[ungelöst] Silesia, Borndorf, Grandparents home

[SueHar2000]

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to my Wall!

I have scant information regarding my family's homes. My Great GrandFather was Julius Hermann Haring. All of his paperwork from passports and civil records say he was born in Borndorf, Kreis Hirschberg, Silesia in 1846. I do not know his religion. If I am correct, this section of Germany is now Poland, and the only town I came up with is Jelenia Gora.

There are so many spelling errors from the people writing this info down, that I am not sure if it is Borndorf, Bendorf, or Barndorf. Crazy!
If anyone has any pointers on how to research this, I am all ears.

His wife was Laura Stumpf. I only know that her approximate birthdate is March of 1845. I do not know what town she lived in, however her son's paperwork says he was born in Plauen. I do not have any info to match that at all either.

I believe Hermann and Laura were married around 1872, and they had 4-5 children while living there. Hermann was a tailor

I do know that a relative said one of her daughters said "all the beautiful girls are from Sachsen" - so I guess they would be from there! LOL.

If anyone can point me in the right direction here, much appreciated.

Thank you!

Susan

[Xtine]

Hello,

welcome to our forum.

Perhaps Bronsdorf ( Broniów ) is the place ?

https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/10246069

or

https://gov.genealogy.net/item/show/BROORFJO70UT

[sonki]

So, according to the Ancestry tree, the wife Laura Stumpf was from Plauen, which is in Saxony, but the husband, Julius Wilhelm Hering from B*rndorf.
I believe most people in the Plauen area were lutheran, but I could be wrong here.

Now to the Haring-Person. The family name Hering or Häring was quite common in the wider Hirschberg area, even I have ancestors with that name from said area. I know that quite a few Häring's lived in the village of Bärndorf. Unfortunately many churchbooks were destroyed at the end or right after WW2, so the lutheran church books have many gaps, i.e. christenings between 1840-1849. Same goes for marriages, the remaining churchbooks appear to end at 1870 and only at 1874 civil registry offices came into effect (here Fischbach was responsible for Bärndorf, scans @ Ancestry). So a marriage in 1872, might be hard to find (if ever), unless the marriage was in the birth place of the bride (usally a common theme), so maybe you could have more luck in Plauen (or wherever she was born).

P.S. I know that some Häring's in the area were lutheran, but others were catholic. So its really important to know what church they belong to, because often that decides if you will find anything (catholic churchbooks were often not destroyed after 1945).

P.S. II: Maybe this is a clue (hard to say for sure) - in the address book of Plauen from 1874, one can find some Hering's, among them a Hermann Hering, a tailor's apprentice.

P.S. III: Ok, in the address book of Plauen from 1878, one can find a Hermann Julius Hering, tailor. This might be him afterall, name + occupation matches...see attachment 1. In later address books he disappeared, which would fit in with his immigration around 1882 (as per the ancestry tree).

P.S. IV: Accordind to the ancestry tree and the Census of 1900, Hermann immigrated 1882, but his wife and children a year later 1883. And in the NY passenger list of 1882 (September, 15, W A Scholten) one can find a Hermann Hering, occupation tailer. Maybe thats him, arriving before the rest of his family.

[SueHar2000]

Thank you so much, Big help, I think I will follow up on your hint, Sonki, That sounds about right! This really is a breakthrough for me, I can not thank you enough. Question - do Haring’s change the spelling of their names to use an E like in Herring? Or two R’s?

[Gastonian]

Hi Susan:

Hering and Häring (with the "Umlaut" or the double dot over the a) sound extremely similar, especially in Saxony - so those spellings would have been used interchangeably (the Umlaut was probably dropped in America). Also, the fish has two "r"s in English (herring), but only one "r" in German (Hering) - and all the records cited by sonki have only one "r" in them.

Regards

--Carl-Henry

[eifeler]

Hello Susan,

I was browsing Familysearch and found the family tree of Hermann Julius Haring and his wife Laura Stumpf:

According to this, however, he did not come from Schlesien (Silesia), but from the administrative district of Schleswig, from a place called

Börnsdorf

in the former Duchy of Schleswig, now the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.

Presumably, Schleswig, which looks and sounds similar, was misunderstood in the USA as Schlesien=Silesia.

https://www.familysearch.org/de/tree/pedigree/landscape/L28X-FC9

https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/10214021

My regards
Dietmar, der Eifeler

[sonki]

Nah, he's from Bärndorf, Hirschberg County in Silesia. On Ancestry you can find, among others, his emergeny passport application that has his exact birth place.
What we need right now is the name of his parents, as the baptismal registers for Bärndorf between 1840-1849 are missing. I have access to the churchbook in the times before and after that gap and I see that Bärndorf was full of Härings/Herings.
Hermann Julius came back to the district capital Hirschberg in 1921 for health & visiting reasons. And he had his return passage to the US booked for July 10, 1924.
In the passport application he gave even more detailed reasons for visting Germany: visiting a sister and his place of birth.

P.S. In his petition for naturalization he signed it with "Häring".

[SueHar2000]

Hello again, thank you so much, everyone for all of this input.

The records on Ancestry and Family search are the ones that I entered, my problem many times is that I do not know the counties or cities, and to add to that, I understand that after WWII the names of the towns, streets, and everything in Bornsdorf was changed from German to Polish!
To my shame, I do not know either language!

Where did you find the Plauen address book, please? Maybe I can find my Grandfather there, he was born in 1874.

Sonki, can you point me in the direction of where I can find any listings in Bornsdorf before the records became lost or after? That clip looks great for Hermann in If his sister was there either times I might be able to find her.

Thank you everyone, again, this is such a help....this is so meaningful.

Susan

[sonki]

Hi Susan,

alright, about the address books for Plauen - 2 sources that contain the same books, but displayed slightly different. One is just for downloading the PDFs the other has an integrated web viewer: Link1 & Link2

Now about Bärndorf, Kreis Hirschberg (since 1945 Gruszkow / Jelenia Góra). As I said, there were multiple Häring families living in Bärndorf at that time, so without knowing the parents of Herman Julius or maybe the full details of a sibling, it will be very hard to impossible to establish the correct connection to the right family at this moment. Bärndorf belonged to the Protestant parish of Fischbach (now Karpniki) and as I wrote before the baptism records from the period 1840-1849 have been lost, so we can't just look up Herman Julius's record and see who his parents actually were. In any case, the church books are on Familysearch, but not accessible online (at least in Germany, maybe you have more luck if you access FS from the US): Link1 & Link2

So maybe its better to focus on the marriage of Herman Julius with Laura Stumpf. For the moment we assume that all(?) their kids were born in Plauen. Now, in the death register for Laura her father's name is written: Edward Stumph or Stumsch (not 100% sure whats actually written there), her mothers name is "unknown". So we know from the address books of Plauen that Stumpf's lived there. One way forward might be to write to the archive in Plauen if they can look up the baptism or civil register records of their children (according to the tree some have known birthdates). Then maybe also ask if they can find a marriage record - but I'm unfamilar with the Plauen region or Saxony in general, so take my advice with a grain of salt here, maybe there are better ways to do research in Plauen. Like I said, the marriage record should ideally contain the name of Herman Julius's father, which might help to locate the correct family in the churchbooks for Bärndorf. So right now I'm a bit unsure how to proceed other than the stuff I mentioned...

Btw. do you know that there is a longer newspaper article from 1924 where Herman Julius talks about the (economical) situation in Germany during his 3 year stay. You can find it on newspapers.com. If no one else will do it before me and this article is unknown to you I I could get you a copy (then I'm back from work).

P.S. One more note - in the addressbook of Plauen from 1877 I see only 2 Stump entries:
Friedrich Stumpf, embroiderer
Hermann Stumpf, carpenter's apprentice
No entry for an Eduard Stumpf...

Also, and maybe thats important - the family name Stumpf can also be found in the Hirschberg area, so maybe Laura was born there as well and only after she married Herman Julius, they moved to Saxony..who knows...I will look a bit into it later in the evening...and its complicated, there are also a few Stumpe's...2 seemingly different names/families, not connected to each other.

P.S. II:
I attached an interesting newspaper article from 1921 - even though we have other newspaper articles where its said that he was visiting his sister in Hirschberg, here it says Tlaum, Saxony (name appears to have been butchered, as no place with this name is known...to me at least).