Kuck Family History: The Beginnings in Germany

For many years, I never knew the Kuck line beyond the immigrant John Kuck who made the move from Adophsdorf, Germany to the United States. However, on a lark, I wrote to a historical center in Adolphsdorf and was put in contact with a Kuck researcher who was trying to track down those Kucks that left Adolphsdorf for America. We swapped information and I ended up with five generations of Kucks from a church record in Adolphsdorf, Germany. They are

8th Grandfather                Marten Kuck

7th Great Grandparents    Hinrich and Gretje Wendelken Kuck

6th Great Grandparents    Hinrich Jr. and Ann Dorothea Elonore Steinkemeier Kuck

5th Great Grandparents    Johann Heinrich and Agnete Grabau Kuck

4th Great Grandparents    Hinrich and Anna Gerken Kuck.

Besides their names, I have their birth and death dates and names of all their children. Someday, I think it would be fun to chase down all those lines and descendants but as I speak not a word of German, it will probably be a wish never completed by me. I lack though, any stories of their lives that I can seek out and sometimes find with those ancestors who lived in the United States. For the most part, they are names and dates on a paper but with little meaning. That ever so slightly changes with my 4th great grandmother Anna Gerken Kuck.

Unknown on Left and Anna Gerken Kuck on Right

Many years ago, I made contact with another Kuck line that made it to America, a descendant of the brother of my original immigrant John Kuck. In her possession was the above photograph of my 4th great grandmother on the right holding the book in her lap. I attached it to my online tree on Ancestry where is was soon copied and pasted to someone called Anna Maria Gertrud Ahausen and promptly copied to over a dozen other trees. Now, those trees with her picture incorrectly attached, outnumber the online trees with it correctly attached and so people assume that we are the ones incorrectly attaching it. I learned a hard lesson which is why I have never and will never show a digital image of the back of this picture with Anna Gerken's name handwritten on there and the date and place the picture was taken and also why I have added a big old copyrighted tag in the middle of it. Live and learn.

The same researcher in Germany also sent along this photograph claiming it to be a picture of the Kuck homestead in Adolphsdorf. From what I gather, it was quite common for the families to live in the same buildings as their livestock and harvested items. He also sent me the one below which outlines the Kuck farm in Adolphsdorf and I can easily find it using satellite imagery sites to this day. Someday I like to go there and pay homage though I have been told that the Kuck family no longer owns it.

This brings me to my third great grandfather John Kuck. It is a bit of a mystery of why he immigrated in the first place. His parents Hinrich and Anna had seven children by the time John left for America. The oldest one, Johann had died in infancy, John was the eldest alive, another brother Hinrich who also died young at the age of five and three more brothers and one sister. Typically, the eldest living male was pretty much set inheritance why so why he left is a mystery. His parents were both still living at the time so perhaps it was a bit of wanderlust in him that drove him to leave the family farm.

On 20 June 1853, when John was just a 16 year old boy, he would set sail for America and to my knowledge, never return to Germany. His youngest brother at the time of his departure, William would die two years later at the age of 3 and another brother George would be born that year (the eighth child of Hinrich and Anna) but he too would die at the age of two. The three siblings who did survive their childhood would all immigrate to America following the trail that John blazed, and in some sense, carried on his torch.

Eleven years after John set foot on American soil, father Hinrich Kuck died at the age of 56. John's younger brother Frederic would immigrate to America soon after. The other two, Dietrich and Anna Mariah would come after their mother Anna's death on 8 August 1872 at age 60. At that point, the only Kucks left in Germany, at least from this particular family, were those in their graves.