on the property, one used for the house, View from the Original Farm the other for livestock. It is probably possible to connect to city water for a fee. There is an established hay field of ten acres. The realtor says it would make a good horse farm with your own hay.Block House on Pulskamp Property The property is located between St. Peters and St. Mary on the Rock, five miles from I-74, 40 minutes from downtown Cincinnati, seven miles south of Brookwille (county seat) and twelve miles east of Batesville.
For more information about this historic property, contact the realtor, Todd Sacksteder at toddsacksteder@sbcglobal.net.
To see a copy of the deed, when this property was transferred from the ownership of Herman Heinrich and Catherine Pulskamp to the middle son, Gerhard, click here: Deed to farm when sold to Gerhard
Pulskamp Diversity
Posted on November 15, 2007 - Filed Under Family history, World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps
The Pulskamp clan started in Merzen, Germany, so you would be correct to think we are German Americans, but over the years in America we have become a very diverse group. Our family now includes members with ancestors from all the inhabited continents (well, I am not sure about Australia, though I have found links to Pulskamps on Australian sites). So, we are German, Irish, African-American, Indigenious American (Navajo and other), and Asian.
The original Pulskamps, like the current owners of the farm in Merzen, were Roman Catholic, but our clan now also includes those without religious affiliation as well as Protestants, Jews, and Muslims.
While no cousin has to date told me of being gay, if we reflect the rest of the population, some of us must be gay. We have at least one, possibly two, transgendered members of the clan. (I have a nephew, Txy, who started life as a niece.)
Among other professions, we are school teachers, farmers, artists, business owners, executives, doctors, therapists, Olympic-level swimmers, and happily retired folks. On Saturday, our clan will increase by one more as my niece and her husband complete the adoption of their son Liam, a member of a California Native American tribe. Life is grand indeed!
If you would like to add to this, or any other story, just click the Leave a Comment button below and share your story.
Introducing: Pulskamp Wiki
Posted on November 9, 2007 - Filed Under Family history
I have created the Pulskamp Wiki and invite you to create an account so you can view and edit information on the wiki. This is a way we can share private information since a password is required for anyone to view, add, or edit the wiki.
To join the wiki, send me your name, address, phone number, email address, and tell me how you are related to the Pulskamp family. After I verify your connection to the Pulskamp family, I will create a wiki account for you and you will receive an email.
So far, the only information I have posted to the wiki is a family tree for the Pulskamp (Brëwer) family, the current owners of the farm in Mërzen, Germany.
The Internet, Genealogy, and Personal Identity Theft
Posted on October 15, 2007 - Filed Under Family history, World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps
We live in a pretty dangerous world. The Internet, as we all know, is not a safe place. One problem that can hit us as we try to find out more about our family history is Identity Theft. Many people, especially older folks, still have bank accounts and other secure information that uses a “Mother’s Maiden Name” for identification. That’s why it is important that we not share the entire family tree on a public web site.
Eventually, I will set up a WIKI that will only be available to known family members. When that is ready to go, I will notify family members I know and set up a password that will allow that person to view the WIKI and post or edit stories there. That is where the family tree will eventually reside.
For more information about a WIKI, visit the web site: WIKI-Wikipedia. Meanwhile, sign up for the Pulskamp Family email list. This list will be used only for Pulskamp news and notices. For example, I can let you know when I add a new story or new information to the blog.
How I met Dulah and Aunt Maggie
Posted on October 15, 2007 - Filed Under Family history
So, my cousin Vincent is the son of Mary Elizabeth Ryan, who wrote a book about the Pulskamp family descended from the youngest son. I had emailed Vincent for years, since email was a new concept, but I actually got to meet him in person when my daughter and I visited the Cincinnati area in September 2007.
One very exciting thing about Vincent is that he has a child who competes in major swimming events. At some point during his years of swim meets, Vincent got acquainted with someone who had some clippings from Celina, Ohio, where descendents of the oldest Pulskamp son had settled. He gave me those clippings to study.
One clipping described a painting, Dulah in Red Velvet by Joseph Pfister. Dulah is identified as Miss Dulah Pulskamp. Of course, we had to go looking for the painting. According to the information we had, the papers from Joseph Pfister were at the Cincinnati Art Museum Library. We went to the Library, hoping to find the painting, but all we found was a photo of it from a catalog from a showing of the artist’s work. Does anyone know where the actual painting might be?
The other clipping that I paid special attention to was an obituary for Bertha Pulskamp Spieler. The piece was written by her daughter, Magdalene, and included the names of all her children as well as their birthdates and married names. With that information, I took a chance and called a person whose information I located on the Internet. Aunt Maggie, now 95 years old, answered my call and connected me with three of her nieces. So our family connection is growing!
Plan for the World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps
Posted on October 3, 2007 - Filed Under World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps
Mark your calendar and start making your plans! We’re going to have the first ever World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps August 1-3, 2008 in the Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio area near Cincinnati. We have some great ideas for the event, but could always use more help making things happen.
Here’s the plan:
Friday, August 1 Gather at the Kolping Grove, 10235 Mill Road, Cincinnati, OH in the late afternoon for appetizers, German music, story sharing and a nice dinner. We’ll get acquainted with each other, figure out how we are related, share stories, and laugh a lot.
Saturday, August 2 Take chartered buses or private cars to St. Mary-on-the-Rock near Batesville, Indiana, where our earliest ancestors in America worshipped and are buried. Using the shelter and hall at the church as our home base for the day, we will plan special events such as hayrides, a trip to nearby Oldenburg, a very German town, where some Pulskamp cousins still live today. A tour of the area will show you the original farm, purchased in 1845, as well as the second farm purchased by middle son, Gerhard, which still belongs to Pulskamps. Nearby St. Peter’s church is another stop where you can find more graves of early Pulskamps. We’ll also get to see mementos from the early Pulskamps.
Sunday, August 3 Drive your own car around the Cincinnati area visiting German and Pulskamp related sites using the pamphlet we are hoping to develop for the event.
We also plan to republish the two books that have been published about our family in America: Leona Doll wrote about the family of the middle son, whose descendents still own the farmland in Indiana, and Mary Elizabeth Ryan Pulskamp wrote the book about the family of the youngest son, from whom I am descended. We have tons of new information to add to those two books, so you will not want to miss the new book, when it is ready for publication.
Of course, we could use your help in making all this happen. Would you like to help create that pamphlet of sites in Cincinnati? How about helping to create a Pulskamp coloring book we could all enjoy? We could use an artist for that project. Would you like to help plan the dinner on Friday or games for the kids on Saturday? Do you have Pulskamp stories to share? Do you have a connection with a charter bus company? Are you an expert in Quark Express, the software I will use to publish the new book? If so, I could certainly use your help. Let me know if you have other ideas on how you can help.
Those Other Daughters
Posted on September 28, 2007 - Filed Under Family history
The church records in Merzen, Germany, indicate that Herman Heinrich Pulskamp and his wife, Maria Katherine Steinke Pulskamp, left Germany with seven children. Our family histories only mention five children: Herman Heinrich (oldest son), Gerhard George (middle son), Henry John Theodore (youngest son, from whom I am descended), a baby boy who died at sea, and a daughter, Mary Katherine, supposedly left in Germany but now known to have come to Indiana with her brothers.
There were, however, two other daughters who made that trip with the family. Maria Adelheid was about thirteen years old, and Maria Elizabeth was about two. What became of these two girls?
So far, we simply don’t know. Since women change their names when they marry, it is much more difficult to track them through census records. Perhaps they died young. Many did. Perhaps they married at St. Mary-on-the-Rock, nearby St. Peters Church or in Cincinnati like Katherine. Perhaps they never married. Perhaps one of you, reading this blog, have an answer or some clues?
The Mystery of Katherine: Solved at Last
Posted on September 28, 2007 - Filed Under Family history
There have been two books written about Pulskamp family history, that I know of. Leona Pulskamp Doll published her book about the descendants of the middle son around 1980 and Mary Elizabeth Ryan Pulskamp published her book about the descendants of the youngest son around 1987. Both books have been marvelous resources for us. (We wish that there was a similar book about the family of the oldest son, but maybe that could still happen.)
Both books have errors in them. Some errors are just mistakes, some where made on purpose to protect someone from unpleasant information. I am not going to deal with those issues in this post, but there is one piece of misinformation that appears in both books that I am going to deal with now.
Both Leona and Mary Elizabeth reported that a daughter, Maria Katherine Pulskamp, was left behind in Germany when the family came to America. I had always wondered about that story, since Katherine would have been only about eleven years old at the time. If she had been older, I might have thought she had married or was engaged to be married, so the family reluctantly agreed to leave her behind. We now know that was not the case. Both books also report on the name of her husband, Anton Dickmann, and the names of their children.
In response to an email from me, cousin David Schuman wrote: “You mention the supposed marriage between Catherine Pulskamp and Anton Dickman. I can tell you that it is more than supposed. … information I found about their marriage from an index in the Cincinnati library.” With that information I was able to find a copy of their marriage and baptismal records of their older children.
So how did this false story get started? We can only guess. Was it just a clerical error on the part of the parish priest at the time or was it a transcription error later? I doubt I will ever know. I have seen a record from Germany in which the church records from Merzen indicate that five Pulskamp children emigrated to America in 1845, while two of the children’s names are missing that notation – Herman Heinrich, the oldest son, and Maria Katherine, the middle girl. Of course, we always knew that Herman Heinrich came because we are aware of his descendants, but with a girl it is a little more difficult, because a woman gives up her name with marriage. But we did know the name of her husband and her seven children.
With a bit more research, I found Anton and Katherine in Federal Census reports. Eventually I was able to trace her family down to current descendants living in Missouri and Indiana. I am hoping that some of them will attend our World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps.
So then, what of the other two girls? Two new mysteries!
Two Families: One Farm, One Name
Posted on September 25, 2007 - Filed Under Family history
Several years ago, my niece, Morgan Pulskamp, asked me if we were related to Birgit Pulskamp in Germany. I told her we were probably not related, as I believe our entire family came over to the U. S. in 1845. But, when my daughter and I decided to go to Germany, we decided to contact Birgit anyway. We are so glad we did.
Our family, the descendants of Herman Heinrich Pulskamp and Maria Katherine Steinke Pulskamp, once owned a little farm in the Hanover area of Germany. The original family name was Krampe, but after owning the farm for some time, Bernhard Johann Krampe (born in Olde, Germany, 1774) became known as Bernhard Johann Pulskamp. Pulskamp is the name his children used.
When the Brewer (pronounced Brever) family took over possession of the farm, they adopted the name Pulskamp also. Whoever owns the farm uses the Pulskamp name.
Pulskamp seems to translate as “spring field” so it is surprising that there are not more farms with that name. To our knowledge, all the Pulskamps currently living in Germany are related to the current owners of the farm. All the Pulskamps in the U.S., with one exception, are related to the family who immigrated in 1845. The exception is Wilma Pulskamp who currently lives in Missouri. Her grandfather, a member of the Pulskamp (Brewer) family immigrated in the 1890’s. There are other relatives from the Pulskamp (Brewer) family in the U.S. but their names are no longer Pulskamp. We have met with some of them and they are helping organize the World Wide Gathering of the Pulskamps.
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