I have been tracing my family for some years, including the Roggenbucks. (Roggenburk is a variant adopted by those Roggenbucks who emigrated to the Cleveland area.) My great grandfather Albert emigrated from Flötenstein, a small town three quarters of the way along a line from Berlin to Danzig, where many Roggenbucks lived. Flötenstein was in West Prussia and today is called Koczala in Poland. Other names in the Roggenbuck line I know of include Mischnick, Kanthak, Spors and Dorau.
I have been tracing my family for some years, including the Roggenbucks. (Roggenburk is a variant adopted by those Roggenbucks who emigrated to the Cleveland area.) My great grandfather Albert emigrated from Flötenstein, a small town three quarters of the way along a line from Berlin to Danzig, where many Roggenbucks lived. Flötenstein was in West Prussia and today is called Koczala in Poland. Other names in the Roggenbuck line I know of include Mischnick, Kanthak, Spors and Dorau.
Roggenbucks were originally found in the 13th Century in the marshes east of Hamburg (Bütlingen), then in the Stralsund (Greifswald) area, but appeared to have moved slowly eastward, usually within 60 miles of the Baltic Sea. There was never any doubt that I was German.
Recently, however, I took a DNA test which showed surprisingly few German genes — inasmuch as my maternal grandmother was also German. Another two of my Roggenburk second cousins — who have no relation to my maternal grandmother — showed no German genes! (My results: 48% Great Britain, 19% Ireland, 11% Eastern Europe, 10% Western Europe, 6% Scandinavia.) My maternal grandmother’s surname was Wuthenow.
So here is a theory: Perhaps the Roggenbucks are genetically Wendish and not German. The area occupied by the Wends coincides with the area where Roggenbucks are found. The absorption of the Wendish culture by German culture must make it difficult to determine nowadays who is German and who is Wendish. Also, I can’t explain why no German genes didn’t get into the pool. It seems odd that some Roggenbucks did not marry ethnic Germans, but maybe living in Wendish villages favored marrying other Wends.
Ancestry.com has a Beta program to further isolate your origins. My sister generated the genetic community Poles in Pomerania. This appears to reinforce the notion that perhaps the Roggenbucks are of Slavic origin, not German.
So my questions to you are:
1. Is it likely that my ancestors are really Wendish and not German?
2. If Germanization of the Roggenbucks occurred early on, would the Wend roots likely be unknown to recent generations, and
3. Among the historic documents you know, is there any evidence that some Wendish people adopted the name Roggenbuck in response to German pressure to do so?
I remain grateful for any response you can offer.
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Hi, stumbled across your page researching the origin of my 3rd great grandparents Roggenbuck. They are from Hannover Prussia Germany. My dna reduces show I have 20% German dna. My only German line in my tree is this one.
AH
Those are good questions. Here are some considerations. Keep on trying to extend your pedigree, not knowing where it will take you. Don’t take anyone’s word that your ancestry is one thing or another. Trust but verify. The further back in time one goes the more sparse primary records are. It is a multi-piece, multi-dimensional puzzle where everything does fit but we don’t have all the pieces. Don’t force any pieces. You get to write the book – keep it honest. As we develop our own micro-history learn the larger history and things will/may fall into place. The 30 years war from 1618-1648 scattered DNA all over Europe. There has been a migration of peoples for a variety of reasons – plagues, disease, wars. Tribes migrated from the east to the west, tribes from the west pushed to the east. The same holds true for the north to south and vice-versa. The further back you go you realized that the human race is an incredible mixing pot of flavors. When you put boys and girls into close proximity with each other – all bets are off. Hopefully, we/they stayed between the lines. It would make things easier for us researchers.
So, to answer your questions:
1. The are something, maybe neither Wendish or German. Isn’t this exciting and challenging?
2. YES!! There is no such thing as a pure race. We all have a belly-button – none alike – and were born somewhere. The only thing I know absolutely for sure is that none of us had anything to do with it.
3. I have no documentation about Roggenbucks at all but there are sources that can tell you where and how they think a name originated. Remember how surnames originated. Where are you from? What work do you do? What did you do? What do you look like? Who is your daddy? Who is your momma?
Are we having fun yet?
Weldon
Weldon –
this isn’t about DNA, but I couldn’t find a way to contact you directly.
In your article on “August Haak’s Ben Nevis Diary” in the Wendish Research Exchange of 8/27/2016, you mention having found Pastor Kilian’s brief shipboard diary and having published it in Wendish Research Exchange Journal v. 5 (1983) no. 2.
I have been unable to find/access this Journal entry. Can you please send me a copy of Pastor Kilian’s diary?
thank you very much for your Wendish work.
John
You can find all of the diaries at: https://forum.wendishresearch.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=434.
I’m Polish and wendish and I live in Cleveland. There’s more of us here than you think, everywhere you see in the big cities where there are poles or eastern Germans there are almost always wends with them but 99% of wends lost their identity within a generation or two or tried to hide their identity.
Kenneth,
I can relate to your comment about Wends having lost their identity. I grew up identifying as a ‘pure German’. All my ancestral lines originated from Germany. I learned a smattering of German at home from my father who was born and raised in Giddings, about 7 miles from Serbin, and who had to learn English to start elementary school. It wasn’t until the late 80’s/early90’s that I learned anything about my Wendish ancestry. And I had relatives that came over on the Ben Nevis! Because most of my relatives had settled outside the actual Serbin settlement (although nearby) perhaps the Wendish connection wasn’t retained as strongly. Just as amazing, is that I attended a parochial elementary school in which many of my classmates were of Wendish ancestry and the school itself was next-door to Concordia University of Austin which was founded in great part by Wendish congregations of Texas. And yet I had no clue about my Wendish ancestry. Fortunately, a visit to a family reunion of my maternal grandfather led to the discovery of my Wendish roots.
That is neato. I love it.
I always felt different than others while coming up. And I did not learn of my wendish/sorbian ancestors connection until about 3 years ago. I’m at the age about when it becomes cool to start doing genealogy. One of my mother’s passions is genealogy. Well, I learned that I am 6th generation direct lineage of Jan Kilian. My bio grandmother is, excuse me was a Kilian as her maiden name. Irene Kilian. She died back in 2013 but am honored to have gotten to know her, I didn’t get to spend too terribly much time with her, not for my taste, but enough that I got to know what a fun loving wonderful woman she was. And we have snapshots of she and carol and I all together. Carol is her daughter and my mother. See, I had been adopted out at 2days old in Feb 1973.. Anywhooo, Carla Tucker is my adopted name. So my mom who raised me, Eva Jean Tracy-Tucker, a great Christian apostle, she went and found my bio mom Carol for me in 1988, which she lived in Giddings Tx and she brought her home with her and Carol and I met for the 1st time, I was 16yrs old and It was like finding a long lost twin we are so alike it is unreal. I always knew I was different. And not in a bad way different. So when I learned about the Wendish community and Society about 4 years ago now if that long, it all makes perfect sense now!! I currently live in Montgomery County TX and plan to migrate(haha) over toward Lee County where my bio mom still lives. I would love to learn the Sorbian language, Susan who is Carol’s cousin and also a Kilian descendant made the comment that it’s too hard. Yea well I believe that but hard never stopped me before. I think that finding an tutor might be the first thing I need to do. Maybe it is too hard. But I plan to find out first hand. The sooner the better!