Kroening Birth Records in Naugard District
After years (and years, and years) of searching, I finally stumbled across the birth records for my 2nd great grandfather and his siblings in Germany before the family emigrated to the US in 1868. August Kroening and all but the youngest 2 of his siblings were born in Germany, Prussia, or Pommern depending on which record I looked at. I had been able to locate his mother, Frederike Wendorf, and her parents in Griefenberg, Pommern but had hit a brick wall in locating her marriage to Johann Kroening or the births of any of her children. Her father was in service to a military captain so the family moved around the country. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I had previously found the Hamburg passenger list for the family that listed “Wissmar” as the last place of residence for the family before their departure to the US. The birthplace for Bertha and Carl was reported at Wismar on some documents as well. The problem was knowing which Wissmar/Wismar was the right one.
My Kroening family DNA matches over the past several years kept pointing back to an area around Naugard and Regenwalde in Pommern. I had previously looked at the map searching for names of towns with vital records registers in that area and I noticed a small town called Wismar near Naugard. I had searched for Wismar before, but I was searching the Wismar that is located in Mecklenburg-Schwerin on the northern coast near a town called Wendorf (Frederike’s maiden name). I realized that I had tunnel vision and had been looking in the wrong county!
I decided to try to see if the books for Wismar near Naugard were available online and they were available through Archion! I logged in and found the books. I held my breath and started paging through. I began seeing a lot of familiar surnames as I paged through – Sell, Radke, Retzlaff, Wendorf. I was looking for Carl Kroening because he was the oldest child that listed Wismar as his place of birth. I looked through the pages starting the year before he was born and kept going without finding him. I was starting to become convinced that I was wrong again and then I found the entry for Wilhelmine Kroening’s birth. A few years later, the birth for Fred Kroening was also recorded.
It was a great find, but the registers were very sparse on information. They gave the parents’ names but there was no other information given as to the grandparents or where the parents were born. The only thing I could think to do was look at the sponsors and check the ones that were not from Wismar. One of Wilhelmine’s sponsors was from Farbezin and had the surname Wendorf, so I decided to start there.
The oldest 3 children, August, Bertha, and Carl were all recorded in Farbezin. There were no additional children found in either of the 2 record sets. Amazingly, the only difference in the birth dates and information between the registers in Pommern and the information that came from immigration and US records was that August’s birth year was actually 1852, not 1853.
Fred Kroening’s sponsors included several Retzlaffs from Wussow which did not have an available register. As you may recall, the Retzlaff family married into the Kroening family after immigrating to the US. August’s sponsors included his uncle Ernst Wendorf and others from Farbezin and Plantikow. Bertha’s sponsors were Carl Retzlaff from Wussow and Alwina Wendorf from Farbezin. Carl’s sponsors included a man from Schmelzdorf but there are no registers for that village available. Another of Carl’s sponsors was a Ramthun from Kniephof – another village with no books available.
The marriage of Johann Kroening and Frederike Wendorf was also recorded in Farbezin. Johann’s full name was recorded and seeing that solved an inconsistency in US records. Johann is listed with middle initial “K” on his headstone, but in the church records at St Paul’s he is listed as Johann “F”. Apparently the initials are referring separately to his middle names Carl (spelled with a “K”) and Freidrich.
I was hopeful that the marriage record for Johann and Frederike would give his parents’ names or where he was from. The entry said that Johann was “a servant from Plantikow”, but I did not find any Kroenings living there in the years before the marriage. I am guessing that Johann was living and working in Plantikow for a time prior to his marriage. Unfortunately neither of his parents were named but it does say that he had written permission from his father for the marriage so his father was still alive at that time.
The church records from St Paul’s in the town of Day near Rozellville, Wisconsin recorded John (Johann) Kroening’s place of birth as Heckenberg, Pommern, and the place was recorded as Hagenberg in the death record for son Ernst. There is a place called Höckenberg not far from Regenwalde, Maldewin, and Naugard in what is now Poland. This is the place that I am most suspicious of due to the close proximity to all the locations listed in the birth records of the Kroening children. There are currently no available books for Höckenberg or Maldewin.
As is the case when doing genealogy, one mystery solved leads to another mystery that needs solving. I am thrilled to finally have an actual place of birth for my ancestor and it does narrow the area that I need to search for Johann Kroening’s birth and parents. Now I wait and ponder how a girl from Griefenberg met a boy from Plantikow and got married in Farbezin. Hopefully someday the records from Höckenberg or Maldewin become available and a few more questions get answered.
* I have used the older German names for these locations. The modern Polish names are available in the links in the text above.
WitzEnd Family History 