About us
On 8 September 1816 in the village of Kattenvenne in Kreis Steinfurt, a son was born to Eberhard (Everd) Conrad Altevogt (1793-1866) and his wife Anna Maria Sophia Caroline Hassmann (1794-1864). On 22 September, the boy was baptized Friedrich Wilhelm Altevogt at the parish church in Lienen, the nearest sizable town. Friedrich Wilhelm was the eldest child of Eberhard Conrad and Anna Maria Sophia, who had only been married the previous year; he had at least seven younger siblings, at least one of whom (Hermann Friedrich Altevogt) later emigrated to America, where he and his wife settled in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Eberhard Conrad Altevogt was a colonus, a farmer who had inherited the right to farm a particular piece of land although he did not own that land himself. His farm was listed as "Altevogts-Stätte" (Altevogt's Place) on his marriage record, and it had already been farmed by several earlier generations of Altevogts. While coloni like Eberhard did not own their farms, they could pass on the rights to the land to their sons. If there were no sons, the land could be inherited through a son-in-law who married the heiress of the old colonus. In the part of Germany where the Altevogts lived, a man who married into a farm typically took his wife's name upon marriage, since the name was attached to the farm itself rather than to any particular male line of descent. Eberhard's father had become the colonus in this way: he was born Everd Cord (Eberhard Conrad) Lückener (1747-1799), but took the name Altevoigt or Altevogt (both spellings are found) when he married Anna Catharina Gertraud (Gerdruth) Altevoigt (1753-1823), the daughter of colonus Wilhelm Bernhart (Berendt, Berend) Altevoigt (1719-1800).
By the 1840s, Friedrich Wilhelm Altevogt had emigrated to America along with countless other young people who left the towns and villages of Kreis Steinfurt to seek their fortunes abroad. In Philadelphia, he became a naturalized US citizen in 1856 under the name "F. William Altevogt," although he seems generally to have preferred to use the form "William F. Altevogt" instead. (In Germany in the early 1800s, many children received a first name in honor of a saint or godparent, but were usually called by their middle name; when Germans emigrated to America, many reversed the order of their given names to put their middle name first.) He and his wife Mary C. Altevogt (maiden name unknown) settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they had four children:
- Herman F. Altevogt, b. 27 February 1845, d. 23 July 1882
- Friedrich Wilhelm Altevogt, b. 3 November 1846, d. 4 March 1847
- Johanna Catharina Altevogt, b. 28 September 1848, d. 26 January 1910
- Emma Helena Altevogt, b. 20 September 1851, d. 12 October 1882
In addition, DNA evidence strongly suggests that William F. Altevogt was the biological father of another child:
- Sophia Maria Siecker, b. 29 October 1848, d. 22 April 1927.
Sophia's mother was Louise Catharine Boberg (known in America as "Catherine Louise Boberg") (1822-1866), who was married to Jurgen Henrich (George Henry) Siecker (also spelled Sieker) (1814-1892). Catherine and Henry Siecker had six other children besides Sophia, but as of yet there is no DNA evidence connecting any of their descendants to the Altevogt family.
The Altevogts (both William and Mary) were Lutherans from Kreis Steinfurt in the Kingdom of Prussia, while the Sieckers were Catholics from Osnabrück in the Kingdom of Hanover. However, their birthplaces were only about 23 km (14 miles) apart on opposite sides of the border between Prussia and Hanover, and they likely would have spoken the same dialect of German. At the time Sophia was born, the Altevogts and
Sieckers were both living in the same neighborhood in Philadelphia,
where both William F. Altevogt and George Henry Siecker were employed as
sugar refiners.
This research group was founded by a team of genealogical researchers who are descended from the three daughters of William F. Altevogt:
- Johanna Altevogt, who remained in the Philadelphia area and married John S. Coin;
- Sophia Siecker, whose family moved to St. Marys, Pennsylvania in the 1850s, and married George Fritz; and
- Emma Altevogt, who moved to San Francisco with her husband Louis Napoleon David.
(Herman Altevogt, William's only son who survived to adulthood, has no surviving descendants that we know of.)
It is our hope to discover more about our ancestors' lives and origins, as well as to map the connections between our families and other families from Kreis Steinfurt and its environs: both those who emigrated and those who remained in Germany. We also hope to forge connections between the three lineages founded by Johanna, Sophia, and Emma, whose hundreds of descendants are now spread across the North American continent from British Columbia to New Jersey.