three gompf brothers from nieder-ofleiden · 2011-07-12 · the gompfs from nieder-ofleiden page 2...

The Gompfs from Nieder-Ofleiden

Three Gompf Brothers from Nieder-Ofleiden Leslie Gompf, July 2011.

Baltimore research by Leslie Gompf and Betty Gompf Nordwall

Ontario research by Leslie Gompf and George Ray Gompf

Research in Nieder-Ofleiden by Pastor Passarge and Alfred Pfeil

Other research assistance by: Baltimore: Ron Jolly, Nancy Evans, Kathy Rude, Sylvia Malonee and Meg Gompf Wolf

Ontario: Annie Gompf Ruppertenrod: Karlheinz Lichau

Linenkampe: Wolfgang F Naegeler

With special thanks to my husband, Robert Gompf, for putting up with my obsession and listening to endless stories about people he never knew.

I report on the eldest brother last, for reasons which should be clear in his introduction. Peter Gompf (b 1821).......................................................................................................... 3 John Gompf (b 1824) ........................................................................................................ 18 George Gompf (b 1809) .................................................................................................... 22


In the mid 1800s, three brothers came over from Nieder-Ofleiden near Gieβen, Germany, in the Hesse-Darmstadt region. They were Peter, John and George. Peter (born 1821) and John (born 1824) settled in Baltimore, Maryland.

1: The east coast of the United States

2: Maryland

George (born 1809) settled near the town of Listowel (west of Toronto) in Ontario Canada. (The Baltimore family had been told that the third brother “went west”. The reasoning behind this will remain a mystery.)

3: Canada

4: Listowel, in western Ontario


1: Peter Gompf (b 1821)

5: Peter Gompf, abt 1880

Peter was a shoemaker

6: A boot made in Baltimore abt 1860

http://19thcenturybaltimore.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/about-a-boot/


Peter arrived at Baltimore harbor in Maryland on Sep 20, 1845 on the ship Marianne. He was 24 years old. He lists his place of origin as Cassel. He was a shoemaker.

7: Passenger manifest for the Marianne. Peter is passenger #52.


8: View of Baltimore, abt 1850 Oil painting by Fitz Hugh Lane

Some time around 1848, Peter married Anna Catherine Schott. She had immigrated with her family in 1847 from Ruppertenrod. Ruppertenrod is 21 km. or abt 13 miles, from Nieder-Ofleiden, in Hesse-Darmstadt

9: Ruppertenrod. (Nieder-Ofleiden is in the upper left)


Catherine’s father and both brothers were shoemakers. While it is tempting to think that Peter and Catherine Schott had met while they still lived in Germany, there is no evidence one way or the other. Peter and Catherine had 5 children: Maria (1849), John William (1853), Katherine (1857), Henry Joseph (1860) and George Phillip (1864). Peter is listed in the 1850 U.S. Census living in downtown Baltimore, in Ward 13. He is married and has his first child, Catherine Mary. He is working as a shoemaker.

10: Ward map of Baltimore, 1852

On Oct 4, 1852, Peter became a citizen of the United States.

11: Transcription of Peter's Naturalization card


In 1856, Peter was listed in the Baltimore City directory, working as a shoemaker at 106 S. Paca Street. Peter’s grandson George has said that Peter and John lived on Little Green Street and Pearl street (although we don’t know which brother lived where.)

12: Downtown Baltimore, 1869. Green St splits the numbers “12” and “14”. Pearl is one block to the

west and Paca is one block to the east. According to the 1860 U.S. Census, Peter (still a shoemaker) and his family were now living in Ward 12. It seems likely that he had moved to nicer quarters (on Pearl or Green street) sometime between 1850 and 1860. Very curiously, the census, which was taken in July of 1860, indicates that two children were born in May of 1860, one named Peter and the other named George. But son Henry Joseph had in fact been born in June of 1860. I wonder if perhaps Peter and Catherine had not settled on a name yet, and the baby was crying when the census taker was there so he didn’t understand when she said “Peter or George or …” and he thought she said “Peter and George”. After living in Baltimore City a few years, Peter developed “lung problems” (presumably from the pollution) and the doctor told him to move to the country.


13: Downtown Baltimore in 1906

In 1861 Peter moved to Howardsville in Baltimore County (near Pikesville, NW of downtown Baltimore). By 1863 Peter owned a portion of his 33 acres (some of which is still in the family and owned by the family of Les Pahl.) The original deeds, recorded in books 37-100 and 69-427 at the county clerk’s office in Towson, MD, read: “March 20, 1863; Peter Gompf from George L Shank & Wife.” And “March 4, 1871; Peter Gompf from D. C. H. Emery & Trustees.” “From stone standing by the side of the road leading from Wm. Barnett’s to Files old Mill in the second line of Jackson’s Chance and running thence 6 acres more or less.” We don’t know where Peter and his family lived between 1861 and 1863, but Peter’s brother John was living in Pikesville in 1860 so chances are Peter was staying with his brother.

14: Peter's land (1877). The name "P Gumpf" appears at the "a" in "Howardsville"


The land was wooded and Peter cleared most of it of trees. He planted a variety of vegetables and raised chickens and turkeys. Peter built a log house with loft. That first home was located near the corner of Bedford and Campfield Roads. Their son Henry said that when it snowed and the wind blew in the winter, the snow would drift in through the chinks upstairs and he’d wake up in bed with snow on his blankets.

15: The area that was once the Gompf property. Notice "Pahl Farm Way".

16: Lexington Market in 1905

The little dirt road that ran along the west side of the farm property was called Campfield Road because there was a gypsy camp in the area. Every week the family drove a wagon down Campfield road to Liberty Road and on into Baltimore to their open-air stall in Lexington Market. This took about 3 hours and time was often spent shelling peas, discarding pea pods onto the road. During the “gypsy season” they would take the longer way to market out to Reisterstown road, avoiding the camp.


There wasn’t a German Lutheran church near-by, so Peter and two other men got together and formed a new church, St. James Lutheran Church. (There is some confusion here, as the church was first dedicated in 1851, before Peter lived out in Baltimore county. We aren’t sure about the timeline, but we do know that Peter was a significant player at the start of this church’s history.) The church was located about a mile above Rockdale, Maryland, approximately 3 miles from Peter’s property. Originally they built a small log church (which was named St. Jacobi). As the church grew, new buildings were built twice at 2 different locations. The last still stands at the corner of Liberty Road and Rolling Road.

17: The original church (St Jacobi)

Peter and family are in the U.S. Census for 1870, for the Randallstown post office. He is a farmer. They cannot be found in the U.S. 1880 census. (There is no U.S. census for 1890.) Some time before 1891, as the children were grown it was time to divide the land amongst them. They each drew straws in order to determine who got which section.

Henry received 10 acres on the east side. George received 13 acres to the south and down the middle. John W. farmed the other 9 acres containing the log cabin. Daughter Maria’s husband was not interested in farming, so they received only an acre on

which to build a house, on the NW corner of the property. Katherine, who never married and lived to be 90 years old, lived with George and his family,

dying in the log cabin in 1947. The extra acreage was still wooded and not good for farming.

Peter helped Henry, George and Maria build identical 6 room frame houses on each of their plots. Catherine Gompf died on April 6, 1895. She was 73 years old. Peter died Oct 18, 1902. He was 81 years old.


1.1: Catherine Maria “Mary”, married Henry Schneider some time around 1869. We do not know his origins or birth date and have not been able to locate his family. He died abt 1872. Mary had a child in Feb 1872, Henry George Snyder. Then, unfortunately, in 1880 at the age of 31, Mary died of tuberculosis. Henry was taken in and raised by others of the Gompf family and he continued to be the owner of the property that had been given to his mother.

18: Henry Snyder’s house today

1.1.1: Henry Snyder, a carpenter, married Musadora Crisswell in 1893. Musadora (“Nan”) was named after a boat! Specifically, a barge that was sunk during the Civil War in order to create a blockade.

19: Henry Snyder and Musadora Crisswell, wedding photo

They had 6 children: George (1896 – a streetcar conductor), Ida Mae (1898), Helen (1900), Katherine (1902), Elsie Grace (1905 – a nurse) and Henry (1908). Henry died when he was 2, but the rest lived to adulthood. Helen, Katherine and Elsie Grace all died of cancer.


1.2: In 1899, John William married Katherina Maria “Mary” Sieck. She was born in Baltimore, but her parents had immigrated from Hannover. John was 46 years old when he married.

20: John William and Mary Sieck Gompf, abt 1890

The original log cabin had frame rooms added to the front of it. It was torn down in 1953 when the land was sold to a developer. There are no pictures of it. They had two daughters, Minna (1900) and Anna (1902).

1.2.1: Minna married Carl Ehrhardt. Carl’s father had immigrated with his parents from Baden- Würtemberg in 1871. Carl and Minna farmed on Windsor Mill Road, living in a log home, into the 1990’s.

21: A farm on Windsor Mill Road

1.2.2: Anna never married. She lived with Minna and Carl and their 2 daughters, Margaret and Helen. John Gompf lived to be 79 years old and his wife Mary lived to age 87.


1.3: Henry Joseph

22: Henry's confirmation certificate

Henry Joseph Gompf

Anna May Hartman In April of 1891, the 30-year-old Henry Joseph. married Anna May Hartman, Minnie’s sister. (Peter’s brother, John, had a son Louis who married Lillie J. Hartman, sister to Minnie and Anna May. In other words, two brothers and a cousin married three sisters.) Because Henry was somewhat shy, he quietly set a date with the minister, thinking that no one would be present for the wedding. The minister secretly invited the congregation and when Henry and Annie came to St. James Lutheran Church on April 7, 1891, they found a surprise wedding reception for them.


Henry and Anna had 8 children: August (1892), Lilly (1893), John (1894), George (1896), Mabel (1897), Herbert (1899), Viola (1902) and Arthur (1909). Lilly and Mabel died as infants. Herbert was born with an open heart valve. Herbert was frail but had a sweet personality and was the center of attention. He died before his 10th birthday. Henry was a “modern man”, always interested in new innovations. Most of his sons attended Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, an engineering prep school. When electric poles finally came down the road, each son took his turn adding wiring to the house and finally electric lights replaced the kerosene lamps. Henry was one of the first people in Pikesville to own a new automobile. Henry’s farm grew so prosperous that he had to hire two men. The house was expanded to accommodate the hired men and again later to accommodate all the children. This home was torn down in the 1990s and the land it was on was sold.

23: Henry's farmhouse, abt 1898.

24: Henry's farmhouse, about 1950

Anna May died in 1935 at the age of 66. Henry died in 1950 when he was 89 years old.


1.3.1: August was fascinated with electricity and built the first wireless radio in Baltimore County. He graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and later received an engineering degree from Columbia University in New York. He was a pilot in the Army Air Force during WWI, startling everyone one day by landing his plane in his dad’s corn field. He taught shop at Franklin High School for a year, and taught math and industrial arts at Bowling Green University. In 1920 he joined the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company in Baltimore as an engineering assistant. He worked his way up through the organization and in 1952 became a vice president in charge of four C&P branches. He retired in 1957 after 37 years of service. He was a life member of the Alexander Graham Bell Chapter, Telephone Pioneers of America. August married Etta Marshall and they had two sons and a daughter: Charles, George and Viola. Son Charles followed in his father’s footsteps and became a pilot on an aircraft carrier in WWII. In 1946 the war was over and he was returning to the U.S. Just off the coast he landed his plane on the carrier. It caught fire and he and his plane were washed overboard by the fire crew. Charles was not recovered from the sea. 1.3.2: John served in the Army in Europe in WWI. He married Anna Creedy. They moved to Canton, Ohio, where he worked as a machinist. They had no children. 1.3.3: George worked at Revere Copper and Brass in Baltimore and at Foster Wheeler in Bridgeport, CT. He was a sergeant with F Company, 304th Infantry, then with G Company, 163rd Infantry serving overseas during WWI. When his group went to the front, George was kept behind to train others in marksmanship. At first he was quite irate that he wasn’t getting his chance on the front lines, but after he saw the wagons returning with the wounded and dead, he decided he was pretty lucky. His sister Viola introduced her best friend, Minnie Eckhardt, to George. Minnie worked as a stenographer for the Western Maryland Railroad at the time. Minnie and George were married in May, 1924. They had two children, a boy and a girl. Both are still alive with children of their own. 1.3.4: Viola graduated from Union Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. During WWII she joined the Army Nurse Corps, 42nd General Hospital and served in the Philippines, Australia and Japan. August 30, 1945, Captain Gompf led 5 army nurses as part of a contingent of 24 medical personnel aboard a Japanese troop train, 365 miles into the center of Japan, to a prisoner of war camp in Kobe. They were the first allied people to enter Japan after the war. There they processed and treated 603 POWs from 7 different countries, boarded them on the train and took them to Yokohama. In the following days, 23,000 POWs from all over Japan were examined, classified and treated at Yokohama before being shipped home. For this action, Viola received a citation. She never married. 1.3.5: Arthur received Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Liberal Arts degrees from Johns Hopkins University. In 1938, he and Huldreich Egli formed the consulting firm Egli and Gompf, Inc., which both analyzed and designed a large variety of buildings and plants including some on the Johns Hopkins campus and in the Baltimore County school system. Arthur married Margaret Purdum and they had two sons.


1.4: George Phillip

25: George's house, abt 1898 (George Gompf, Mina Hartman Gompf. The girls are probably their children Lena

and Lilly. The boys might be nephews August and John) George Phillip married Minnie Hartman in March of 1891. Minnie’s parents, August Hartmann and Lena Ohrman, arrived in Baltimore on the Therese on Nov 3, 1857. They came from Linnekampe in Niedersachsen. They married in 1859. George and Minnie Gompf had two daughters, Lena (1892) and Lilly (1894).

1.4.1: Lena married Albert Riddle. They had two daughters who married and stayed in the Baltimore area.

1.4.2: Lily married Clarence Pahl in 1911. Clarence’s father immigrated from Hannover, Niedersachsen, Germany. His mother, Celia Asker also immigrated from Germany, possibly from Hannover. Lilly and Clarence remained in the old home until they died. Then one of their sons, Leslie, owned the land. He built a modern brick home for himself and family, and rented out the old frame home. (The original house is still standing.). Leslie and his son, Leslie, and their wives continued to farm. In 2003 the younger Leslie Pahl died as a result of pancreatic cancer. His wife and children still farm and run the stand (with the help of the parents). (http://www.pahlsfarm.com/aboutus/aboutus.htm) They have a farm stand on the property on Bedford Road (the county extended Campfield Road to the north and renamed the easterly bend Bedford Road.) They also have an extensive egg route and still sell in Lexington Market as well as several other smaller farmers’ markets.

George died in 1939 at the age of 75. Mina died in 1944 when she was 78 years old.


26: 1910 Census showing the 3 Gompf families, plus that of Henry Snyder.


2. John Gompf (b 1824) John arrived in Baltimore sometime between 1845 and 1853. The Hall of Records in Annapolis, MD, shows that John became a citizen of the United States on Nov. 5, 1860. The record states that Peter Gompf, already a citizen of the US, testified that John Gompf “hath continued to reside within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the US, five years at least, and one year at least immediately preceding this application, within the State of Maryland.”

27: John Gompf

John married Catherine Maisel (or Maier) from, we think, Lauerbach, in Hesse-Darmstadt. Catherine’s mother’s was Martha. (We have not been able to find her family.) They had 7 children: Lizzy (1854), Peter (1856), Louis (1858), Louisa (1861), Rebecca (1862), Mary (1865) and Kate (1886). John and Catherine first lived in downtown Baltimore, near his brother Peter. In order to baptize his first child, daughter Anna Elizabeth, he went to a church outside of Baltimore in Catonsville. There appears to have been a train line from downtown Baltimore out to Catonsville, which is about 10 miles east from where John was living in downtown Baltimore. (It is possible that John had briefly lived in Catonsville, but unlikely.)

28: Record of the baptism of Anna Elise Kumpf (Gompf) in the church record books of Old Salem Lutheran

Church, Catonsville, MD


29: Historic Old Salem Lutheran Church, Catonsville

The Catonsville church later would share a minister with the St James Lutheran Church that John’s brother Peter had (we think) helped establish. According to the 1860 census, John had moved out to Pikesville and was a gardener. This means he was living in the Pikesville area before Peter moved out there. On the 1870 census, John was living in Randallstown, and on the 1880 census he was living on Liberty Road. Because the 1870 census does not indicate the street address, it is likely that John was living on Liberty Road in 1870 as well.

30: Randallstown and Liberty Road


Catherine died in 1881 at the age of 52. John died some time between 1881 and 1900. Unfortunately, we do not know much about many of their descendants. Of those that we do know, most of them have stayed in the Baltimore area. 2.1: Anna Elizabeth “Lizzy” Gompf married George Frederick Laabes in 1874 at Old Salem Lutheran Church. George had been born in Germany. We know nothing about his family. Lizzy bore 11 children, but only 6 or 7 made it to adulthood. The five we know about are Louis E Laabes (1884), Christina Laabes Sparwasser (1885), William J Laabes (1889), Minnie Laabes Naylor (1892) and Estella Laabes Welsh (1896).

George and Lizzy Laabes first lived in Catonsville, but around 1883 they moved to Falls Road, just north of Baltimore. Some of their daughters were mill workers. All the children I can find lived on Falls Road as adults! (It is a very long road.)

2.2: Peter Gompf married Christine Wittkopf in 1887 when he was 30 and she was 29. Her father was from Melsungen, Hessen, Germany. Her mother was also from Germany.

31: Christine Wittkopf Gompf and Peter Gompf

They lived in Lochearn, outside Baltimore, on Providence Road. Peter and Christine had 6 children: Sophia Mary Louise Gompf (1887), Clayton Wittkopf Gompf (1891), Mabel Adelaide Gompf Heacock (1893), Lewis Carl Gompf (1896), Anna Evelyn Gompf Wheeler (1899), and Henry Robert Miller Gompf (1903). We know more about their descendants than we do about any of John’s other children.

2.2.1: Sophia Mary Louise Gompf never married. She preferred to use the name “Violet”. She lived with her parents at least until 1930. 2.2.2: Clayton Wittkopf Gompf married Annie Elizabeth Bayne. They also lived on Providence Road. Clayton and Annie had 5 children: Hazel Gompf Coleman (1917), Col. Clayton Novrin Gompf (1918), Carolyn Bayne Gompf Trupp (1919), Calvin K Gompf (1925) and Audry A Gompf Carr (1928).


2.2.3: Mabel Adelaide Gompf married Robert Werner Heacock. His family had lived in Catonsville. Mable and Robert lived in Lochearn and later on Liberty Road. They had three children: Dorothy L Heacock Hartig (1917), Richard D Heacock (1919), and Robert E Heacock (1921). 2.2.4: Lewis Carl Gompf married Ella C Bayne, sister to Annie Elizabeth. They lived in Towson, Maryland. Lewis and Ella had 4 children: Lewis Carl “Bud” Gompf (1922), Ella Marie “Boots” Gompf Brazis (1930), Clayton Cordell Gompf (1933) and a daughter who is still alive. 2.2.5: Anna Evelyn Gompf married Louis Bennett Wheeler. They lived in Baltimore County. They had 4 children. Two died at birth. The two surviving children are still alive.

2.3: Louis P Gompf married Lillie Hartman, sister to Minnie and Anna May (who married sons of John’s brother Peter), daughter of August Hartmann and Lena Ohrman. When they married (in 1911), he was 53 and she was 37. Still, they had two children, Ruth (1912) and Louis (1914). They farmed on Reisterstown Road. I believe he took over his father-in-law’s (August Hartmann’s) land. 2.4: Louisa Gompf never married. She lived with her sister Kate. 2.5: Marie “Mary” Gompf married a man with the last name Grammer. While I have found a “most likely” family (the husband’s name is Aaron), I have no evidence yet that this is the right family, as there are two Mary Grammers (wives) born in the same year and living in Baltimore. If my hunch is correct, Mary and Aaron had 9 children, 4 boys and 5 girls. 2.6: Catherine “Kate” Gompf married William Keller. William was a blacksmith. His family farmed in the Pikesville area. Kate and William had one child, son John, who was adopted.


3. George Gompf (b 1809) Johann George Gompf, his wife Margarethe Braun and three of his four children (Margaretha, Johannes, and Wilhelm) emigrated to North America in 1862, sailing on the ship Gascher and arriving in New York City on July 19th. Also on the Gasher from Nieder-Ofleiden were Conrad Rothem (1803), Johannes Klapp (Margaret's future husband), Peter Becker (1840) and Christine Weyn (1823). I do not know the fate of any of these men other than Mr. Klapp.

32: Gascher ship passenger manifest. The Gompfs are passengers 59 – 62, at the split between the pages


George and his family emigrated much later (1862) than Peter and John did (1845). George was older than Peter and John, so he had already started his family by 1845. Perhaps George did not want to travel with small children, although many other families did so. Also, the father of George, Peter and John (also named Peter), died in 1851. Perhaps George, the eldest son, had stayed in Germany for reasons having to do with his father’s estate. I have been unable to verify when George’s son Nicholas arrived in North America, but I have seen reference to the year 1857. Certainly he was living in Ontario, Canada by 1864 as he was married in Ontario. George’s daughter Margaret had also moved to Canada by 1863 as she and her husband, John Klapp, were married there by 1863 (the year their first child was born.) I do not know why George and family did not sail straight to Ontario. If they had, we may have never found their immigration records as there are very few records from ports in eastern Canada from that time period. One possibility is that George wanted, or needed, to visit with the Gompfs who were living in Albany, NY. The Gompfs who settled in Baltimore have always known that there was a third brother, and it is natural to wonder why he did not settle in Baltimore. There may have still been land available around Baltimore, as Peter bought his land there in 1863. In any case, in 1862 the United States was in the midst of its Civil War, and the dividing line between the North and the South was perilously close to Baltimore. I cannot blame George and his family for not wanting to travel to Baltimore in 1862! By the mid-1850's land was opening up for settlement in the north part of Perth County. Still, why would the immigrants choose a place so far from family? It may not have been all that far.

33: Some early Gompf settlers - city and year of immigration. (Not all immigrants are shown.)


Things I notice:

1. Listowel is, indeed, west of Baltimore. Although most of us in the US think of it as simply “North”. 2. A branch of the Albany Gompfs was living in Rochester by 1870, although I can’t find that any were

there as early as 1862. Also, there is one connection I have been able to find between a Gompf and Perth County. A man named Frederick Gompf, born 1835 in Kirchheim and settled at the age of 2 in Marion County Ohio, traveled to Waterloo, Ontario (50 km from Listowel) in 1851 to apprentice as a cooper. George’s son Nicholas was born in 1837, so Nicholas and Frederick were contemporaries. Also, George’s second son, John, was a brewer and he declared himself as such on the 1871 census. While there is no solid evidence that the Kirchheim Gompfs were related to the Nieder-Ofleiden Gompfs, it is tempting to think that a young man who was learning the trade of barrel-making could have written home to a cousin who was thinking about establishing himself as a beer-maker to tell him about what he had observed regarding the matter. Whatever the reasoning, George and family settled in Ontario. I have not checked the land records in Perth County to see when George purchased his land, but he must have done so before 1871. The Gompfs purchased land 2.5 miles south-east of Listowel. Land in Ontario was divided along an even grid and each lot had a “concession” number (the horizontal rows of the grid) and a “lot” number (the vertical columns of the grid.) The Gompfs owned the land on the 1st Concession of Wallace, lots 13 and 14.

34: Part of the Township of Wallace, 1879. The property of Nicholas Gompf is on the bottom row, to the right of

Listowel. (Note: the map is not oriented with North at the top. The top is more of a North-East.)


35: Main street, Listowel

In the 1871 Canadian census, George and his family appear in Wallace, North Perth County, Ontario. They live next door to Nicholas and his family.

36: The 1871 Census showing the households of Nicholas and George Gompf. (I have no idea who

Charles Kemble was.) The Gompfs were Lutheran and attended a country church (St. Paul’s Lutheran) in Gowanstown (directly above Listowel in the property map above). Both George and his wife are buried in this church yard. I found a lot of fascinating information about this area from a website written by the descendant of Peter Orth who also immigrated from Hesse. (http://www3.sympatico.ca/don.orth/story.htm)

“"Wallace Township was one of the many townships which in the 1840's were carved out of the heavily-wooded, unsurveyed crown land, commonly known as the Queen's Bush, which lay to the north of the Huron Tract and south of Georgian Bay. the boundaries of Wallace itself first appear sketched on a map of Canada West (i.e. Ontario) dated 1846. The Township's triangular shape is unusual, but it is the result of it being the left-over piece when lines were drawn parallel to Lake Huron and to existing lines further east. The "left-over" heritage also meant that it was the very last township of the Queen's bush to be surveyed and opened up for sale". (P. 135).


The first survey of Wallace Township was undertaken in 1847. As of September 16, 1856, Crown land in Wallace Township became available for sale. Notice of this sale occurred on July 4, 1856. Previous to this time, there were "squatters" living in Wallace Township. So many of these squatters put in claims for the land on which they were living that it appears that only several lots actually became available for sale. The terms of sale were 10 shillings per acre, payable in 10 equal annual installments, with interest, actual occupation to be immediate and continuous. In order to receive the Crown Patent which made ownership complete, the settler had to pay the full price, plus interest, at ten shillings (about $2.00 per acre). Therefore, the first Patent in Wallace was not issued until May 7, 1859.” “... [the immigrants] would probably have encountered and endured a more "pioneer" existence in Wallace Township given that it had only come under settlement starting in the late 1850's. This would have meant that many of the original settlers would have faced the difficult task of clearing virgin forests, draining swamps and building shelter, most typically log cabins as well as constructing roads and establishing the basic amenities of a rural community including the establishment of churches and schools and early businesses.” “Peter Orth was very active in his church while living in Wallace Township indicating his devout Lutheran faith. Peter was one of the founding members of St. Paul's Lutheran Church located on part of Lot 30, Concession 5, near the village of Shipley which is near the present day village of Gowanstown. The land for the church was donated by Johannes Nickel on which a log church was built. The congregation was organized as of April 30, 1864. … The congregation was started by the Missouri Synod with Rev. Wiechmann of Flordale who served the families by holding services in the homes every three weeks. In 1874, a number of people, including Peter Orth and most of his family, left St. Paul's Lutheran Church and followed Pastor H. Bruer in the founding of Trinity Lutheran Church located in the village of Kurtzville. … The congregation remaining at St. Paul's Lutheran Church asked the Canada Synod for a clergyman. The split in the church at that time was very divisive for the community and for many families… [The] children probably attended school at S.S. 4 Wallace. The first school was a log building constructed in 1858 at a cost of $101.50 and located at Lot 35 of Concession 5, Wallace Township. “[George and family] probably lived very much in a German culture and milieu until he died. The large concentration of German settlers in Wallace Township would have made it very easy to function in German on a day-to-day basis. Church services during his lifetime were believed to have been conducted solely in German and most of his reading material would likewise have been written in German. In fact, most of the tombstones in the Wallace Township cemeteries for the German residents were engraved in German script and language until early in the 1900's.

George and Margarethe had four children: Nicholas (1837), Margaret (1839), John (1844), and William (1847). All the children were born in Germany. A grand-daughter of George’s recalls George teaching her youngest sister to walk by tying a scarf around her middle while he helped her balance. Apparently, he helped all the younger Gompf children to walk in this manner. Margarethe died between 1871 and 1881. Sometime between 1881 and 1887 George was walking in his field when he fell over a pile of stones and hurt his chest. He never recovered from this injury and died shortly after. He was buried in the Lutheran Church yard beside his wife.


3.1: Nicholas Gompf, being the eldest son, farmed the home place in Listowel. He married Louise Lorch, a neighboring farmer's daughter. She had been born in Nassau, Germany. Louise came to Canada with her parents and two brothers in a small sail boat. It took nine weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean Nicholas and Louise had thirteen children. Three of these children died very young, on the same day, from diphtheria. They raised the ten remaining children -- 3 sons and 7 daughters – on the farm. Nicholas and Louise also cared for his parents and later, until his death, her father at the family home. Katherine Gompf Pommer (1865), William Gompf (1867), Minnie Gompf Daum (1868), Frederick Nicholas Gompf (1870), Elizabeth Gompf Kennedy (1868), Julia Ann Gompf Kennedy (1878), Louise Gompf Pommer (1881), Heinrich Gompf (1882), Amelia Elise Gompf Cairns (1884), and Mary Augusta Gompf Woods (1887). To say that Nicholas has many descendants is putting it very mildly. I am aware of over 230 descendants and there are many, many more to be found. Nicholas died February 20, 1916 at the age of 84 in the original farm home of his father. Louise died October 8, 1916.

3.3.4: Frederick Nicholas Gompf, Nicholas’ second son, stayed and farmed the land in Listowel with his wife Lucy Kidd. They continued to look after Fred’s parents until they died. Fred and Lucy died childless so the farm is no longer in the Gompf name.

3.3.6: Julia Ann Gompf married George Alexander Kennedy in 1907 in Ontario. George’s family farmed in Listowel, and he and Julia continued to make Listowel their home. They had one child, Clinton (1907).

3.3.7: Louise Gompf didn’t marry until she was nearly 30. Before then, she lived with her uncle John in Hamilton for a bit (she was with his household on the 1901 census), and she was a domestic (“in service”) in Listowel when, in 1910, she married Dan Pommer (brother to Christian Pommer, who married Louise’s sister Katherine.) Dan was a cabinet-maker. In 1911 they lived in Berlin, Ontario (later re-named to Kitchener). They had no children.

The rest of the children moved to Manitoba. From what I can tell, eldest son William was the first to head west. He did so in 1889.

From http://manitobia.ca/cocoon/launch/en/themes/ias “The young Canadian government had plans for the prairie. It was to be turned into an agricultural colony filled with immigrants from Eastern Canada, New England and the United Kingdom. These new Western Canadians would buy goods produced in Eastern Canada and grow wheat and other grains that would be shipped to Europe from Montreal. For this to happen the Aboriginal people of the plains would have to give up their rights to the land, a trans-continental railway would have to be built, central Canadian industries would have to be protected from competition in the United States, and hundreds of thousands of immigrants would have to be recruited.”

“The province's chief attraction was free land. Under the Dominion Land Act of 1872 homesteaders could get 160 acres of land for free as long as they improved the land, grew crops and lived on it for three years. Their only cost for the land was a $10 registration fee. But breaking the heavy clay soil, building a house in a land without forests, and getting in a crop were hard work. Oxen pulled the ploughs, seeding was done by hand, and homes were often built of sod. Until the railway came through even getting to the Prairies could prove to be an arduous journey involving a mixture


steamer, railway through the United States, stagecoach, wagon, cart and foot. The land may have been free, but only six of every ten homesteaders was able to stay on the land long enough to claim their 160 acres. Despite this, farms and towns began to cover the postage stamp province. As the Canadian Pacific Railway spread westward, it created a row of towns and villages and Brandon, the province's second largest city. “

37: Oak Lake, Manitoba

38: Aerial view of Oak Lake, Manitoba

3.1.1: Katherine married Christian Pommer, a farmer, in Ontario in 1892. Both of his parents had immigrated from Germany. His mother had come from Udenhausen, Hessen, Germany in 1837 with her parents and siblings. In 1901 Katherine and Christian were still in Ontario, but by 1916 they had moved to Woodworth, in the Brandon region of Manitoba. I cannot find them in 1911. Perhaps they were in transit to Manitoba at that time.

Katherine and Christian had “only” 5 children. The children all lived, all married, and all produced children of their own. I know of 52 descendants of theirs (including children, grandchildren, etc.) I am sure there are more. One of their children was William Albert Pommer, who was a member of the Canadian House of Commons

3.1.2: William left for Manitoba in March 1889, according to the book “Listowel Ontario, Past and Present. 1852-1921.” By Cyrus Hacking (p. 38). [This is the only mention of Gompf in the entire book.] William must have returned to Ontario to marry Agnes Lindsay


as they married in Ontario in 1899. On the 1906 census, William and Agnes were in Maskawata, which is about 7 miles from Oak Lake. In 1916, they were in Oak Lake.

William and Agnes had 7 children, all of whom married and had children of their own. I have not come close to investigating all these families!

3.1.3: Minnie Gompf married the blacksmith John “Jack” Daum some time before 1888 in Ontario. Jack’s parents had both immigrated from somewhere in Germany. Minnie and Jack had two boys Albert (1888) and Charles (1893) in Ontario before moving to Oak Lake, arriving before 1901. Once in Manitoba, it appears that John became a farmer for a while, but by 1911 they had moved to Brandon where he was once again a blacksmith.

3.1.5: Elizabeth “Lizzy” Gompf married James Reuban Kennedy abt 1896. (He is not related to sister Julia Ann’s husband George Kennedy.) Because their first child, Clarence was born in March of 1898 in Manitoba, they must have migrated before1898. James’ father was a farmer, so chances are good he was a farmer before getting to Manitoba. He was certainly a farmer afterwards. Lizzy and James had 7 children, one of whom died as an infant. The rest married and probably all had children.

3.1.8: Harry Gompf married Lena Taylor Dec 20, 1910 in Winnipeg. They lived for a while in Saskatchewan, but ended up in Oak Lake. They had 9 children, although one died at birth. Their children and grandchildren have reproduced in moderation, having an approximate average of 3 children each (when they had children.)

3.1.9: Amelia “Milla” Gompf married Fred Cairns in 1908 in Manitoba. According to a history she told to her nephew Max’s wife, Annie, she moved to Manitoba around 1905. They stayed in Oak Lake, where they had 5 children. Their only girl died as an infant but I believe the four boys all had families of their own.

3.1.10: Mary Augusta “Gussie” Gompf married Herbert Augustus Wood in Winnipeg in 1912 and Edmonton in 1916. In 1922 they moved to Los Angeles, California. They had no children.

As an irrelevant aside, the author’s ancestors, Robson, arrived in Ontario in 1867. Some of the children went to Manitoba and settled not far from Oak Lake, in an even smaller place named Deleau. The present-day Robsons of Deleau know the present-day Gompfs of Oak Lake, but I have not found that any of the families, even through the wife’s mother’s lines, married. 3.2: Margaret Gompf married John Klapp also from Nieder-Ofleiden. He had sailed with the Gompfs to New York on the Gascher. John and Margaret lived one mile from Listowel on a farm (concession 1, lot 31). Before going to Canada, John had been a tailor. John and Margaret had 7 children: Louisa (1863), John (1866), William (1869), George (1870), Henry Nicholas (1873), Frederick J (1876) and Catherine Elizabeth (1880). By 1901 the children started moving west. John, George, Henry and Frederick were all on various censuses in Manitoba in 1901, 1911 and 1916, in towns like McCreary, Neepawa and Brandon. Henry Nicholas, after going to Manitoba, was living in Norton Shores, Michigan according to the 1930 United States Census. His descendants still live there. After Margaret died (in Ontario) in 1905, John also moved to Manitoba, although he returned to Listowel by the time of his death in 1920.


3.3: John Gompf married Barbara Wilhelmina Keil. (He was 29 and she was 20). Her parents immigrated from Germany abt 1852, no more than two years before she was born. Her father was a cooper. John must have trained as a brewer while he was living in Germany because on the 1871 census he indicates “brewer” as his occupation. By 1876 John had moved to Hamilton, Ontario to work as a brewer. In 1880 he established the “Ontario Brewery”, which closed in 1906.

39: A John Gompf beer bottle (you can see his name at the top of the picture.)

40: Location of "Ontario Brewery" on a map of present-day Hamilton, Ontario

John and Barbara had nine children. Six died before they were 5 years old. The surviving ones were: Amelia Gompf Gibb (1876), Wilhelmina “Minnie” Gompf Thedorff (1885) and John Charles Ernest Gompf (1889).

3.3.1: Minnie Gompf married Andrew John Charles Thedorf, a piano repair-man, who was born in Ontario but had moved to Michigan by 1910. He returned to Ontario by 1912 and married Minnie while there. In 1915 Minnie crossed the border going to Michigan, but in 1920 they were living in Buffalo. They appear to have had no children.

3.3.2: Minnie’s older sister, Amelia married Otto Gibb, a bookkeeper. They had 9 children. Their eldest child, John, was living with Andrew and Minnie Thedorf in Buffalo in 1920. Their eldest girl, Winnie, married a man who was born and raised in Michigan.

3.3.3: John married Laura Davis and they stayed in Hamilton, Ontario.

Barbara died sometime between 1892 and 1899 (her last child was born Oct 1892). She was no more than 46 years old. In Nov 1899 John married Annie Jahn. John died in 1908 at the age of 63.


3.4: William There is some chance that William served in the U.S. Civil War, as there are at least two William Gompfs born in Germany abt 1845 who served after 1862 and have not been identified. This isn’t impossible. First, William (and family) sailed into New York. Second, William’s siblings Nicholas and Margaret were in Ontario by 1864, but there is no certain way to tell when William (or John) arrived in Canada. It isn’t, however, very likely. On the 1871 Canadian census, William is a brewer, living with his parents in Listowel. In 1875, William married Fredricke Wilhelmina Keil, sister of Barbara Keil (the wife of his brother, John.) When they married, William was 28 years old and Fredricke was 19. Some time between 1875 and 1879, William and Fredricke moved to Hamilton, Ontario. William and his brother, John, stuck together through the years, living and often working in the same place or very close together. During his time in Hamilton, William had four professions: Brewer, Teamster, Brewer’s Agent and Butcher. In 1879 he was a brewer. In 1880 and 1881, he was a butcher. But in 1880 his brother John opened a brewery and apparently John needed William to help him. William returned to being first a brewer, then a teamster for the brewery and finally a brewer’s agent. He worked for his brother until 1892, when he was finally able to return to being a butcher. William’s shop was at 68 Market hall.

41: Shops near Market St. Completely renovated, but possibly very much like the shop that William ran. (These 3

little houses are surrounded by parking lots and big buildings.) According to family history, William was noted for his excellent German sausages. His home was on 488 Catherine St. at the intersection with Maccaulay St.


42: House at the corner of Catherine N and Maccaulay St., approximately where William lived.

William and Fredricke had three children: Henrietta Gompf Sheldrick (1876), George A Gompf (1880), and Matilda Gompf, who died when she was 8. Henrietta and George both stayed in the Hamilton area. There is always more to be discovered, more to be written down. I welcome corrections, updates and additions. [email protected]

three gompf brothers from nieder-ofleiden · 2011-07-12 · the gompfs from nieder-ofleiden page 2...

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