12.  THE CARL FAMILY IN GERMANY

Now we'll go on to the German state of Schleswig-Holstein where our Grandma Bertha L. CARL was born.

Schleswig-Holstein is also in Northern Germany bordering Mecklenburg's western border and Denmark's southern border, as well as the North Sea on the west and the Baltic Sea on the east.  Schleswig-Holstein's northern area is part of the Jutland Peninsula on which all of Denmark sits.  Much of Schleswig-Holstein was a lowland used mainly for farming.

Several generations of the CARLs lived within or near the Eiderstedt Peninsula.  Jacob Stamm Carl was born February 11, 1839, and baptised on April 6, 1839 in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Witzwort near the Eiderstedt.  He was given the exact same name as his father who was born in Kreis (like a county in US) Eiderstedt in about 1798. Little Jacob's mother was Maria Lucia Bundies who was born about 1812 in Tating on the Eiderstedt and who died April 12, 1842, when our great-grandfather was just three years old.

About 1866 at age 27, Jacob Stamm CARL II, the son, married Anna Elisabeth Katrine Albers, daughter of Claus Alberts and Anna Elisabeth Dorothy Hanssen.  As a day laborer, he may have worked on other family farms.     

They had five children by 1876 born in the Witzwort area of the Eiderstedt Peninsula.  Margaret Elisabeth Carl was born on September 13, 1867; George Christian Carl was born on October 24, 1869; Maria Magdalena Dorothea (Marie) Carl was born on March 11, 1872; Anna Friedrica Magdalena (Magda) Carl was born Septermber 29, 1873; and Adolph Stamp Carl was born February 6, 1876.

Somehow, our great-grandpa, Jacob Carl, had saved up enough money to buy a large, thatch-roofed, brick house that included Jacob's blacksmith shop at one end.  This house was located on the island of Nordstrand, which is very close to the mainland at Husum.  It is accessed now by a driveable mile-long and high causeway connecting to the German mainland.  On this island, Bertha Catharina Lucie  was born on October 18, 1878.  Two years later on September 9. 1880, our Great-aunt Emma Sophie Wilhelmine Carl was born.  Both girls were baptised in the Evangelisch Lutheran Church on Nordstrand.  

(In 1985 when Larry Woodwick and I made a trip to Germany, we visited with the current owner and resident who was the third generation of the buyers of the Carl home, now run as a guest house.  Had we known that ahead of time, we would have stayed in Grandma's birth home!)

Nordstrand was part of a much larger peninsula called Strand.  However, a disastrous storm tide tore the peninsula apart and washed away one-half of the land in 1634.  That created smaller islands such as Nordstrand and Pellworm, over 200 years before the Carls moved there.  A total of 6,123 people drowned, and 1,339 farms and houses were washed away, as were twenty-eight windmills and six clock towers.  The estimated loss of livestock was 50,000.  Nowadays, homes and farm buildings are built on mounds of earth to provide some protection in the event of a break in the dyke during a storm. 

Reminiscing about Germany while in the US, Grandma composed a lovely song about her childhood where she played with her friends on the Leiderdyke with the sound of her blacksmith father's anvil nearby.