Heinrich Ratzlaff, father of Jacob Ratzlaff (b1842)

According to the information I currently have, my great great great grandfather’s name was Heinrich Ratzlaff and I feel it’s likely that he was somehow related to the Johann Ratzlaff (1726-1805) family.  He was born sometime near the year 1800 in either Driesen, Brandenburg, or Karolswalde, Volhynia.  GRANDMA tells us that his first name may have been Jacob.  We do not know Heinrich’s wife’s name, but the couple did have four children.

1)      Henry, birth date unknown

2)      Jacob, born 08/12/1842

3)      Benjamin Jacob, born c.1848

4)      Susanna H, born 03/15/1850

#3 Benjamin’s middle name was Jacob, and #2 Jacob has also been listed with the middle initial “J”., so it’s possible that Heinrich’s name was actually Jacob.

We don’t know much about Heinrich or the oldest son, Henry.  GRANDMA indicates that Jacob, Benjamin and Susanna were all born in Karolswalde.  The green Jacob Ratzlaff book indicates that Jacob was born in Holland, but that’s just not very likely to be accurate.  Henry was probably born around 1840, which would indicate Heinrich’s birthdate to be in the neighborhood of 1800.  We don’t know anything further about Henry at this time except that the green Jacob Ratzlaff book says that he never left Russia.  Benjamin and Susanna’s names appear, like their brother Jacob’s, in the Tobias Unruh baptism record.  Unruh lists Benjamin as having been baptized in Zabara in 1858.  Susanna was baptized in 1866, but the location isn’t indicated.  Given the birth dates of the children, the Heinrich Ratzlaff family must have moved from Karolswalde to Zabara between 1850 and 1858.  They must have returned to Karolswalde by 1869.  Notes indicate that the family moved from “Poland to Russia” in 1867; could this refer to the move from Zabara to Karolswalde?

Jacob’s children are listed in an earlier entry, so they won’t be repeated here, but GRANDMA also lists names for Benjamin’s children and Susanna’s children.

Benjamin married a woman by the name of Eva Schmidt who was born around the year 1849.  In 1877, his and five other families set out to move to Jerusalem.  The party got as far as Turkey where they were forced to stop.  They lived in Turkey for five years until a typhoid epidemic took Benjamin’s life at some point around 1881.  He was buried in Turkey.  We don’t know if Eva and the children came back to Volhynia or not, but in 1882 the family emigrated to the U.S.A. and settled near Halstead, KS.  Benjamin and Eva Ratzlaff’s children were:

1)      Bernhard, b.1864 in Volhynia, d.1944 in Regina Saskatchewan.

2)      Maria, b.1868 in Volhynia, d.1947 in Halstead, KS.  Maria married Heinrich Nightengale and many of her descendants still live in Kansas.

3)      Henry B, b.1871 in Volhynia, d.1943 in Montezuma, KS.  Henry married Sarah Schmidt and the family moved to Montezuma.

4)      Andreas, b.1874 in Volhynia, d.1949 in Delhi, CA.

5)      Helena, b.1876 in Volhynia, d.1940 in Fairview, OK.  Helena married Andrew Koehn in Marion County, KS.  After Koehn’s death, Helena married Henry Nichols in Fairview, OK.

6)      Jacob Benjamin, b.1877 in Volhynia, d.1863 in Winton, CA.  Jacob married Susie Koehn in Enid, OK.  The family lived in OK, Canada, and CA.

            The eldest child, Carolina (b.1864) probably died young.

Susanna was born in 1850 in Karolswalde.  She married Jacob Boese (Base) (1949-1897) of Karolswalde in 1871 and the family immigrated to the U.S.A. aboard the SS Kenilworth in 1875.  The couple had 10 children between 1872 and 1894 and must have attended the Bergthal Mennonite Church in Pawnee Rock, KS, although not much is know about them.  Susanna remarried later in the U.S.A. to a man named Albrecht.    GRANDMA does not indicate the date of her death.