Bleeke Background

Jurgen Stürma describes a Heimatpfleger as a type local heritage custodian:

Since the 17th century there had been a school in Leteln, which was supported by the farmers' associations of Leteln and Aminghausen. Classes took place in various buildings in Leteln.

On one of the last village visits, the participants (members of the Heimatsverein?) were astonished to discover that even before 1686 there had been a schoolmaster and a school in Leteln. This is evident from the entries in the Frille church book.

The first of these schoolmasters was buried on 25 August 1686 at the age of about 50 years:

The location of the Leteln school remains unknown. From about 1703 onward the Bleeke (or Bleke as it often appears in the church register) "schoolmaster dynasty" provided the teachers for Leteln.

The Bleeke family came from Ilser Heide (Ilserheide), as the pastor of Frille refers to it, and provided not only the teachers for Leteln, but also some of the Frille teachers or schoolmasters and sextons.

The relationship between these families remains unclear for the time being, as the relevant data from the church records have not yet been evaluated. Since many of the birth dates cannot be found in the Frille church register, one must assume that some of the Leteln school masters Bleeke were not always father and son.

Up to 1800, nine Leteln schoolmasters are mentioned in the Frille church records.

We do not know when the Leteln School was established and where it was located at that time. However, since the time of the Bleeke family, the school has most likely been located in house no. 13, because it can be assumed that the school was located in the house of the schoolmaster. House No. 13 was also known as the Bleeke[German: Bleeken] House. When the last schoolmaster died, he bequeathed his property to a relative who ran a farm at No. 13. So the school must have been somewhere else from that time on at the latest. The assumption is that it was located on the later site 24 (Korte, now Lindenhof) and perhaps it was established there earlier. During renovation work a gate beam was found, the inscription of which refers to the use of the building: "Where youth are educated well, much good things are certainly done—M. Joh, Hinrich Ernsting 1762". It hasn’t been nresolved whether the gate beam came into the building later, or whether the school was actually moved to house no. 24 on the village square as early as 1762. What is certain is that the house belonged to the municipality in 1829.

Under teacher Wehmeier the school was moved to the site No. 19, which was at the time where the last Leteln school was located (Large Drift Trift 50/52). The municipality bought the residential house of the farm No. 19 (Rösener). The family had originally owned farm No. 6, but had had to sell it due to economic difficulties. The new farm no. 19 was also sold and the family emigrated to America in 1841. The free house number was given to another farm (Niehüsers), as the school was tax-free and therefore did not require a house or tax number. In the house of the former farm not only the school took place, but also the teacher and his family lived here. It is not known in which rooms the school class was housed. The only thing that can be determined from the photos is that the chamber compartment was obviously rebuilt, as the roof protruded over the two-column truss of the floorboard end.

Rosteck was very musical and also brought a violin. It is said that the Letelners said, "Then we could have kept the other one!" August Rosteck died on November 19, 1899, and lived for the last time in the "Noll-Villa" in front of the canal underpass, which of course did not exist at that time, since the canal was built later. In the Frille church book, it is expressly noted: " N.B. he was a faithful teacher in the villages of Leteln and Aminghausen for over 40 years, lived on the banks of the Kohlenufer, only temporarily in Aminghausen.”

As is already known, the Bleeke family, who came from Ilserheide, provided the Leteln schoolmasters for many decades. With the death of Carl Friedrich Bleeke on January 1, 1800, the time of the Bleeken schoolmasters ended. The family continued to live in Leteln and ran a farm on farm number 13, which was therefore nicknamed “Bleeken” and later also moved to farm number 16. In 1834 the Bleekes emigrated to America.

In 1977 Pastor Lohmann received a letter from Mrs. Sue Bleeke of Decatur, Indiana, U.S., asking him to do research on her husband’s, Don Bleeke’s, ancestors. Since such a task requires a lot of time, my neighbors and I offered to take on this task. Until 1902 Leteln belonged to the Frille Church. So we had to search there.

In 1648 the Thirty Years War was over. When peace and order had returned, the pastors in the parishes started again to record births, marriages and deaths in a big book. Everything that had been there before was destroyed where the soldiers had gone through. In Frille, the first book begins in 1662. When we found the first Bleeke, it was a big surprise to me that house number 13 was there. That was our house number! So the Bleeken had had our house.

The first entry was: Hans Heinrich Bleeke, schoolmaster in Leteln. In 1703 he married Ilse Margarethe Deerberg from Leteln. That was the blacksmith shop, where "Im Gang No. 9" is now. Since there were only a few houses in the village of Leteln, we can assume that she was the daughter of the blacksmith Deerberg. The school was probably already in number 13 back then. The Bleeken must have been bright. They weren’t just schoolmasters (they didn’t say teachers back then) in Leteln. We found the name in Frille (45 years schoolmaster), Lahde and Ilserheide. In Leteln, the position was always passed down from father to son. The last Bleeken schoolmaster died on January 1, 1800. He probably had no children and took the heir from Ilserheide. This was Christian Bleeke. He married Anne Margarethe Volkening from Leteln No. 2. He was born in 1753 and had three sons. Karl married a Niemann from Todtenhausen, Phillip a Schwier from Wietersheim and Friedrich a Krückeberg from Berenbusch. In 1834 Phillip went to America, and one year later his wife and six children also, three boys and three girls. The youngest was born in 1833. Later the two brothers and one Krückeberg also went to America.

The individual mentioned at the beginning, Don Bleeke, is a descendant of Phillip Bleeke(that is: Johann Heinrich Phillip Bleeke). He founded the Lutheran Immanuel Church and School in Decatur in 1849. The commemorative publication from Decatur for the 125th anniversary in 1974 was sent to me by Sue Bleeke. In 1986 Louis Bleeke visited us with his wife Dolores. He too is a descendant of Phillip Bleeke. For him it was an exciting to stand on the ground that his ancestors had worked.

The garden is still the same size and the long hedge is most likely still planted by the Bleekes. When my grandfather bought the property in 1883, the hedge was already old. Unfortunately the old house was no longer standing. It had burned down in 1894. I then showed him Rommelmann’s house, because this is what the old Bleeke’s house might have looked like; it was built in 1772. These Bleekes have become one big family. As Louis told me, there is a family reunion every two years. About 200 people gather there. They have no connection with the descendants of the other two Bleeke brothers. I still have contact by letter with Louis, he still speaks and writes German. In 1989 a Krückeberg visited me, descendants of the Krückebergs from Berenbusch. He also spoke German.

Louis had already written to the mayor of Minden in 1970 and asked for research. He had given the letter to the registry office, and they sent it to Frille. He did not get an answer. We found the letter in the church register in Frille.

About the Bleekes in the United States. The Bleeke family from Leteln emigrated to America like many others. In the New World, new possibilities opened up. The Bleekes settled in Union, Adams County, Indiana about 5 years after emigration and were quite successful there. In 1974 the 125th anniversary of the church was celebrated in Decatur, Indiana. On this occasion a small commemorative publication was published, from which the following information is partly taken. The Bleeke family is also mentioned in "History of Adams and Wells County, Indiana".

The living conditions were more than modest for many rural inhabitants in Germany and many decided to emigrate in order to find a new livelihood and better living conditions for themselves and their families. We had already heard that the three sons of the Bleeke family and also a brother-in-law of the Bleeken brothers, a Krückeberg from Berenbusch, emigrated to the United States in 1834. They were Carl Friedrich Bleeke (*1794), Johann Heinrich Philp Bleeke (1797-1883) and Christian Friedrich (*1800), who was married to Luise Eleonore Krückeberg from Berenbusch No. 10. Before Phillip Bleeke came to Decatur, he settled with his family in Wheeling, where he lived until 1837. Then he went to Cincinnati. From there he undertook a journey in 1838 to find a new place to settle. Finally he came to Adams County, where he purchased land. In 1840 he returned to Cincinnati to get his family, who arrived on November 27 of the same year. The journey was more than very arduous. The roads were so muddy that the family was eventually forced to leave part of their household in New Bremen, Ohio. They eventually had to continue on foot and could only manage 5 miles a day at most.

At first they all lived in a tent, which they had built out of the tarpaulin of the wagon and a few strong wooden poles. During this time they built themselves a primitive log cabin. On the 24th day December they could finally move in. Only in 1852 they built the house, which still stands in its old place.

The road to the church was 5 miles long, which the Bleekes always had to walk. Finally, from 1849 on, the Bleekes' house was regularly used for devotions and sermons by Pastor Fritze. This is how the Evangelical Lutheran Immanuel Church was founded

The community was initially very small. With the bride of Christian Bleeke there were only eight people. In the course of the next years other settlers joined the community: Johann Krückeberg with his wife and three daughters and Heinrich Wilhelm Weyland with his wife, son and daughter. It is obvious that the families still knew each other from their old homeland. Other families soon joined them: Grote (1852), Reinking (1853), Thieme (1855), Krückeberg, Schamerloh, Koldewey, Höriger, Rücklos (all before 1858) In 1865 a school was established, in which 18 children were first taught.

In the history of Adams County written 1889, it says about Frederick William Blakey (Friedrich Wilhelm Bleeke), the son of Johann Heinrich Philip Bleeke, he was born in Prussia in 1825 and came to America with his parents at the age of 10 years. In 1854 he married Mary Bevelheimer from Pennsylvania. In 1889 there were still 9 children from this marriage. He owned a total of 480 acres of land, that is about 192 hectares or about 768 acres. The brothers Friedrich and Christian lived in the same house until 1870. In 1850, they founded a potash factory. The hardwood resulting from the cultivation of the land was burned to ashes, from which potash and other products were then made. The company was named John II. Blakey. The ash products were also used in the production of ceramics and the Bleeke brothers (Blaeky) very successfully entered the ceramic production in 1880. The Bleekes were the second settler family in the Uniuon Township.

Christian Bleeke owned 400 acres in 1889, about 160 hectares or 640 acres. Christian married Louise Fahlsing and after her early death Mary A. Rupp. He had 3 children from his first marriage and 10 from the second.

One has to keep in mind the enormous changes the emigrant families went through. They came from an old half-timbered house with a small farm in Leteln and became wealthy farmers and entrepreneurs in America. Who had a farm of 640 acres in Leteln?