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Georg Ludewig Wesemann and Justine Marie Küster, 1803 to 1855

The second miller and his family

Georg Ludewig Wesemann was born at Linse on 23 June 1777 and baptized on the 26th as “George Ludewig,” son of Johann Heinrich Wesemann and Christine Kampen. His own death entry, seventy-eight years later, gives his birth as 23 June 1777, which matches the baptism to the day and joins the two generations. Four later entries name him as a father: his son Heinrich Christian Ludewig’s marriage in 1832, his daughter Dorothea Luise’s marriage in 1846, and the deaths of his unmarried daughter Carolina Ernestine Luise in 1858 and his unmarried son Heinrich Wilhelm in 1861. As a young man he was possibly the “Ludewig Wesemann” who was godfather at Linse on 30 November 1794 to a daughter of the tailor Ludewig Meier, aged 17 then.

He took over the middle mill within two years of his father’s death. In 1803, on the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity, probably 30 October, the Halle register noted his marriage as “the bachelor Ludewig Wesemann, master miller at Linse,” to “Miss Justine Marie Küster, lawful daughter of Johann Ludwig Küster, former master miller at Delligsen”. The banns were read once at Halle and twice at Delligsen, the bride’s parish, where the wedding was held; the Halle entry does not give the wedding day.

He held the middle mill on hereditary rent through the 1830s. When the French ruled the district as part of the Kingdom of Westphalia, the valuation of the commune of Linse of 6 December 1811 entered “Ludwig Wesemann” as a smallholder (Brinksitzer), house number 20 in the fire insurance, with one water mill of two runs and a garden of 1 Morgen 40 Ruthen. Beside him Heinrich Brünig had a grinding run and an oil run, and the widow Lüders at Thran a mill of three runs. The land-tax roll of 1812 gave him 2 Morgen 70 Ruthen of farmland, the garden, and “1 mill with 2 runs,” valued at a yield of 75.09 francs and taxed 15.02 francs; the whole commune paid 1,025.34 francs. The registers call him the miller at Linse in entry after entry. He was probably the “Ludewig Wisemann, Linse” who was a godfather at Halle on 8 August 1810 at the baptism of a daughter of the full farmer Christoph Hardestmark[?]. From 1832 the clerks call him a machine-miller (Maschinenmüller), a title explained in the The German Mills section.

Justine Marie Küster was born about 1780 to 1782 in or near Delligsen, a Brunswick village. Her ages in the registers give a birth year rather than a date: she was 25 in December 1805, 27 in August 1808, 32 in June 1814 and 38 in 1817. Her forenames are also written Marie Justine, and once Anna Marie.

Justine Marie was probably the “wife of the miller Wesemann, of Linse” who was a godmother on 20 November 1813 to a daughter of Johann Heinrich Brünig of Linse. She died at Linse on 9 June 1835, in the evening, of consumption (Auszehrung), aged about fifty, and was buried quietly.

Georg Ludewig and Justine Marie had nine children at Linse. The Halle register holds the baptisms to 1814, and Linse’s own book those from 1815.

The first son lived only three months. On 25 December 1804 the clerk wrote that “a son of the middle miller Ludewig Wesemann died of lockjaw(?), aged 3 months”. He was almost certainly Johann Heinrich Conrad, baptized on 27 October, more than a month after his birth, with “the miller Küster” of Delligsen and “the widow Wesemann, of Linse” among his godparents. The burial is the earliest record to call Georg Ludewig the middle miller.

The second son, Heinrich Christian Ludewig, was George’s father; his life is told below.

Heinrich Wilhelm’s godparents in 1808 were Heinrich Christoph Brand and Ludewig Brünig, both of Bodenwerder. He was probably the “Wilhelm Wesemann, journeyman miller from Linse,” who stood godfather to his brother’s daughter at Kirchbrak in 1840. He never married, and he died at Linse.

Ernst Ludewig Georg’s baptism in 1811 brought godparents from both sides: “N. Pagendarm of Grünan(?)” and his uncle Ernst Wesemann of Bodenwerder. “Grünan” is almost certainly Grünenplan, a Brunswick mirror-glass works settlement founded in 1744, today one of six districts of Delligsen, about 25 kilometers from Linse near the mother’s home district. Under the French, Grünenplan lay in the canton of Delligsen and Linse in the canton of Halle, both in the Kingdom of Westphalia, so no border then lay between them. The godparents from outside Linse probably came from the mother’s side, from Grünenplan, and from Bodenwerder. A son of the couple died at Linse on 4 December 1815 at nine in the evening, aged “four [and a half(?)],” his forenames written Heinrich Georg Ludewig. He was probably Ernst Ludewig Georg: two of the three forenames match, and the only other son near that age was eighteen months old.

Georg Heinrich Ernst, born in 1814, had as godparents Heinrich Christoph Küster of Delligsen; Georg Ludewig Süders(?), a miller entered as Zimmer-Müller; his uncle Ernst Wesemann of Bodenwerder, standing for this couple for the second time; and Justine Wienig(?) of Bevern(?). He appears nowhere in the later records as an adult.

Dorothea Luise Friederike was baptized on 9 March 1817 at Halle as “Justine Louise Friederike”. Her godparents were the master miller Anton(?) Friedrich Halbrodt of the Linse upper mill; Christian Hasenjäger(?), master miller at Bergfelden(?); her aunt Caroline Louise, widow of the tanner Brand of Bodenwerder; and Amalie Lüders, born Küster. She was the “Dorothea Waßmann, machine-miller’s daughter” who was a godmother at Linse about 1835 or 1836. Her later life is told under “The Family Left Behind.”

Carolina Ernestine Luise was almost certainly the “Carolina Louisa” baptized in 1819 or 1820. Christiane Friederike Minna was known all her life as Luise. She was the “Luise Waßemann, machine-miller’s daughter,” who stood godmother at Linse in 1838 beside Wilhelmine Halbrodt, and the “Miss Luisa Wasmann from Linse” of 1847 and 1848, still unmarried.

A few more of the household appear only as godparents. A Wilhelm, “machine-miller’s son,” stood in 1832 and was an innkeeper at Lüerspring[?] in 1834. Friedrich Ludwig, styled only “machine-miller’s son,” with no surname, stood at a Halle baptism of 19 December 1838; a clerk who named a man by his father’s trade alone implies one machine-milling household in the parish. A “Louisa, born Wesemann,” godmother in 1819 or 1820, was a married daughter of the house of the generation before that child. The “Wilhelm Wesemann, bachelor,” of Linse in 1823 was a grown man when Heinrich Wilhelm was fifteen, and was probably someone else. None of them can be placed.

Two wheels, and then none

The 1830s were the family’s strongest years at the mills. Georg Ludewig held the middle mill on hereditary rent, and from 1832 his son Heinrich Christian Ludewig held the lease of the Thran mill below it: two of the three wheels on the lower Lenne in one family. Georg Ludewig, “master miller Ludewig Wesemann of Linse,” went to Kemnade in February 1836 to stand godfather to his grandson Wilhelm Christian Ludewig.

Behind the mills, though, the family carried debts. In 1814 Ludewig Wesemann bought land in the Bodenwerder fields from the baker Weferling for 174 Reichsthaler and never paid for it. In 1822 he mortgaged fourteen parcels, that one among them, for a loan of 700 Reichsthaler from the guardian of the minor children of the merchant Grave, and in 1838 the Bodenwerder town council treated him as a party to a concealed sale. By 1828 the 2,000-thaler price of his brother’s Bodenwerder mill had turned into a standing debt, with a forced sale under discussion. In 1831 the Schomburg heirs of Hameln sued “the miller Wesemann of Linse” for interest on a debt older than the suit. None of these records gives a reason for what followed. Together they fit a household under financial strain in the twenty years before it lost both wheels; that they caused the loss is only a theory.

The losses came fast. The household was still at Thran in July 1838, but by September 1840 Heinrich Christian Ludewig was leasing a mill at Kirchbrak, eleven kilometers upriver. On 7 February 1841 Wilhelm Fischer, entered as master miller at Linse, had a daughter born there. The Wesemanns gave up the middle mill sometime between about 1840 and 1855, probably early in that span, and no record says to whom or why. Georg Ludewig was still a machine-miller at Linse in June 1846, when his daughter Dorothea married. By 1852 his son was a landless lodger at Linse.

Georg Ludewig Wesemann died at Linse at five in the morning on 29 December 1855, of a chest complaint (Brustschaden), and was buried quietly on 1 January 1856. The clerk wrote him as “formerly master miller of the middle mill at Linse”. Those words name the family’s mill and show that he no longer held it.