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THE JOHENGEN BRANCH IN AMERICA

The guide is based on the extensive research by Ida Johengen Wells
which commenced about 1977, 200 years after the birth of the Johengen
(patriarch in America, Jacob Johengen, Sr. The original documents of our
first contact in 1980 are contained in the appendix, with Ida's original version
of this family tree. In 1994 Ida published "The Johengen Family Tree", one
inch thick and all handtyped. Ida's typewriter is now beyond repair, and this
version is on a 1984 DOS computer, but we may have access to the
21st century Internet by other means.

I suggest that you now read the five page letter from Ida Wells of February 12,
1980, with a copy of her original family tree (pp Al-A6). Next read the list of
passenger on the ship Austerlitz of New Orleans, 407 tons loaded and departed
port of Havre de Grace for New York under master Samuel R.T. Adams, arriving
August 8, 1936. Please review the ship's Johengen family and biographical
sketches of each on pp A7-A12.

The Jacob Johengen family, at the time of their emigration to the U.S., had been
living in the village of Schiffweiler in the Saarland. Schiffweiler is due east of
Saarlouis on the Rhine, and a few km southwest of Ottweiler. Jacob moved his
family from Remmesweiler, also in the Saarland, a few years after the death of
his first wife, Anna Groot. The two oldest children from this marriage, Anna Maria
Barbara and John Nicolaus, remained in Germany. John Nicolas had married in
1830 and begun his own family. Anna Maria had given birth to two 'natural'
children, Peter in 1832 and Jacob in 1837, before her marriage in 1838 to Francis
Peter, the acknowledged father of Jacob.

The first of our Johengens were traced by Ida Wells to the village of Daun in the
Trier District of western Germany. Philip Johantges and Christina Neff appeared
on the rolls of the Roman Catholic Church in Daun. Philip was the son of Andreas,
and Christina was the daughter of Philip Neff. Christina's brother Philip (Jr.) acted
as sponsor at the baptism of their daughter, Anna Catherina in 1695. For a record
of this family, see p. Al3. The fifth child, Joannes Georgius baptized Oct. 29, 1703,
married (Nov. 3, 1733) Anna Elizabeth Woll. The eighth children of this family are
listed on p Al4. The first child, Joannes Jacobus Gehenge, baptized Feb. 26,
1738, married Margaretha Pressler on February 9, 1768, and their children are
shown on p Al5. The sixth child, John Jacob Gehenge (Jr.), born Jan. 26, 1779,
married Anna Groos on Sept. 7, 1801. Their seven children are listed on p. Al6,
(which has more complete listing than p. A6). On Feb. 15, 1820, John Jacob
Cehenge married his second wide, Angela Muller, and their four children are listed
on p. A17. Ida's documentation of Johengen descendants in America is an
excellent base for more modern updates.

The various spellings of the Johengen surname were first mentioned on page A4,
with (my) great uncle Paul Bantle as the source. To this introduction, The 

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various spellings in U.S. records as compiled by Ida Wells are shown on p. Al8.

An early tie in America was made between the Johengen and Nenno families,
when two of the daughters of Jacob Johengen Sr. married two sons of John and
Barbara Nenno. Of all the German families in Western New York, the Nennos
have been the most active in the 20th century in tracing their genealogy. Nenno
family reunions were held in the 1940s and 1950s (which I attended). Their arrival
in 1833 on the ship, Ange Gardien from Havre de Grace, was discovered from
microfilm in the Mormon Library in Williamsville, NY in the same month by
Elizabeth Nenno Wilson and Ida Johengen Wells. (see p. Al9).

In this research in the 1978-1983, the family lore was that the original Nenno
patriarch was "a carpenter from Lorraine". A clue to his origin was found in the
1877 census of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in New Oregon, NY, close
to Langford and 20 miles southeast of Buffalo. As found by Paul Doherty, in
this census Mickael Nenno, son of John the patriarch, gives his birthplace in
February 13, 1818 as "Bous, near Saarlouis". After years of checking, Paul
Doherty found the Nenno source in Berus in Saarland, Germany, about three
miles from the (current) French border (see p. A20 as credit for this excellent
research).

Some ties between the Nenno, Johengen and Degenfelder families were provided
by Thomas Nenno Wheeler (b. July 24, 1928) in an interview with me on
February 14, 1984 in Long Beach, CA. He was the son of Andrew Nenno, Jr, son
of Andrew Nenno Sr., "who was killed by a falling tree". He remembers both his
mother and grandfather Andrew talking about Andrew Sr's death. Andrew Jr.
recalled how black his father was before he died (probably from massive internal
injuries). As described by Kathryn (Nenno) Hubbard in her personal letter of
February 18, 1980: "Grandpa (Andrew) was killed Nov. 24, 1862 age 53 years by
felling a tree (that struck him) in woods for firewood. His son Frank was with him,
age 10 at the time, and dragged his father to house, snow on the ground. Quite
a long ways from the house. What an experience for a boy 10 years old."

Hazel Inez Nenno and Kathryn Nenno Horning in California kept in touch with the
family in the East. Tom Wheeler recalled (my) great aunt Anna Degenfelder and
Lavina Johengen visiting in a new 1932 Ford in 1932. The pictorial record of this
trip is kept in a photo album by Aunt Anna, now held by Theresa Degenfelder
Denea. In 1937 Aunt Anna and Lavina Johengen again visited the Nennos in
Monterry Park, CA. Both of his parents, Hazel and Mark Nenno, were school
teachers, so they could travel in the summer. Tom Wheeler recalled his visit
to Western new York in 1938 with his parents. They took the El Capitan
streamliner from Los Angeles to Chicago, where they visited George Degenfelder
and family. They went on to Detroit where his father bought a new Chrysler.
Then they drove to New York and visited Joseph and Mary Bantle Degenfelder,
the John Winter family, and the Nennos where they could see Lake Erie (the
hills outside Forestville, NY). My father, Richard Degenfelder, remembers this trip.

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Tom Wheeler's mother always said that her family came from "a long line of draft
dodgers". In reality, since Napoleon was always recruiting men, he probably was
impressing new men into his army. She said that the Nenno's came to this country
to avoid conscription, passed on by her grandfather to her.

In tracing back the Johengen line, it should be recognized that a country including
all German people did not exist until the 19th century. England and France have
long histories, and Northern Germany was established by the Hohenzollerns as
Prussia in the 16th century. Lower Germany was first established by Napoleon
Bonaparte as the Confederation of the Rhine in the 1806, as a counterbalance to
Prussia. The Johengen family came from the area of the provinces of Alsace and
Lorraine, famous because they were either German or French in the 18th century,
depending on who had the upper hand in the last war. I compiled the following history
in 1997 to provide the background of European history, which with its frequent warrings
and rule of monarchies explain why the common man would take a risk on America.
As late as 1790, 60% of the population of the United States, including black slaves,
were English or Scottish descendants. The great wave of German immigration began
in the 1830s and extended to great grandfather John Degenfelder around 1860
(naturalized in 1864).

Napoleon Bonaparte was the Man of Destiny to many Frenchmen, the most brilliant
ruler in their country's long history. To most other Europeans, Napoleon was the
warring Man on Horseback. He was the enemy of national independence; the foreigner
who imposed French control and French reforms. As French conquests accumulated,
and as nominally free countries became French puppets, Europe grew to hate the
insatiable imperialism of Napoleon. Napoleonic France succeeded in building a vast
empire, but only at the cost of arousing the implacable enmity of the other European
nations.

By 1800 the second coalition against France had disintegrated. The third coalition
combined all of the other powers against France. In 1805-1807, Napoleon routed
Austria, Prussia, and Russia at large battles at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, Auerstadt,
and Friedland. Under this latter-day Caesar almost all Europe could be divided into
three parts. First came the French Empire, including France proper and the territories
annexed since 1789. Second were the satellites, ruled in many cases by the relatives
of Napoleon. Third came Austria, Prussia, and Russia, forced by defeat to become the
allies of France.

In this period, Austria was considered the "first Germany", and Prussia was
the "second Germany". In 1803 the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss ("chief decree of
the imperial deputation") abolished more than a hundred of the Germanic citystates
and small ecclesiastical principalities. The chief beneficiaries of this readjustment
were the south German states of Bavaria, Wurttemberg, and Baden, which Napoleon
intended to form into a "third Germany", dominated by France. In central Europe
Napoleon decreed a further reduction in the number of German

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States. In 1806 he finished the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, limiting the
reigning Hapsburg to emperor of Austria. To replace the vanished empire, Napoleon
created the Confederation of the Rhine, which included almost every German state
except Austria and Prussia.

In 1848 liberalism and nationalism won initial victories and then collapsed in the face
of internal dissension and Austrian resistance. Drastic reform of the German
Confederation began in May 1848, when a constitutional convention held its first
session at Frankfurt, the capital of the Confederation. Its 830 members, popularly
elected through out Germany, represented the flower of the German intelligentsia -
18 doctors, 33 clergymen, 49 university professors, 57 schoolteachers, 223 lawyers
and judges. While some 140 deputies were businessman, there was only one dirt
farmer, and not a single laboring man. The Frankfurt Assembly lacked a broad popular
base, and many of its members lacked political experience.

The Frankfurt constitution died aborning. The Assembly elected the King of Prussia to
be its emperor, but Frederick William IV, alarmed by Austrian opposition, ignored his
promises of March 1848 and rejected the offer. German liberalism had suffered a major
defeat. After the initial shock of the revolutions, the professional and business classes
began to fear the radicalism of the workers and artisans. The German princes soon
either revoked or abridged the constitutions that they had granted in 1848.

Germany emerged as a great continental power only after 1850, although millions of
Germans had lived in Europe for a millennium. The Kingdom of Prussia had driven
German unification. Characteristic Prussian attitudes had overcome other German
ways of looking at society and had imposed themselves on nonPrussians. The
Prussian triumph was complete by 1871, and their militarism, authoritarianism and
social/cultural tone prevailed at the start of the 20th century, and soon the Great
War (now called World War I).

The first major question facing the statesmen of central Europe after the revolutions
of 1848 was whether Prussia or Austria would dominate the German Confederation.
Germany was a creation of the post-Napoleonic Congress of Vienna of 1814, and
after being split by the upheaval in 1848, needed to be rebuilt. The "Big German"
solution called for federation with Austria; the "Little German" solution called for
separation from Austria, or even from South Germany. The "Little German" program
meant Prussian domination of the non-Austrian states, and therefor became the
goal of Chancellor Otto Von Bismark.

The period after 1848 opened with a defeat for a Prussian "Little German" solution.
King Frederick William IV, who had refused to accept the imperial crown "from the
gutter" when it was offered by the Frankfurt Assembly, still cherished the hope that
the German princes might offer it to him. He formed

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the Erfurt Union of Princes to pool military resources, with the underlying aim being
Prussian political dominance. The Austrians managed to bring Russian pressure to
bear on Prussia. The Russian Czar opposed the unification of the Germans, no
matter under whose auspices. In November 1850, the Prussians renounced the
Erfurt Union and agreed to the revival of the Confederation.

Both the constitutional and economic foundation of future Prussian development were
laid during the 1850's. The Prussian Constitution of 1850, which lasted to the end of
World War I, provided for a bicameral legislature: a hereditary upper house including
the nobles and royal appointees, and an elected lower house. But the method of
electing this lower house made it certain that the popular will would be frustrated.
Electors were divided into three classes, according to the amount of taxes they
paid. The 4% of the electorate who paid high taxes selected one-third of the
representatives. The 14% of middle taxpayers selected another third, and the
remaining 82% of low taxpayers selected the last third. The preponderant power
of the wealth is clear, a residue of the Junkers landowners who supported Prussia's
rise to power.

Even so, the lower house had very little to do beyond the budget. Policy questions
were decided in the upper house, or still more often by the King and his personal
circle of military and political advisors. The King appointed his ministers, could
veto any bill he disapproved, and had a fixed sum of money at his disposal for
expenses. He had a special "military cabinet" for army affairs that reported
neither to the ministers nor to the legislature. Practically, the King and the
Junkers ran Prussia. The absolute monarchy that characterized 18th century
France did not survive its 1789 revolution, while the new power Germany
ignored the system of democratic government across the Atlantic Ocean. Thus,
after Napoleon's exile in 1815, and after the failed revolutions of 1848, Germans
from areas formerly governed by local princes emigrated to America. They went
to eastern cities were the industrial revolution was taking place. Many kept in
contact with their European families, through World War I and the Depressions.
World War II broke most of these ties, and subsequent American prosperity
further dimmed immigrant memories of families in the new world for the old.

In the second quarter of the 19th century, there was widespread emigration
from the southern and western parts of Germany to the United States. Among
the reasons for leaving were overproduction, overpopulation, and unavailability
of land. It was also a time of prosperity in the U.S. Some of the Berus families
settled in North Collins, south of a German concentration in Buffalo, which
founded St Louis Church in 1833. Among these families were Nenno, Bodewein
(Boardway), Lallemand (Lawman), Bouille (Ballard), Vinter (Winter), Schmitt (Smith),
Gier, Demmerle and others. The German Catholic immigrants who settled in Langford,
part of the town of North Collins, named their church in 1851 at St. Martin's, probably
after St. Martin's in Berus.

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Alsace-Lorraine is the area bounded by the Rhine River on the west, by the general
line of the Moselle valley on the south running northwest, the Saar River on the north
running from Luxembourg through Saarbrucken, and then a line east the Kalrsruhe
on the Rhine. After the Thirty Years War and 700 years of German domination, Alsace
was cede to France by the Treaty of Westphalia. Lorraine became part of France in
1766. The French Revolution gave way to the rise of Napoleon, enabling France to
claim all German territory west of the Elbe River. Napoleonic imperialism aroused a
nationalistic reaction among the traditionally disunited Germans. Some of the excesses
of feudalism ended with the Edict of October 1807 by Baron Stein of the Rhineland, but
all authority still rested with the King and army. The north Lorraine area was ceded to
Prussia after Napoleon's final defeat in 1815. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870,
Germany annexed all of Alsace and about half of Lorraine.

In the late 1820's a general emigration from the still-feudal economy of Germany began
to the promise of individual opportunity in America. The earliest immigrant to America
was John Nenno, one of the founders of Langford, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1833.
To descendents born in the first half of the 20th century he was known as "the carpenter
from Lorraine". The Nenno family was from the village of Berus in Saarland, Germany.
Berus is located directly on the French border, a few miles southwest of the city of
Saarlouis. Berus was part of the one of the smaller German states that comprised
the Holy Roman Empire until seized by Louis XIV of France in 1680. In 1815 the
Treaty of Paris ending the Napoleonic Wars ceded the area to Prussia.

John Nenno is said to have left his home in 1828 to start for America, probably
influenced by economic forces and the location of Berus in an area of traditional
conflict between France and Germany. He and his wife, and the seven youngest
of his nine children, sailed from the port of Le Harve, France on the "Ange Gardien"
(Guardian Angel), and arrived in New York City on August 21, 1833. They lived in
South Buffalo for a few years before settling in Langford.

According to Erasmus Brigg's "History of the Original Town of Collins", John's Son,
Andrew (b. 1815), acquired 60 acres of land in Collins in 1838. John Nenno applied for
naturalization papers on June 10, 1837 and was naturalized on Oct. 6, 1842. His
signature is recorded as an X, indicating lack of schooling in Europe. The land
records in Erie County Town Hall show that John Nenno bought land in the Town
of Collins on March 31, 1851.

The second common German ancestor was Jacob Johnegen Sr. in 1837, as described
in the first part as a compilation of research by Ida Johengen Wells.

Prepared July 14, 2000
Joseph R. Degenfelder cc: Ida Wells, Lin Benzin, Thomas Wheeler, Donald Gentner, Kathryn Hamburger