The Kunkel Family
The Baron Kunckel above is the
first known Kunkel. . . which is the way it is
spelled today. However the
English speaking immigration officers and enumerators etc
spelled it the way it sounded
to them when the Kunkels said it in German. So they were
known as Gunckel, Cunkle,
Kunckel,Kunckle, Kunkle, Konkel and Konkle! This is why
researching is a nightmare.
The New Dictionary of American Family Names - by Elsdon Smith published by
Harper and Row, 1973) - says
the name “Kunkel” means dweller at or by deep water.
More research indicates the
name Kunkel was derived from the Old High German name
Kuhn meaning “wise”; (in this
case such a compliment makes it acceptable)
Another, more down to earth
definition is occupational in origin - traced to the art
of “kunkelmachen: The
manufacture of distaffs - that part of a spinning wheel which
holds the wool or flax.” Not
only does the name mean “distaff or spindle” but to this day
the Pennsylvania “Dutch” have
a special room in their homes for spinning. Its called the
“Kunkelstube.”
No one knows if the early
Kunkels were spinners or manufactured distaffs. They
seemed to have been living
mostly in the Spessart Region of Central Germany, to the east
of Frankfurt, which was noted
for the making of fine glass. Baron Kunckel von
Lowenstern was a most definite
example. The earliest written record was
“1356" for “Dythart
Kunkele.” He was shown living in Giessen County, State of Hessen
in the district of Darmstadt.
Records were to sparse to determine descendancy.
Here is an inscription found
on an old sword.....“Mein Ehre he isst Truere”, “My
honour is called Loyalty.”
That sword surely didn’t belong to Dorothy’s brother Johann
Evangelist Kunkel as you will see
.....
Here is the story of the
Kunkel ( Kungl) family our great-great-great-grandparents
Andreas asnd Elizabethand
their sons and daughters coming to Canada in 1847. By this
time in history “emigration
fever” had a big grip on Germany. The Canada Company was
offering land with no down
payment, by Location Ticket, actually squatter’s rights with
certain rules. The German
farmers reading the advertisements and hearing the glowing
stories from other friends and
family, who were already settled here in the Queen’s Bush,
felt it was the answer to
their problems. The following will explain their biggest problem
and why North America looked
real good at that moment!
This Kunkel family history
begins in Beir, Bavaria. Bavarians were noted for
wanting to keep their
independence, so an incident in the spring of 1847 between the
young son of Andreus Kunkel
and an officer in the Prussian Army was the turning point.
For years there had been
hostility between the general population and the army. Young
Johann Evangelist Kunkel
objected to the forced induction and ended up in a sword fight
with an army officer. The
officer died from his wounds and this motivated almost the
entire family to leave in a
hurry, fleeing for their lives. They decided to leave on different
boats and then meet up at the
Port of New York, USA and head to Canada.
Johann Evangelist Kunkel (b.
1819) left on 24 May 1847 on the ship John George
and his brother Johann Baptist
(b.1809 ) got out sooner, he left on 18 May 1847 on the
ship Maria Loiusa, he said he
was born in Holland. Probably he did not want to be
considered family of his kid
brother Johann Evangelist!
Dorothea, my g-g-grandmother
left on 22 May 1847 on the ship Meta. Her
mother, Elizabeth (Sauer)
Kunkel left on June 7th 1847.
Dorothy’s father Andreas left the
day after on the SS Banca out
of Rotterdam. You would think the women would have
liked to travel together with
at least one of the men in the family, but this way if one was
caught the rest of the family
was not!
A sister Magdelena and a
brother Andrew B. (b. 1823 ) came as well. Andrew
was married to Anna Maria
Laport and they had three children.
Two other sons William and
Frederich, may have had families of their own to
consider and chose to remain
behind. There is no information on William but Frederich
was born May 13 1827 in Heido
Schlhof, Prussia, and died April 25 1858. He had been
married to Anna Pieni.
Their mother Elizabeth Sauer
was born in Laufach, Germany October 27 1784.
She died 8 August 1847, in New
Germany ( Maryhill) and is one of the first deaths in the
records at Halter House in
Maryhill . She must have been in Canada only a very short
time as her boat had sailed on
7 June 1847, and so it would have been about 20 July 1847
when she landed in New York.
She must have just arrived in New Germany when she
died. She was 58 years old.
Would it be an illness she picked up on the journey? She was
not elderly by our standards
today. ( this was just shortly before Marie Anne, Jacob’s
wife died. Could there have
been some illness in the area?)
Their father Andreas was born
3 March 1780 in Prussia, came in 1847 first to
Maryhill area and later lived
in Formosa area with his son John B.and his wife and their
children as well as a servant
girl Margaret Hester. John B. was married to Barbara Berger
and they had two children,
Andreas and Thandea. John B. died Aug 12 1891.
The 1860 Census showed Andreas
Sr died when he was living with Dorothy and
Jacob Druar. Andreas is buried
in St Clements and I have a copy from the church records
further along.
I was most fortunate to get
this information from descendants of three of
Dorothy’s brothers, John E.
Kunkel’s g-g-grandson Gerard Kunkel whose wife Audrey
nee Weiler helped me on the
net. Dorothy’s other brother - John B. Kunkel’s g-ggrandson,
Larry Martin and Andrew S
Kunkel’s g-g-grandson John Schaefer who’s wife
Terry is descended from John
B.Kunkel sends me lots of interesting information from
Mildmay. So all of us have the
same g-g-g-grandparents----Andreas Kunkel and
Elizabeth Sauer.
Dorothy Kunkel was born on 19th of February 1813, in
Erlenbach, Obernburg,
Bavaria. She was number four
in a family of seven children born to Elizabeth Sauer and
Andreas Kunkel;
#1 Joseph
#2 Johann Baptist
#3 Johann Evangelist
#4 Dorothy
#5Andreas
#6 Magdelena.
#7 Georg