The Price of a New Beginning

Theodore Heines and Tecla Knipper, 1847

Theodore Heyens Baltjens and Tecla Knipper grew up in Neuscharrel, Lower Saxony, Germany. The village's history dates back to a significant event on August 26, 1821, when the original village of Scharrel was destroyed by fire. Instead of rebuilding all the homes in the tightly packed village, which had contributed to the spread of the fire, they chose to create a new settlement on the Barenberg, which became known as Neuscharrel.

In the 1840s, this tight-knit farming community had several hundred residents, most of whom were Catholic. Theodore and Tecla likely knew each other. Both families grew up on farms. The Baltjens farm has since been combined with other farms and is now owned by the Schaad family. However, Tecla’s family farm still stands and is owned by the Knipper descendants. For some reason Tecla, born in 1821, is not listed in this document.

Dorf-und Familienchronik Neuscharrel by Rose Gutleben; Heimatverein Neuscharrel publisher 2003

There is also another Knipper farm in Neuscharrel which has been passed down from Tecla’s nephew, Heinrich Anton Knipper.

Theodore and Tecla were married on November 26, 1842, at St Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Scharrel. Heye Eilert Baltjens and Johann Knipper were witnesses to this blessed event. Who better to witness this joyful occasion than Theodore's brother Heye and Tecla’s brother Johann?

St Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Scharrel church record

The couple started their family with Regina Baltjens, born in 1843, but she died within seven months. Their second child, Eilert, was born in 1845.

In the spring of 1847, Theodore, his pregnant wife Tecla, and their two-year-old son Eilert left everything behind. From Neuscharrel, they journeyed north 85 kilometers to Bremen to board the Minna, a three-masted bark bound for New York with 135 passengers. It was Monday, April 27, 1847. While specific weather records from that time are scarce, general climate data suggests that Bremen typically experiences mild temperatures during this month, averaging around 48.6°F.

I can imagine Tecla steadying herself against the swells, one hand on her belly, the other holding tight to Eilert. The voyage stretched over six weeks across the Atlantic. The air grew thick with illness, salt, and hunger in the cramped steerage. The conditions on these ships were cramped, unsanitary, and poorly ventilated. They weren't the only family chasing hope—others from their region clung to the same fragile promise of a better life, some surely with the same hunger and fear. The voyage was challenging for the healthy, but Tecla was pregnant, which added more stress to the trip. It is unknown why they would leave at that time instead of waiting for the birth of their third child. However, passages on ships were booked months in advance, and sailing were infrequent and tightly scheduled. Tecla may have become pregnant after the plans were set.

Theodore was a plasterer, a skilled trade in high demand in a fast-growing city like Cincinnati. That's where German Catholics were gathering and where the future awaited. All of that must have seemed worth the risk, a risk taken in the hope of a better life.

They docked in New York on June 11. No Castle Garden yet—just chaos at the piers, immigrant runners shouting in broken German, offering lodgings, rail tickets, canal fares. Theodore shielded his family and held onto his pack, bargaining what little they had left for a passage inland, uncertain of the future.

More than likely, they took the Hudson River steamboat to Albany, then a narrow canal boat west along the Erie Canal to Buffalo. Days blurred as they drifted past locks and mill towns. From Buffalo, they boarded a steamer on Lake Erie to Toledo, and from there, another canal boat down the newly completed Miami and Erie Canal—250 winding miles to Cincinnati.

With a realistic travel time of 3 – 4 weeks, they would arrive at their final destination in late July or early August. On August 13, in a city barely known to them, Tecla gave birth to a daughter: Mariam Gertrudem Heins.

Theodore wrapped the newborn in swaddling cloth the following day and carried her to baptism. Now faint and ink-smeared, the record lists the witnesses: Bernard Kollmann and Bernard Lammers. Theodore may have known the men from their homeland. Bernard Lammers would later appear in the 1850 census, a thread still waiting to be woven into the story. Theodore stood still as the priest conducted the baptism, a husband and father for the third time, cradling the baby in his arms while Tecla waited back home.

Tecla died six days later. Whether from exhaustion, fever, or internal bleeding, the records do not say. She was buried in Saint Joseph Cemetery, no gravestone to mark her life.

Mariam disappears from the records after her baptism. No burial. No census. No marker. Perhaps she died within days and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave beside her mother. Or maybe she died with her mother, and they were buried together, arriving and leaving this life together.

Theodore stayed in Cincinnati. But it wouldn't be long before he met and married Margaretha Kaiser, who took on his child Eilert as her own. Together, they created a new family. He dropped Baltjens and became Theodore Heins, later changing to Heines.

While Tecla may not be my great-grandmother, sharing her story is essential so Eilert's descendants can appreciate her courage and understand her origins. Many of her relatives continue to reside in that charming village, keeping her legacy alive.

Thank you to Dirk Unterbrink who lives in Neuscharrel, and helped me find Tecla’s actual birthplace and sent me several farm pictures.