Mark R Dollhopf
A second-generation immigrant, and the first of our truly “suburban” grandmothers, she raised the first family to achieve the American dream – among her children were the first in Dollhopf history to attend high school, college, and graduate school.
This is the only known photo of Lizzie, taken when she was seven. The 14 generations of grandmothers in the previous blogs were Franconians – all born in or around Mistelbach. Lizzie, was not from Franconia; she was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. But her parents were indeed German immigrants, both from the region of Hessen, the area surrounding Frankfurt, Germany. Like her mother, Lizzie was committed to an insane asylum where she died at the age of 94.
Margaretha trudged on, crushed by the poverty of her time. She gave birth to four children out of wedlock. When she finally married, her husband died two years later when she was just 29. She remarried, adopted five children, and gave birth to seven more, ultimately caring for 15 children. Her first-born left for America at the age of 19. She never saw him again.
Margaretha and Eberhardt lived through a period of profound social change, even though this change came slowly to Mistelbach and the larger region of Franconia. They witnessed the end of feudalism. Well, almost. Unbelievably, it was not until the mid 1800s that feudal serfdom finally, although not entirely, ended in Franconia – almost 70 years after the French had abolished serfdom in the French Revolution of 1789.
In 1816 the Indonesian volcano Mt. Tambora erupted causing winter weather during the the summer in the northern hemisphere. From the Mistelbach pastor’s log: “The 1816th year was one of the strangest ever for humanity that you could have experienced. It was a year of wiped-out crops, caused by the rain that began in May and lasted until the end of November, which put the beautiful fruits of the fields in deep water…. This natural event led us to a great inflation in the year 1817, which was so oppressive that people had to eat grass and herbs and bran two or three times a day in order to escape starvation.”
On a hot August 14th night in the summer of 1769, Kunigunde called their three boys (at least I imagine it this way) – Johann 17, Stephan 15, and Albrecht, 7 – to the rear of their house #55 at about one hour past midnight. There, in the southwestern sky, visible only from the rear of the house because the house faced northeast, they witnessed a most extraordinary event.
Conrad and Anna were the first Dollhopfs in our line to be married at this altar. Anna was born in Pittersdorf, a village two miles south of Mistelbach. Her father Peter Nützel was a farmer. The Nützel family was one of the oldest and largest in the region. We have three different maternal lines of Nützels in the Dollhopf tree (dear cousins and friends Georg and Carola Nützel live today in the neighboring village of Gesees).
Beginning with Margarethe and this Dollhopf family, and for the next 100 years we don’t know as much about the Dollhopfs as we did in the previous three centuries, or in the years since 1800. The 1700s were years of increasing poverty for German peasants, and our branch of the Dollhopfs was no exception
Dorothea was born in the Zeckenmühle – a mill, likely a sawmill, about one mile downstream from the Dorfmühle. She was 12 years old when Mistelbach was destroyed by the Croatians in the spring of 1634. We don’t know if the Zeckenmühle was razed, but given the fact that all but eight houses were left standing, and that the mills were the likeliest of targets, we can reasonably assume that Dorothea and her family fled. If their mill was destroyed, we don’t know where the family sought refuge, or for how long. Perhaps they fled to another village, perhaps they “camped” in the woods, as many did.
She was the youngest of our great-grandmothers when she died.
Or was murdered. From the Mistelbach Chronicle, describing the years following the events of 1634: “Sad times, the country is teeming with devastating, wild thieves and gang members who chase each other back and forth incessantly. Friend or foe, they were all the same now. Everyone robbed the villagers, treated them with hostility; the people were in constant flight, even the forests no longer provided security since enemies flushed them out with dogs. There was a great lack of people in Mistelbach, even fewer cattle and livestock; the land remained largely desolate.”
Of all our great grandmothers, Maria Sporrer braved a life of near constant peril and sorrow, enduring the greatest of our family tragedies, the Thirty Years War. Her life was probably the most tragic in the 600 years of Dollhopf history. She had the unique distinction of being our 10th great-grandmother twice – both of the men she married were our blood-related 10th great-grandfathers. She and her first husband Johann Holl were the parents of Barbara Holl, our 9th great-grandmother; she and her second husband Cuntz Dollhopf were the parents of Cuntz, our 9th great-grandfather.
Margarethe’s generation was the last of the most prosperous era for Dollhopfs, the last of the mill owners. She was an “hourglass” great-grandmother. There were at least 30 Dollhopfs living in and around Mistelbach in her generation. But in the next generation, following the Thirty Years War, her youngest son Cuntz would be the only Mistelbach Dollhopf who survived. She was the narrow neck of the hourglass, through which only one grain of sand passed.
We don’t know her name, but the earthshaking Reformation occurred in Mistelbach during her lifetime.
Our 13th great-grandparents Margarethe and husband Cuntz Dollhopf were likely the first Dollhopfs to be married in Mistelbach, in the church of St. Martin, that was at the time Catholic. In 30 years it would be renamed St. Bartholomew when, as a result of the Reformation, it switched to Lutheran
She was our first great-grandmother to live in the village mill. We know her given name Margarethe from court records. She married Dietrich Dollhopf probably in the late 1460s. Dietrich was a miller and owner of the Dorfmühle (“village mill”) in Mistelbach, which he acquired on or before 1499. At the time, Mistelbach was a mere hamlet of 19 farming families according to the 1398 book of fiefs. The Dorfmühle remained in the Dollhopf family for 150 years until 1649, at which time it the fief was assumed by Wilhelm Drechsel, our 9th great-grandfather through a maternal line.
Our 15th great grandmother might have been a wealthy burgher. Beyond that we don’t know much, including her name. We don’t know her name because the churches in Bayreuth and Mistelbach did not start keeping records until the mid 1500s. Anyone born before that time we must infer from court records, and women, because of their lack of legal standing, were often not mentioned by name.
What did our grandmothers wear? They did not wear dirndls – contrary to our popular notions of buxom beer stein juggling Octoberfest maidens. A display of cleavage would have caused major disruption in the village. Nor did our grandfather’s wear leiderhosen…
Did our grandparents have sex? Well, I guess so. It doesn’t say so in the church books, but we’re here. A women’s sexuality was defined by her hair and clothes, not her figure.
Aside from bearing children, there was no greater or more impactful event in the life of a peasant woman than her marriage. With little or no chance for an education, few opportunities to practice a trade, limited life outside the home, her value to society (and her sense of self-worth) was based on her ability to bear and raise children – that, according to Martin Luther.
It is not likely that our peasant grandmothers could read or write until the 1800s, although there was a schoolhouse in Mistelbach dating back to shortly before the 1556. Perhaps some of our grandmothers did attend school, but school attendance was optional, especially for girls, since chores around the house and on the farm took precedence.
Our great-grandmothers were considered inferior to men. Why? Because of ancient Roman law, the Church, and surprisingly, the Bible. Even Martin Luther said that the intellectual aspirations of women were not only an absurdity but a positive peril – “Take them from their housewifery and they are good for nothing.”
In the Middle Ages, Mistelbach was a rural and remote peasant village. Our great-grandmothers had a limited and narrow view of the world – a world of religious domination driven by mysticism, magic, and superstition – which persisted until the 20th century.
So much is written about our great-grandfathers, not so much about our great- grandmothers. Who were they? This is the first in a series of 23 posts describing the life and times of 17 generations of Dollhopf women.
Even though Germany is the origin of many of the Christmas traditions we celebrate today, it might surprise you to know how the Dollhopfs celebrated the holidays before Johann Dollhopf left the village of Mistelbach bound for Pittsburgh in 1871. They never had a Christmas tree, never opened an Advent calendar or lit an Advent wreath; never kissed under the mistletoe, never sent Christmas cards, never knew Santa Claus; did not exchange presents other than fruit, nuts, and sweets, and of course didn’t have electricity, so they didn’t string lights. How did they celebrate?
The Dollhopf coat of arms is a German Renaissance tour de force, a 15th-century pictogram rich in symbolism and cultural zeitgeist. It was granted in 1480 to Johannes Tolhopf, an astrologer in the court of King Mathias Corvinus of Hungary, a native son of Kemnath, only 20 miles from Mistelbach. Is he a relative?
Dollhopfs have been farming in the village of Mistelbach for 600 years. Hans Tollhopf was the first; he acquired 3½ acres in Mistelbach in the 1430s, a village then of only 19 farms. For the next 450 of those 600 years the Dollhopfs were serfs, peasants bound to the land and the rulers who owned it. As serfs they were granted fiefs – more or less permanent leases – to plots of land and the buildings on them. This blog traces the number of acres held in fief by each of 15 generations from 1430 to 1871. How big were their farms? How many acres did they need to produce enough food to survive? Did they struggle, or were they comfortable? What finally drove many of them to America? What happened to those who stayed in Germany?
When our 2nd great-grandparents Johann Dollhopf and Margarethe Bär gave birth to their first baby in 1852, they didn’t consult a baby book. There weren’t any. So how did they choose? They had three boys and one girl, and all three boys were named Johann, the girl was named Sophia. What were they thinking when they gave the same name to all three sons?
When Johann and Catharina Dollhopf, our 4th great- grandparents, transferred the family farm to their teenage son, Eberhard, they included an annual grocery list. This interesting piece of history gives us insight to the daily meals of our medieval ancestors. Hmmmm.
The Brothers Grimm provide us with the definitive origin of the word Dollhopf, orTollhopf. No, it’s not a fairytale; it’s a cake that looks like the hood of a medieval monk. Fruit is optional.
Where did our ancestors live?
This is a detailed map of Mistelbach in 1850 showing the location of the Dollhopf houses…
…from 1499 to 1632 the Dollhopfs lived in House #57, the village mill,
…from 1632 to 1784 in House #55, just above the mill,
…from 1784 to the present day (or until Johann Bär Dollhopf left it in 1871) in House #19.
In 1778, almost one hundred years before Johann Bär Dollhopf left Mistelbach for America, Heinrich Pfaffenberger, a mercenary fighting for the British in the Revolutionary War, died of scurvy in Newport, Rhode Island.
Heinrich was one of our cousins.
“The burden of taxes, imposed by the governments for the support of their monstrous standing-armies, drives the Franconian people by the thousands into the wilds of America, where they live with a freedom unknown in the Fatherland. No land-tax, no salt-monopoly, no tithes, no military conscription, no censorship of the press, no class legislation, pursue them there.”
Charles Tylor
A Historical Tour in Franconia in the Summer of 1852
Genealogy is not the sum total of sepia-toned, dusty, photographs. It’s not just the few notes scribbled on the back page of a Bible. It’s a portal through which we witness the journey of our grandparents, through which we better understand the forces that shaped, and continue to shape, our lives. Millions of Americans have similar stories, but the one told on these pages is our story – a firsthand account written by people who were there.
Our great-great-grandfather Johann Dollhopf died at the age of 28 in the year 1858. Shortly after he died an inventory was taken of everything he owned, providing us with a doorway through which we can step back in time.
Meet our 11,000x-great-grandfather, “Adam” Dollhopf. He lived 275,000 years ago in East Africa. I don’t think he spoke German.
If you have been affected by the COVID-19 virus, if a family member, or someone close to you, is sick, or has died, our thoughts and prayers are with you. If you are grieving, we grieve with you. That’s what families do. If you are on the front lines – a first responder as many of our family members are – thank you for your life-saving work.
The coronavirus pandemic is the defining moment of our time. It has already killed more people than the wars in Vietnam and Korea. Combined. The unemployment rate is the worst since the Great Depression. Schools are closed. Businesses are failing. Lethal at worst, inconvenient at best, stressing and depressing.
This is bad. Our great-grandparents endured far worse.
A list of paternal Dollhopf direct line ancestors from Hans Dollhopf (~1400-~1454) to Edward Dollhopf (1889-1982).
