The Land Auctions in Irsch in 1861

Meadowland in Irsch

The fields around Irsch

A wine hill

Kataster Map with Meier House

The morning of February 22, 1861 was a momentous one for me and for all of the present-day descendants of Johann Meier and Magdalena Rauls Meier.  That day determined our nationality for the next 150 years.

Although there had been an application to emigrate legally executed earlier in February, and although there would be an auction of farm and household items in March (as described in my post of February, 2012), the selling of the land a farmer owned was the day that the emigration decision was cast in stone. Now there was no turning back for Johann and Magdalena because at the end of the day they no longer had fields in Irsch to support their survival during the coming year. By the time the sun set on February 22, other farmers were in possession of their land and the very barnhouse that had been their home since their marriage on February 14, 1849.

It is amazing to me that,  in that small village of Irsch sometime during the first three months of 1861, the auctions of five families took place.  They would join Johann and Magdalena on the same ship that would sail from Le Havre about the beginning of April. It is obvious that a monumental division was continuing.  The buyers of all of these auctioned fields may have considered the idea of emigration but decided against it.  The farmers buying the Meier's land, which would mean a mortgage to be paid, were clinging to their homeland.  In spite of ever-lurking hardships, they were setting their roots more deeply into the soil of the only place most of them had ever known . They would be the ones to continue their way of life of the old country.  The sellers were uprooting themselves, determined to have a better life for their families, although it meant leaving everything and everyone they had ever known; a change of allegiance and of customs that were as yet unknown to them.

The Land Holdings of Johann and Magdalena Meier:

The auction of the land owned by Johann and Magdalena Meier began at 10 a.m. on the morning of February 22, 1861 and ended at 3 p.m. In was held on the premises belonging to Mathias Peter Britten. It is more than likely that this was the Peter Britten who is listed in the Catholic church registers as a farmer, ship-puller, and innkeeper and that the inn's taproom was the setting for the sale.   There were two witnesses, Theordor Ney who was a house painter/whitewasher in Beurig; and Johann Becker who was a field guard in Irsch.  The official in charge of the auction was again notary Waringer of the almost "unintelligible handwriting".

There were two classes of land to be sold--the land which the Meiers owned outright, and the land which was part of the Irsch Gehöferschaft. The Gehöferschaft holdings were either meadows or Lohhecken/oakbark hedgerows. Lohhecken, to the best of my understanding, came from (scrub?) oak trees growing in the wild, the bark of which could be stripped and then sold to the tanneries along the Saar river in Saarburg or Beurig.

The other pieces of land which Johann and Magdalena Meier offered for sale consisted of farmland where crops were sowed, cultivated and harvested; garden land which could be used by the family to grow the produce which would see them through the year; wildland; a wine hill for growing grapes; Wande (steep hillside) land; forest land; and a woodlot.

As I have explained in the post, "Village Roads and Fields", a farmer's fields might be miles from his barnhouse.  The possession of adjacent fields was uncommon in the Rhineland in the 19th century. Areas called "Flur" had descriptive names that identified the approximate location of each strip of land owned by a farmer in a particular section of the village. Ewald Meyer, in his history of the village of Irsch, says the names of the "Fluren" were usually related to landforms, names of local farms, woodlots, etc. That is, a farmer might have his clover planted in a land section called "By the Stone Cross" and his potatoes in a strip of land known as "Above the Trier Way." The auction bidders as well as the official conducting the auction would officially be accepting the land boundaries described in the Kataster, which was the land map and tax register document used by the Prussian Government to identify the owner and boundaries of each parcel of land and assign tax responsibility to each landowning resident.

The conditions read out for the sale of the land and building being auctioned were, in many ways, similar to those for the "moveable objects" as explained in my February post.  In addition, there were warnings that the buyer was getting the land as described in the Kataster register, regardless of any unknown errors in it. The land buyer would be responsible for one third of the purchase price of property, with interest, on November 11 of 1861, 1862, and 1863. The interest rate was five per cent yearly. However the taxes for the land would not become the responsibility of the new owner until January 1, 1862. There was also a penalty for late payment and provisions for default of payment. The new owner also had to pay the cost of recording the new ownership on the Government's land Kataster.  A few of the other conditions listed defeated both my ability to read German and the power of "Google Translate."  All of the conditions were read aloud before the actual auction started.

The Land Auction Begins:

When the auctioneer was ready to begin the actual selling, the field description was read out.  The bidding was then open and when the gavel fell awarding the lot, the same description was read again to the buyer to make sure that he understood both what he was buying and the cost. If the buyer was satisfied that all was correct, he signed his name. These handwritten signatures varied from very clear to downright impossible to read. (Picture the hurried scrawls of many doctors, business people and public officials).   It was rare to find an "X" or some other mark in place of a signature. Most of the adults in Irsch must have had at least elementary schooling by 1861.

The auction document gives no indication of how the bidding on each field was brought to a close, but a fellow genealogist, who also has an auction document for her family from the Rhineland area near Koblenz, shared an interesting detail. At the point at which an auctioneer heard a significant silence, a candle would be lit. This candle would burn for only one minute before it went out. The auctioneer would then light another one-minute candle. The same procedure was repeated with the third candle. Hearing no other offer before the third candle flickered out, the land was officially declared sold to the last bidder.  The auction officials in the Koblenz area were definitely sticklers when it came to assuring that everyone had the same amount of time to think over a further bid!

When the auction record for the land of Johann and Magdalena Meier was placed on file for me to see 151 years later,  it contained the following kinds of information for each piece of land.

*the number of the land lot in the Flur - Lot 1647

*the name of the Flur - hinterm Keltergarten (behind the Kelter garden)

*the size of the piece of land - 16 Ruthen, 60 feet

*the owners of the fields that bordered the field being sold - Nikolaus Fuhs-Klein and Johann Schuh

*the buyer and his residence - Anton Schuh, Irsch village

*the amount paid for the piece of land - 20 Thaler

*the signature of the buyer - signed in his own handwriting

When the auction ended, the total land sale had earned 1,269.15 Thaler for Johann and Magdalena.

The Auction of the Land and the Dwelling On It:

Property 4091 consisted of a "Wohnhaus" a place for the family to live, for the animal stalls, and for storage of crops.  It was located in the middle of the village with a land area size of 10 Ruthen and 10 feet.  Bordering it were the dwellings of Anna Hauser, "unreadable" Feilen, and the main street. (I've noticed that a number of people had the first or last name of "unreadable," due to the poor handwriting of notary Warigner.)

The highest bid for the house, barn, and stables (all under one roof) was 320 Thaler, a combined bid from two Irsch farmers, Nikolaus Fuhs and Mathias Konter.  This was somewhat unusual.  It begs the question of why.  Was the current barnhouse then divided into two dwellings or was it shared in some other way by the two winning bidders?

Auction of the cows

After all of the land had been purchased, the auction was declared over at 3 p.m. and the auction of the animals began.  It was in the same location, the inn of Mathias Peter Britten, and the same official and witnesses were present.  There were three cows in the stalls of Johann Meier; however,  one cow was held back and would not be sold until the moveable property auction of March 22. This exception made sure that the Meier children would continue to have milk to drink until all the family's possessions were sold.

One cow was sold for 40 Thaler to Mathias Lehnert-Schreiner, A farmer in Irsch.  The second cow brought 48 Thaler, more than many of the land pieces.  The new owner was Nikolas Reiter,  a farmer from neighboring Beurig.  The auction ended at 4 p.m.

After the Auctions Ended:

On the same day that the auction was held, the rights to land and property were transferred to the Jewish merchant Simon Wolff.  The money from the buyers of that land was not due in full until November of 1863, and the Meier's left Irsch to go to America in March, 1861.  Ewald Meyer who did the translating of the auction documents says that this Jewish moneylender from Wawern loaned back the money minus interest to the Meiers based on the anticipated land payments that would be made.

There is no written explanation that tells me whether Johann, Magdalena, and their children were able to stay on in their barnhouse. Technically, they no longer owned it. But I think staying in it is very possible since their movable possessions would not be sold until the following month at the "movables" auction. Also, the winning bidders had not yet paid any money for the property and would not owe for taxes until 1862. Johann Meier had made the expenditure for the taxes on land and buildings in 1861 from his own pocket.

In the following four weeks, it must have been a peculiar feeling for Johann and Magdalena to hear their neighbors and friends talking of their planting plans for the coming year in the farm fields, some that had once belonged to Johann, his father and his grandfather.


NOTES: An unmarried uncle, Michael, must have lived with Johann and Magdalena and their family because he was going to America with them and sold his land too. His auction was held the next day, February 23.

The notary seems to have used square units: Fuß (feet), Ruthen, and Morgen. In Prussia, one square Ruthe was 14.18 square meters and one square Fuß (foot) was .092 Square meters.  One Morgen was 2553.22 square meters.

Sources:
Aussenstelle of the Landeshauptarchiv in Neuwied - Rommersdorf, Rheinland.
Meyer, Ewald, Irsch/Saar: Geschichte eines Dorfes
Translation of Auction Documents of Joseph Thielmann and Katharina born Henn by Walter Petto and Ulriich Thielmann, 
Translation of Auction Documents of Johann Meier and Magdalena born Rauls by Ewald Meyer.
Pictures from www.Irsch/Saar.de; Kathy, the Single-minded Offshoot, and Annette Schwickerath of Trier

Thankful Thursday - The Wägelchen and Heilige Johannes

How many Groschen am I bid for these fine pieces?

In my February post, I talked about the auction of Johann and Magdalena Meier's "moveables"; how the auction was carried out, a few of the items that were sold, the amount of money that my great-great grandparents earned from the auction, and how, in the absence of banks as we know them, how a Jewish tradesman served as money lender, taking a risk on the ability of the buyers' readiness to pay him in a few months, with an interest charge added to the amount due. It was not unlike having a credit card.

I did not list all of the 168 transactions that took place on that late March day, for obvious reasons. But as I studied that list, I began to see that there were more bits of history to be gleaned and a few that touched my heart and made me thankful for my great-great grandparent' willingness to give up many of the things which were either close to their hearts or which had been acquired by endless days of work on their farm.

While it is possible to find information on the layout of a typical house and barn, it is more difficult to discover what was inside the structures that might have been unique to my emigrant ancestors. The auction adds so much color and realism to what lay behind closed doors of an especially meaningful farm home - in the barn where there were tools and equipment that were used again and again, in the storage areas where provisions that brought them through hard times as well as through winter, and in the living area where the cupboards and closets held many items used every day. Given the amount for which each item was sold, it is possible to know what the members of this farming community found most valuable. Some items that were purchased with Thaler; others with the more lowly Groschen (there were 33 Groschen to a Thaler). The items seem to have been sold in a way that would keep both men and women interested, mixing household goods with farm tools. To keep the crowd from leaving before all the items were auctioned, some of the highest priced and most highly prized goods were held to the last - the bags of potatoes, the tub of cabbage, barrels - with Trank/drink - and the wagons.

Sold from the barn area

Spades and axes; hammers, hay forks, scythes, rakes, flails, chains of varying lengths, a wedge and a small ax for splitting wood, a saw, knives and a whetstone to keep a sharp edge on tools used for cutting, a Fruchtwand which separated the grain seed from the hull, a flail, ladders of varying sizes, a winnowing fan - All of these things were sold from one to 28 Groschen.

More expensive were a rack-wagon which sold for 14 Thaler, a handcart sold for 6 Thaler, harnesses or Pferdegeschirr* earning approximately one-half to one Thaler each. A Hexelbank* brought in two Thaler. Several other items sold for a Thaler or more, but unfortunately the handwriting on these items is not readable.

Livestock:

Two of the cows that the Meiers owned had sold for 40 and 48 Thaler and had already been claimed by their new owners on the same day that the barnhouse and all the farmland were auctioned. That auction, with much higher bids, was held in February. The third cow, however, was needed for her milk until the family was only a few days away from leaving Irsch. Thus it was still in the Meier's barn on the day of the moveables auction. While the first two cows sold had brought in a few Groschen more than 40 Thaler, the winning bid for the remaining cow was only 25 Thaler and 6 Groschen Most likely this was due to which people attended the second auction, many of whom were not rich enough to buy more land.  They were also not able to bid as much for the last cow. The four geese were sold for varied sums from eight to 12 Groschen.

Sold from the living quarters:

I picture the doors of the cupboard open, the shelves bare as these items are auctioned bit by bit: a spoon, cake pan, tin kettle, three iron kettles, coffee grinder, crockery, pitcher, a plate (perhaps it was considered special by great-great grandmother Lena, since it was sold separately from other crockery).

From inside the kitchen or the Stube, furniture and larger pieces no longer stood in their usual places. On offer were chairs and benches, a stove, a straw basket. Is it possible it was one worn on the back for harvesting grapes? More likely it is one that carried a meal to the fields to to feed the hungry family when the Angeles bell of the church rang out. A bed and a bedstead (I don't know how these were different), a house stove, and a Laden, which my dictionary tells me is either a shutter or a shop) sold for Groschen; a cabinet or cupboard, sold for three Thaler, one of the more valuable items from the house.

Provisions Stored for Future Use:

For the stored potatoes, the winning bid was usually one Thaler  for 50 kilograms. Considering that a baking or cooking pan sold for about seven to ten Groschen, the potatoes to put in the pan were a valuable and expensive commodity and more important than most things man-made.  The potatoes were sold in bags weighing from five, two, or one Zenter (according to Wikipedia, one Zentner equaled about 50 kilograms) and seemed to sell at a price of one Thaler per Zentner of potatoes.  An empty barrel was worth about 27 Groschen, but the barrel with "Trank" or drink (wine or Viez?) was worth 10 Thaler and 15 Groschen to one buyer.  The tub of cabbage sold for over two Thaler.  There were also bundles of wood meant for fires in a fireplace or stove, and the harvested Lohrinde, which was the bark stripped from oak trees that could be sold to the tanneries in Saarburg.  The buyer gambled that some one tannery would pay more than the twelve Thaler he originally paid. 

Some Unique Surprises:

*A sail was one of the more surprising items on the auction list; perhaps the family story saying Johann Meier was a sailor is more accurate than I thought.  It was purchased by a sailor from Beurig (a sailor would often be a barge owner) for one Thaler and 12 Groschen.  A correction and proof of an assumption: I made a mistake in translating the word Seil; which is not a sail at all.  Instead it is a cord, rope or line which would have been used by the Halfen, men who controlled the horses pulling a barge against the current.  I had always suspected that Johann Meier sometimes worked as one of these Halfen, handling a team of horses on the trip between Saarburg and Serrig.  

*A resin pot - Resin or Rosin is added in small quantities to traditional linseed oil/sand gap fillers and used in building work. Players of bowed string instruments rub cakes or blocks of rosin on the bow hair so it can grip the strings and make them speak. While there is good reason to have such a pot as building material, I would like to believe that someone in the Meier family played the violin. I know that the grandchildren descendants born in this country had good voices and sang in harmony at parties.  Why not fantasize that one of their grandparents also played a "fiddle."

*Boxes of junk - Coming from a long line of pack rats, I have a "junk drawer" - doesn't everyone?  I also have a box here and there of stuff I might need in the future like old eyeglasses in case the three pair that actually have my current prescription might all be stolen by a thief with poor vision; a bunch of cassettes that already have something on them but could be used to tape something new; bunches of string in case I need to give tie support to every plant in my flowerbeds; and so forth.  I smiled when the auction list of my 2nd great grandparents included two boxes of Gerümpel, the German word for "junk." One box sold for two Groschen, the other for 12 Groschen (evidently the second box had a higher class of "miscellaneous" - or it was a bigger box).

*Two of the most touching pieces sold during the emigration process of Johann and Magdalena were "The Holy Johannes" and the Wägelchen. Both received a high bid of five Groschen, and I think that these two items in particular must have been difficult to part with. Holy Johannes may have been a picture or a small statue of the patron saint of Johann Meier, perhaps given as a gift to Johann at his baptism or first Holy Communion. The Wägelchen was some sort of a carriage for a baby, perhaps more like a small wagon than a decorated Victorian baby buggy one might picture.  Had all five children been taken to the fields or to a neighbor's farm in it?  For Magdalena it would be much easier to part with the crockery or an iron kettle, I think, than with these last two possessions. 

I wish one or the other of any of the auction pieces, but especially "The Holy Johannes" had come to America and been handed down to my generation.  But survival meant that only the practical pieces could be placed in the travel trunks and bundles.  On this thankful Thursday, I am so thankful that my ancestors had the courage to sell their unnecessary items to add to their resources for beginning a new life in a new land.

*A Pferdegeschirr is a harness, although the word gave me a moment of pause and a grab for a dictionary since Pferde means horses and Geschirr means some kind of crockery. My first thought was that this was dishware decorated with horses.
*a Hexelbank was a device that cut straw into small pieces.


Sources and Resources: 
1. Records from the Koblenz State Archive
2. The patience of Ewald Meyer for his many hours spent struggling with the translation of the German of yesteryear as written by a careless official.
3. The generosity of the researcher who remembered the family names which I had been seeking when searching for his own purposes
4. The great memory of a fellow genealogist who recalled that an article on resources in the Koblenz Archive had included my ancestral villages

They Belong to Us No Longer

The Auction
PBS Television "Germans in America"

Johann and Magdalena Meier of Irsch left their home village in order to emigrate to Wisconsin, but three cows, four geese, a ladder wagon, and an iron pot were left behind - as were many other possessions or  "moveables."  These were sold at auction on March 22, 1861, most likely a day or two before the couple and their four children said goodbye to the barnhouse on the main road  of Irsch in Kreis Saarburg, Rhineland.  The familiar house was no longer theirs.  And they were leaving behind the grave of their child, Anna Maria, who had died just one year before.

Almost since I began working on my family history, I have tried to imagine what my great-great grandparents' last days in Irsch were like but never imagined that I might actually know what they sold before leaving, who bought these things, and how much money the Meiers earned from their sale.  This auction of moveable possessions was the final opportunity to acquire additional funds for their future in the new land, but for that money, the family Meier must stand watching as the bits and pieces of their life in Irsch were carried off by others.

The notary from Saarburg, Mathias Waringer was in charge of the auction. The sale began at nine in the morning.   In all, 168 "moveables" were sold that day for a grand total of 223 Thaler and 3 Groschen.

There were a number of rules of the sale set down in this auction document.  It seems that most of the buyers did not pay for the items they bought on the day of the auction.  Essentially, they bought on "credit."  Evidently it was unusual for a winning bidder to have in hand the money to pay for his purchase.  Most purchasers had until November 2 to make a payment for the things they bought.  Due to the difficulty of deciphering and understanding the old German in the document and my limited ability to translate a German transcription (sprinkled with question marks where words were illegible ), I cannot tell you with any certainty whether the barrel or the axe or the jug, as yet not paid for, went home with the man or woman who gave the highest bid.  At the very least the cows and the geese, which needed to be watered and fed, probably were with their new "owners" by the evening of the auction day.

Those who bought on credit were to make payments to the "old" tradesman, Simon Wulff, who lived in the village of Wawern and who functioned in approximately the same way as today's banks.  He probably loaned money for the expenses of their upcoming trip to Johann and Magdalena Meier in advance of the auction against the anticipated proceeds of the auction sale.  As a result, all money from the auction went to him.  After he deducted the cost of the loan and the additional interest fees due him from Johann and Magdalena, he gave any remaining money to them, taking the risk that each successful auction bidder would pay him as agreed. There was also an extra fee (a type of interest) paid by the bidder at the time payment was due in November.  

Most of the people at the auction were Irsch villagers.  But other villages were represented, so either word of mouth or some type of printed advertising must have brought people from them. For instance, Johann Meier's uncle Peter from Freudenburg bought a farm chain of some kind for six Groschen .  A farmer from Magdalena Rauls Meier's birth village, Oberzerf, bought a sack of grain for two Thaler.  One of the three cows, costing 25 Thaler and 6 Groschen, was walked to a new home in Paschel, a somewhat distant village.  Villagers also came from Serrig, Ockfen, Beurig, and Saarburg.

Where does one find these actual auction documents signed by Johann Meier and his wife Magdalena?  The nine pages of handwritten minutes of the auction proceedings on 22 March 1861 were found in the State Archive in Koblenz. The Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz  holds a magnificent variety of historical documents which are becoming better known as the archive digitizes its holdings. 

Special and heartfelt thanks to the two generous helpers who made my knowledge of my ancestor's departure from Irsch more detailed than I could have ever dreamed: the Rhineland researcher who surprised me with the auction records in November, and my German friend Ewald from Irsch who managed to read almost all of the old German "Gekritzel" of notary Waringer.  (As a boy, Herr Waringer evidently doodled while the other school children practiced their writing skills!)

*Gekritzel = scribbles, scrawl