Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

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Sduddy
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by Sduddy » Tue Oct 05, 2010 8:51 am

Hello Brian. Another jeweller, not German, was Dillons of Galway, who famously, in Galway at least, had a clock outside giving Dublin Time. So Galway people going to town got extra data to bring home.

M. McNamara
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by M. McNamara » Thu Oct 28, 2010 8:15 pm

Lawrence Clarke, an Australian, who is researching the Bethell side of his ancestry, recently made a connection with German ancestors.
He writes ".... in the 1911 Irish census in the same area was a Frank Bethell who ran the Bethell hotel on the Esplanade in Bray. He was listed as the proprietor aged 42 and born in England. Nothing unusual. What was unusual was in the 1901 Irish census Frank Bethell was a Chef working at a hotel in Bray and his birth town was listed as Kirchiem Unter-Tek". (or more correctly Kirschheim unter Teck).

Kirschheim is in the South West of Germany, close to Freiburg and in the present land of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Thinking of this thread, I wondered what brought all these Germans to Ireland in the mid to late 1800s.
A web search revealed the story of mass emigration from Germany, post 1850. The vast majority went to the US with smaller numbers going to other West European countries. One website states "Although they received less publicity than the Irish, nearly as many Germans emigrated to the United States during the mid-1800s. In fact, during the peak year of immigration, 1854, German emigration to the United States outpaced that from Ireland by two to one. Over-population played perhaps the most significant role in motivating Germans to emigrate."
German emigration ceased in or about the 1890s after the multitude of independent kingdoms, states and cities united under Prussia to form the German Federation.

Having got thus far, I did a search for emigrant families in this area and happened upon the website of Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg. Clicking on http://www.auswanderer-bw.de/sixcms/det ... PHPSESSID= gets you to the English version.
A search for Maurers who emigrated to Ireland shows 1 entry

Emigrant no. 227069
Name Otto Maurer
Year of emigration 1895
Destination Irland
Last place of residence Oberkirch

I noted 2 other Maurers from Oberkirch emigrated to England at the same time.
I searched for Dold, which is also mentioned in this thread, and found several who emigrated to England but none, initially anway, to Ireland.

In the matter of religion, just 1 of many dozens of files I looked at gave a religious denomination and that was a female Maurer who admitted to being "ev", which I suppose is evangelisch or Lutheran/Protestant.

pwaldron
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by pwaldron » Thu Oct 28, 2010 11:51 pm

To the German immigrants to these parts in the same period can be added the Haselbeck/Haslbeck/Has'lbeck family who arrived in Limerick city, via Manchester, around the time of the 1901 census. Franz Sebastian Haselbeck (1885-1973) became a photographer and his work is currently on exhibition in the Hunt Museum in Limerick.

pwaldron
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by pwaldron » Thu Oct 28, 2010 11:59 pm

Another German family that I know are the Ganters of Dublin - Adolph Ganter and his wife Catherine Morat from Baden were having children in Dublin by 1867. According to the 1901 and 1911 census returns, Adolph was a watchmaker and his four sons Joseph, Charles, Frederick and Leo all became clockmakers, watchmakers and/or opticians.

There is definitely a pattern beginning to emerge here!

Paddy Casey
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Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by Paddy Casey » Tue Nov 02, 2010 8:35 pm

M. McNamara wrote:.......I......happened upon the website of Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg. Clicking on http://www.auswanderer-bw.de/sixcms/det ... PHPSESSID= gets you to the English version.
Thank you very much for posting this and flagging that most interesting website of the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg. I spent some time browsing the site because, apart from it being a source of names of emigrants who left for Ireland, it has a history which might be relevant to Clare research.

Two German retirees (Hans Glatzle and Wolfgang Müller) spent an enormous amount of time over many years systematically trawling the state and communal archives of Baden-Württemberg in collaboration with, and with the help of, the professional archivists of that state. They started by creating card indexes and then moved to punched cards (remember those ?) and at a very early stage they were transferring their data to PCs and now it is on the Internet. In other words, and if I have understood it correctly, it was a bottom-up project which was driven by two fanatical beavers rather than a top-down, systematically planned programme emanating from a government office.

Why could this be relevant to Clare ? Well, until recently I had never heard of anybody who has systematically collected analogous data on Clare emigrants, i.e. a systematic index of emigrants from a given area. We have lots of information on individual emigrants from genealogical research, for example, but I don't know of a "card index" of Clare emigrants. I emphasise the "I don't know of...." because, analogous to the laws of gene mutation ("If it's possible then it will have happened or it's going to happen"), it's well possible that someone has tried to index Irish emigrants in the course of the last 100-150 years and has since died, leaving the index in a cardboard box in some attic or shed or archive (if it didn't end up in a rubbish skip) waiting to be discovered and published.

Now I see that Tom McDowell is systematically listing emigrants from East Clare on the Clare Library site (see, for example, http://www.clarelibrary.ie/eolas/coclar ... grants.htm ) so maybe, if others pitch in, Clare will soon have a comprehensive emigrants index like Baden-Württemberg.

One constantly reads the heart-wrenching stories of people leaving overnight, the note on the kitchen table in the morning, etc. and I assumed that the emigrants had to obtain some sort of travel documents before upping sticks and leaving. However, it seems that this was not the case until 1915 (see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/reco ... sports.htm ). Before that date a simple peasant could disappear overseas without leaving any traces in the local or national government archives. Amazing !

Paddy

smcarberry
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by smcarberry » Thu Nov 04, 2010 11:37 am

This is in response to Paddy C.'s comments on a bottoms-up approach to a comprehensive listing of Clare emigrants. I realize the appeal of such an undertaking. If done well, it would be analogous to the collection of memorial cards, a project underway in Clare at the grassroots level. I expect the resulting data from that project to be highly valuable because it is highly reliable, being a record made contemporaneous with the vital event (death) with information provided by the involved family. In very similar circumstances, however, death certificates are not uniform in being reliable, and other records with information provided by close family members are often riddled with error. Collecting emigrant information is even more vulnerable to error, as amateur family historians often make mistakes in tracing family generations backward in time to the original immigrants. That said, though, that type of effort has already resulted in a large chart of Clare people departed to Australia, available in the Clare County Library donations section. That kind of collection, if offered as an official version, would always have to have a disclaimer that donated information should be checked for accuracy and be confirmed with the fullest documentation possible, in the same way that conventional wisdom views the LDS IGI listings to be susceptible to error due to origination from amateur family historians of varying ability and interest in accuracy.

For as long as the Internet has been used by family historians, there have surname listing boards, like the one that Pat Connors maintains for Clare people. That is very similar in aim to what Paddy C. is describing. The people providing data for those are usually the Diaspora. The new interest in the utility of collections done with data from Irish residents is described for one now underway in Galway (although I find talk of "harnessing" us in the Diaspora to be a bit offensive, when the term "gathering in" could be used):
http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2010/10/2 ... \d-economy

Overall, I like the idea of each parish being the focal point of family history efforts. Our ancestors' lives revolved around their own particular locality, with the parish generating records of their vital events and newspaper articles usually noting a placename for each county resident discussed in the news. Tracing each resident from his parish origin forward in time has the potential of being as productive as trying to trace a current family's members backward in time to their Irish parish. The few became the many over the course of time, so why not start when Clare families were fewest in number and show how those families grew and then left ? The computer resources needed for this task boggles my mind, but there are tech savvy people who can put their minds to that.

I also like Williams' referring to the Diaspora being able to send their youngsters back to the original Irish parish, for true appreciation of the family's history. That's my pet goal, to have in place a Clare-based program for Diaspora youth. Too late for my children, but maybe for my grandkiddies when and if they arrive.

Sharon Carberry
USA

Dean McCarthy
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by Dean McCarthy » Tue Nov 30, 2010 2:16 pm

Hello, I note that Lawrence Clarke is researching into the Bethell family. I would love to get in touch with him as I am Frank Bethell's great grandson. Can you let me know how I can get in touch with him ?

M. McNamara
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by M. McNamara » Tue Nov 30, 2010 2:55 pm

Hello Dean
Lawrence's email is lawrenceclarke65@gmail.com.

asawdon
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by asawdon » Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:50 pm

hello everybody. - they came, not just the Maurers but others, as part of a chain migration from the Black forest a small and remote group of parishes in southern germany where farmers made clocks as a winter occupation when they brought their farm animals inside in the winter.

Initially the clocks were made of wood - all the parts, including the wheels; religion had something to with it because they had carved religous figures, and they incorporated such carving in their clocks - a monk would come out and ring a bell or the apostles would come out in a procesession on the hour

They came to Britain and Ireland to sell the clocks. Many of thise firms survived in Ireland for a long time and still do, as jewellery shops- only about 5 remain in england and wales, but many more proportioatly in Ireland - in part perhaps because a catholic country was more like home to them, and because in England there was great hostiilty to germans at the time of the first world war. but also because they got to ireland later

You can find some of of them among the membership list on the web site for Retail Jewelllers of Ireland; the names that come to my mind either still in business in ireland or in business until recently (not all still in the founding family) include

Bauman, Burkley, Duffner, Hartman, Heine, Faller, Fallers, Hilser, Leufer, Muckley Wherley (plus Kleiser, who abandoned his family clockmaker trade and became a piano seller)

that is about 15 shops in total so they are all over the towns in ireland today (except Dublin) The Burkleys went back to 1778 when Ferdinand Burkely was a partner in a firm in london - and they traded until the seventh generation.

Irish history I supposed is a lot about people leaving Ireland as emigrants, so it is surprise to find a group of people emigrating to ireland in the 19th century.

I believe that german men of military age were interned in the curragh in the first world war (I have heard of other examples where men who had gone back home in the summer to buy clocks and help with the harvest were then stuck in germany for the following four years - i have the idea that this happened to one of the burkleys)

It would be good if some-one gathered the story and photos of these remarkable businesess and published it!

andrew (tel 0044 (england) 02075824158

Richard Constable
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by Richard Constable » Tue Jun 14, 2011 12:40 am

Hello Co. Clare, and hello Andrew.

Andrew sent me a note about his post, so I followed up a few leads and thought you might be interested in some notes from my ongoing research of the Black Forest clock and watch trade.

The clock and watchmakers mentioned under this topic are from the Triberg area of the Black Forest.

Here are some further details regarding some of the people mentioned:

Peter Dold gave his place of birth as Triberg in the 1911 Census, not Freiburg or Freiberg. His birth circa 1858 seems not to have been registered in Triberg though, so may have been in one of the several neighbouring parishes that came within the then administrative district of Triberg.

Joseph Hartmann was born in Triberg on the 16th November 1863, son of the clockmaker Joseph Hartmann from Oberprechtal, living in Triberg, and his wife Clara Heim. Another clockmaker from Oberprechtal working in Triberg at the time was a Wilhelm Hartmann, likely Joseph senior’s brother. Oberprechtal is a part of the modern municipality of Elzach.

Alphons Hartmann was Joseph Hartmann junior’s younger brother.

Adolph Heim senior, a painter living in Triberg, was the godfather and probably also uncle of Joseph Hartmann junior. He was married to Wilhelmina Kirner.

Gustav Adolph Heim, or we could say Adolph Heim junior, would have been the Adolph Heim working in Limerick. He was born in Triberg on 3rd March 1862 to Adolph Heim senior and Wilhelmina nee Kirner, and he married Elizabeth McNamara.

Hartman & Heim was the Hartmann/Heim family’s business at 2 Patrick Street, Limerick. It had this name by 1894, and in the 1911 Census the Hartmanns were living over the shop at No.2, with the Heims living at 5 Patrick Street.

Auntie Kathleen, mentioned in a post about Adolph Heim, I would think is no anglicised German name, but is Lizzie Heim’s sister Kathleen McNamara, writing home from a family trip to Germany. She appears with the Heim family in the 1901 Census.

The three Maurers mentioned in the post about emigration all came from Nußbach. I don’t understand where the reference to Oberkirch came from. Permissions were given to Joseph Maurer in 1889 to go to “England”, Albert Maurer in 1890 also to “England” and Otto Maurer in 1895 to Ireland. I can’t say at the moment whether this is the same Joseph Maurer who came to Ennis. What I can say from using the original records in the past is that the description of “England” is highly unreliable in modern terms, as it was used by officials at random to cover England and Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Separate references to England and Ireland therefore may (or may not) apply to Ireland only and cannot even be taken as a sign of a stopover in England en route. It is a great pity that the people who transcribed the records for the online version left out the details from the originals that give age, profession, and amount of money taken with them. Nußbach used to be within the administrative district of Triberg, and was absorbed again by the (smaller) modern municipality of Triberg in 1973. It’s a very likely place for the Maurers of Ennis to have come from.

Nicodemus Weißhar, clockmaker assistant at Hartman & Heim in the 1901 Census, reappears in the 1911 Census working instead at Joseph Maurer’s in O’Connell Street, Ennis.

The Leufer (Läufer) family who traded in Tuam, Co. Galway, are also said to have come from Triberg.

Other surnames mentioned by Andrew would generally be from other parts of the Black Forest and working in different parts of Ireland, so there would be a slightly different story to tell about each of them.

If any of the above sparks any further thoughts or discoveries, I would be interested to hear.

asawdon
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by asawdon » Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:31 am

quick thoughts; the list of names i gave of the top of my head were intended to be examples of names which currently have (jewellers) shops in irleand Some of the shops are not still in the same family (although they have retained the original name)or have traded until recently like heine or Burkley (seven generations iof Burkley n the clock and jewellery business in the british isles since 1788)

I think the thread is also throwing up the point that they were generally speaking married to others of their community, albeit they married irish spouses in later generations. (somebody mentioned Ganter in dublin - I think the family name is still around althought shop isnt; there was also Haiz and Isele in dublin which became Hayes - and in joyces ulyuses, as we have passed bloomsday the other day) they nip into Fehrenbachs pork butchers for a sandwich, Fehrenbach is a black forest name so the were not all clockmakers (mind you i wonder if there really was fehrenbach pork butchers as pork butchers were another chain migration from a different area to the black forests.
andrew

Sduddy
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by Sduddy » Tue Jun 14, 2011 11:23 am

Hello Richard,

Your information about the Heims tallies with a couple of studio photos, "photographisches atelier" taken by R. Rimprecht, Tryberg, Bad. Schwarzwald and one taken "Zum Eninnerung au den Wasserfall in Triberg". Marie Heim (1901 - 1966) kept a sketchy note, in pencil, of her family tree, which at one point shows Adolf ("my grandfather") and his siblings, including Klara. It shows that Klara's children are Johanna 1861 - 1937, Josef 1863 - 1930, Maria Theresia b.1870 and Alfous. I presume these are Hartmans and that Josef is the one who came to Limerick. It also lists Adolf's children as Katherine 1860 - 1867, Josef b.1859, Gustaf Adolf b.1862, Maric(?)e b.1864, Josef b.1867, Katherine b.1869 - it is difficult to make out where this list ends- the page is tiny and crowded with notes. Was it Adolf senior who came to Limerick, or was it Gustaf Adolf, who came to be also called Adolf? Adolf (Jun.) writes in English, to Lizzie, with perfect ease, "My dearest own darling" etc.. On the back of one of the photos taken in Limerick is written (for Marie's information, I think), "Aunt Katherine, Father, Alphonse and Jo Hartman mit Michael". This reference to "Aunt Katherine", who also appears in another photo, together with a reference to "your sister" in a letter from Lizzie to Adolf, is what made me think she lived in Limerick for a while. I reckon she returned to Kappel, because of various bits of documentation signed by her there - all in German - and I haven't a word.
Yes, Kathleen McNamara was living with Adolf and Lizzie, in Limerick, in 1901. They died in 1902 and 1903, leaving a baby daughter, Marie Heim. Kathleen took Marie away to live in Belfast. But why Belfast? I found May Heim in the 1911 census with thirty other boarders in Mount St. Michael's Convent School, Lurgan, Armagh, but I failed to find Kathleen (I think I tried every form of the name). I know from later correspondence that they lived in Belfast. But the postcard still intrigues me, and your belief that it was from Kathleen McNamara makes me wonder if she spent a while in Kappel, maybe more than a holiday. Kathleen died in 1926. I wonder if she appears in any German census. Thank you for making contact.

Sheila.
Last edited by Sduddy on Thu Jan 06, 2022 7:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

pwaldron
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by pwaldron » Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:27 pm

After re-reading everything above, I must say that it is truly remarkable how this thread has evolved in so many directions from Paddy Casey's simple query of last summer: a case of the "butterfly effect" or how "mighty oaks from little acorns grow." I am reminded of the remarks of Clare-American poet Thomas Lynch about publishing a book - "it's like throwing a stone into the Grand Canyon and waiting for an echo". (He was kind enough to say that my own heavy book of heavy mathematics would create a bigger echo than his own thin and light-hearted volume of poetry!).

I thoroughly agree with Andrew Sawdon that it would be good if some-one gathered the story and photos of these remarkable businesses and published it.

A few updates:

David McWilliams's ideas have also taken legs at
http://www.irelandxo.org/

Paddy Casey's own similar ideas now have a separate thread at
http://www.ourlibrary.ca/phpbb2/viewtop ... f=1&t=2446
which doesn't seem to be linked to directly from this thread.

I was very sad to see the shutters down on Irwin Bros of Patrick Street, mentioned above, when I was in Limerick recently; my grandfather got a good deal on my grandmother's engagement ring there away back in 1907 - it helped that his brother was working for Irwins at the time! I met Eddie Irwin only last year when he entertained the Thomond Archaeological and Historical Society in the shop on a very wet summer evening. The whole story is at
http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/busin ... _1_2621975
J. H. Irwin is still in business around the corner on William Street, but no longer in family hands. The problem in that part of Limerick today is that many of the old shops were boarded up just before the crash in preparation for development of The Opera Centre, a project now stalled; now Patrick Street and the surrounding area are like a ghost town.

Sduddy
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by Sduddy » Sat Jun 18, 2011 8:54 am

I stood in Patrick St. and wondered why it was so forlorn. Now I understand.

Sduddy
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Re: Timekeeping in rural Clare - Maurer of Ennis

Post by Sduddy » Sat Jun 18, 2011 9:09 am

Richard, I'm back to say it has taken this while for me to come fully around to your view on the postcard, so ingrained was my habit of thinking that Irish people travelled for employment purposes only. Yes, it must have come from Kathleen McNamara - though, for a visitor, she makes herself right at home - she says, "Now you could easily spend your holidays here, or with your uncle Rudolf and at Triberg". Only "Kappel" is legible in the post-mark, but the Christmas wishes and the reference to a lady by her married name, leads me to think it was December, 1925. Some Heims must have been still living in Triberg then, but not as clockmakers, I suppose.
Thank you for your help and I hope your research goes well.

Sheila.

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