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Hunting for the Nipkows - Part 1

I thought it might be fun, and perhaps a bit risky, to go through the steps I take in researching a family. I don't know where this will lead, if anywhere, at this point. But to be honest, I did uncover a good hint the other day while researching on Ancestry, so that gives me a decent place to start.

 The family that I am talking about is that of my great grandmother, Augusta Emilie Nipkow, who married Henry William Mesenbrink.
Henry William and Augusta Emilie Nipkow Mesenbrink
Married September 20, 1882
Henry and Augusta were married in the Lutheran Church near Spragueville, Iowa, near the Mississippi River in Jackson county. Their families had moved there in the recent past, Henry's family having come from Minnesota to rejoin his brothers by 1869, and Augusta's family having come from Germany in 1872. Augusta taught Sunday School and apparently had strong Lutheran roots. This is important to me because of the part of Germany that Augusta came from. Her obituary states that she was born in Butow, Pommern, Germany. Most of Pommern, or Pomerania, is now part of Poland, since World War 2, and is predominantly Catholic. And the language changed from German to Polish, along with the placenames. A google search finds a webpage http://prussianpoland.com/buetow.html which shows pictures of Butow/Buetow/Bytow, the latter being the Polish spelling without the accent on the 'o'.

There is another Buetow, this one in Germany, specifically in extreme eastern Germany in what was Vorpommern. So, we have two Buetows in Pomerania, one now in Germany, and one now in Poland. The two towns are 300 miles apart. So we need a bit more to go on.

Here is where I found a helpful record on Ancestry. A record of Augusta's immigration with her family is found in the Pomerania passenger lists.
They left from Stettin/Szczecin on May 2, 1872. They came from a place called Hohengrape near Frankfurt an der Oder (not the Frankfurt, Germany you think of). In Polish, Hohengrape is known as Chrapowo. So, the first leg of the Nipkows' journey was the 50 miles northwest from Hohengrape to Stettin. Augusta was just seven or eight years old when they started to America. If she was born in Butow, as her obituary states, it might have been the one 150 miles to the west, in present-day Germany or the one 160 miles east in present-day Poland. Neither one makes a lot of sense at this point. So, perhaps its time to look at what is known about Augusta's parents.

Augusta's parents were Fredrich Nipkow and Wilhelmina Huebner. They are both said to have been born in Stettin. Perhaps they were, in fact, born in the city of Stettin, or perhaps they just claimed that, rather than mention a small village that few would be familiar with.  In any case, the Stettin area is a long way from the two Butows we've found so far.

Searching Google again, this time for Bytow, I found a town called Bytowo which is in fact spelled Butow in German according to Wikipedia. It's close in location to Hohengrape/Chrapowo, just 35 miles to the northeast, and close to Stettin as well. I think this is close enough to Hohengrape and Stettin to be the right Butow, and is likely to be the place where Augusta was born. If there are records to be found, it will be worth a look in my opinion, especially since we already have Augusta's birthdate and parents.

More later...

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