The Middle Mill, Im Krümpel
The Wesemann mill was the middle mill (Mittelmühle), Steinacker’s “lord’s mill in the Krümpel” (Herrenmühle im Krümpel). Around 1580 it was the Hake family’s Häger mill. The von Hake of Buchhagen rebuilt it, and the ruling prince bought it in 1661. By 1759 a toll was attached to it. A Linse village description of that year, as Olaf März quotes it, says the duke had moved the land toll into the lord’s mill (Herren Mühle), “and there is a good deal of traffic through here.” Goods carried to the Weser from Halle, Linse, Dielmissen, Dohnsen and Kirchbrak paid the toll at this ducal mill, which stood between the landing and the village. The lord’s mill of 1759 was probably the middle mill.
Before the Wesemanns
The Halle registers name the middle mill’s holders from the 1590s. The first Linse miller in the burials is Heinrich Kersten, “a miller by trade,” struck and fatally wounded on the road between Bodenwerder and Linse on the night of 13 June 1595. He died on 11 July and was buried the next day. A second Kersten, also a Linse miller, married the widow of Curd Langen in 1599 and was buried that August, of dysentery. A note in the register pointing back to 1595 makes him probably the man who struck the blow, not the victim. Neither entry names a mill. Diederich Möller was “at Linse in the middle mill” in October 1596 and appears in the baptisms until 1602. “M. Diderich Müller of Linse,” about forty, was buried in January 1605, and two of his sons followed him by March; he was probably the middle miller.
| Years | Holder | As the register gives it |
|---|---|---|
| 1596 to 1602 | Diederich Möller | “in der Mittelmühlen”; buried 1605 (probably) |
| 1607 | Heinrich Crossen | “der Mittelmüller zu Linse” |
| 1612 to 1616 | Marcus | Mittelmüller; his wife buried 1616 (one man, probably) |
| 1619 | Hans, then Andreas | Mittelmüller |
| 1623 | Albrecht Carsten | “der Mittelmüller” |
| 1668 | Margaretha Vitt | a godmother “aus der Mittelmühlen” |
| 1677 to 1681 | Barthel Vith | Mittelmüller |
| 1684 to 1687 | Rudolph Gaßbrauch(?) | “Müller in der Mittelmühlen zu Linse” |
| 1707 to 1710 | Johan Schlüter | Mittelmüller |
| 1723 to 1729 | Christian Sander | “der Mittel Müller zu Linse”; twins baptized 1723, his wife buried 1729 |
| 1727 | Johan Friedrich Freytag(?), the younger | Mittelmüller |
| 1728 | Christian Kilen(?) | “of the middle mill at Linse” |
| July 1732 | Johan Gerhard [Küll/Kill?] | Mittelmüller |
| December 1732 | Daniel Müller | “jetzo in der Mittel Mühlen” |
| 1734 to 1744 | Franz Bergmüller | Mittelmüller |
| 1753 to 1762 | Burchard (Gerhard) Rudolph Dempewulff | leaseholder (Pachtmüller); dead by September 1762 |
| 1762 to 1767 | Hermann Jürgen Schäfer | married the widow; Mittelmüller 1766 |
| 1771 to 1774 | Franz Conrad Dempewulff | Mittelmüller |
| 1774 | Johann Heinrich Wesemann | “jetziger Pächter” |
Each entry is given as read, many with doubtful words marked; the chain built from them is probable, not proven. The Thirty Years’ War leaves a gap after 1623. Christian Sander’s wife was buried in 1729, and in July 1732 a Mittelmüller named Johan Gerhard [Küll/Kill?] stood godfather at the baptism of a son of “Eleonora Sand[?] … the middle miller’s wife at Linse,” who was either the child’s mother or her employer; the entry does not say which. He may have been of the Kilen family, or the Knüll miller Johann Gevert Knüll. In 1722 “Hinrich Wasman from the middle mill” stood godfather at Linse beside a mill hand of the village; who he was is discussed in the Wesemann Family section. Franz Bergmüller buried a stillborn child as “the middle miller” in February 1744, and the middle miller’s wife, aged 48, was buried in January 1750, her husband unnamed.
In 1753 the Halle church inventory lists “the leaseholder in the middle mill” among the Linse payers. He was probably the Rudolph Dempewulff who was the middle mill’s leaseholder in 1757 and 1761, under the forenames Gerhard Rudolph and Burchard Rudolph. He was dead by 21 September 1762, when his widow, Wilhelmine Elisabeth Heyken, married Hermann Jürgen Schäfer, a miller from Amelunxen in the Corvey lands who was already working at Linse. Schäfer was the middle miller in February 1766 and a miller at Linse until April 1767. No entry from May 1767 to April 1771 names a holder. Then Franz Conrad Dempewulff appears as the middle miller from 29 May 1771 to 6 March 1774.
The Wesemanns arrived that spring. On 5 June 1774 “the widow of Joh. Wilhelm Kampen, from Salzhemmendorf, now in the middle mill with her daughter,” stood godmother at Linse; her daughter was Christine Kampen, Johann Heinrich Wesemann’s wife. On 27 October 1774 the clerk wrote “Master Johann Heinrich Wäsemann, now leaseholder in the said middle mill”. The family almost certainly took the mill between 6 March and 5 June 1774.
The Dempewulffs
The Dempewulffs were a milling family who stayed at Linse long after the mill passed on. “The miller Frank Conr. Dempewolf” stood godfather in February 1766, and his wife godmother in June 1767, so he was married and at Linse four years before he held the middle mill. Others of the name appear without a mill: Jo. Fried. Dempewolf, a godfather in 1770; Just Daniel Dempewulff, whose wife was “von Holten,” a sponsor in March 1774; and “Johann Erh. Dempewulf,” written as upper miller over a struck-out “middle,” in March 1776. Hanne Dempewulff was a godmother in 1789, and in 1799, aged 35, bore a son to the journeyman miller Heinrich Cohrs of Polle. Georg Dempewulff was a godparent at Linse in 1792 and 1799, the widow of Conrad Dempewulff died at Linse on 29 September 1803, aged 72, and an innkeeper Dempewolf of Halle and Ernst Dempewolf of Bodenwerder both appear in 1810.
Elsewhere the name belonged to millers. Archive catalogs name Anton Dempewolf, middle miller at Voldagsen in 1712; Christoph Dempewolf, leaseholder of the upper mill at Deensen in 1743 to 1746; and Georg Dempewolf, a mill leaseholder “from Halle,” in 1815 to 1841, though none names Linse. The earliest Dempewulff origin on record is at Northeim, where on 27 November 1749 Master Johann Burchard Dempwolf of Willershausen, son of the late Johann Caspar Dempewolff, “former water miller at Kloster Amelungsborn,” married a brewer’s daughter. Amelungsborn lies a few kilometers from Linse. The Linse tenants, Burchard Rudolph among them, were possibly of that miller’s family. That the Dempewolfs of Voldagsen, Deensen, Linse, Halle and Bodenwerder were all one milling family is a theory resting on the name alone.
The Wesemann Years
The middle mill was the one Hassel and Bege describe as let on hereditary rent by the Chamber, and the ducal Chamber’s own file on it, “the hereditary-rent grant of the grinding and oil mill at Linse,” runs from 1770 to 1844 in two volumes. The catalog makes plain that the Chamber granted the tenure through the district of Wickensen; the file itself has not been read. Every Brunswick file from 1775 on calls Johann Heinrich Wesemann a hereditary-rent miller, and the family is the “middle miller” in 1777, 1792 and 1804.
Johann Heinrich held the middle mill until his death in December 1801, and his son Georg Ludewig from 1803. Ludewig Wesemann is recorded as the miller at Linse in 1804, 1805, 1807, 1808, 1810, 1813, 1814 and 1817. With his 1803 marriage, which already calls him master miller there, and his 1855 death entry, which names the mill, the records place him at the wheel from within two years of his father’s death. The valuation of the commune of Linse, dated 6 December 1811, enters him as a smallholder (Brinksitzer) with one water mill of two runs and a garden of 1 Morgen 40 Ruthen, and the land-tax roll of 1812 gives him 2 Morgen 70 Ruthen of farmland, the garden, and “1 mill with 2 runs”.
From 1832 the registers call the Linse millers machine-millers (Maschinenmüller) instead of the plain “miller” and “master miller” of 1804 to 1820. The word marks a mill running machinery beyond a simple grain gear. That fits Hassel and Bege’s 1803 description of Linse mills with both grain and oil gears, and the grinding gear that set off the Gripsmühle lawsuits in 1823. The family was improving its machinery in the very years it was in court over gears.
Then the mill was lost. When Georg Ludewig died on 29 December 1855, the register called him “formerly master miller in the middle mill at Linse”. The family is recorded at the mill through the godparent entries of 1840, and Wilhelm Fischer appears as master miller at Linse with a daughter born there on 7 February 1841. The Wesemanns therefore left the middle mill between about 1840 and 1855, probably early in that span. By 1852 Georg Ludewig’s son was a landless lodger at Linse (see Wesemann Family). The heritage record matches: the Im Krümpel site is the broken-up one, named for an address with no listed building left, divided and partly torn down, which is what becomes of a holding a family loses.
References
- Karl Steinacker, Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Holzminden, vol. 4 of Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Herzogtums Braunschweig, ed. Paul Jonas Meier (Wolfenbüttel: Julius Zwissler, 1907). Digitized on the Internet Archive (bub_gb_q9MDAAAAYAAJ; diebauundkunstd00steigoog) and by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00066839-4); HTML transcription by Christian Kaese, Eschershausen, 2020, at kaese.name/Heimatgeschichte/1907_Denkmaeler/.
- Olaf März, Fließende Übergänge: Stadt – Flecken – Dorf im Braunschweiger Weserdistrikt in der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Diss. phil., Leibniz Universität Hannover, 2016; DOI 10.15488/8737): pp. 60–64 (what a village description contains), p. 91 and note 983 (the toll in the Herren Mühle at Linse, 1759), pp. 355–361 (the Tran and the Floto family), the source list of the Dorf-, Feld- und Wiesenbeschreibungen, and the appendix tables (the head-tax list of 1678 and the village descriptions of 1759 for Linse and Halle).
- Halle Kirchenbuch “Beerdigungen 1585–1734” (churchRegister 390642), Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer: Bild 33 (the Kersten burial of July 1595), Bild 36 and 65 (the Möller household, 1596 and 1605), Bild 56 (1599), Bild 73 (the plague of 1613), Bild 75–76 (1616), Bild 192 (24 October 1727, the Erbmüller Johan Knüll) and Bild 196 (7 December 1729, the Mittelmüller Christian Sander’s wife).
- Halle Kirchenbuch, Taufen 1591–1711 (churchRegister 390643), Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer: the Linse mill entries of 1596–1625 (Bild 1–107, with Bild 69, 75, 78, 80, 81, 86, 89, 96, 98, 104, 105 and 107), of 1668 and 1673–1690 (Bild 191–241, with Bild 194, 201, 205, 208, 213, 220, 225 and 227) and of 1707–1711 (Bild 320–343, with Bild 320, 327, 329, 334, 335 and 341).
- Halle Kirchenbuch “Taufen Trauungen 1707–1740” (churchRegister 390645), Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer: Bild 76–95 (the baptisms of 1721–1725, with Bild 80, 12 April 1722, and Bild 86, 29 September 1723); Bild 106–112 (1727–1729); Bild 130 (26 July 1732) and Bild 131 (9 December 1732); Bild 142–145 (1735–1736); Bild 162 (the marriage of 1715 or 1716).
- Halle Kirchenbuch 1741–1765 (churchRegister 390647), Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer: baptisms, Bild 53 (6 October 1743), Bild 140 (23 September 1761) and Bild 160 (5 July 1763); burials, Bild 195 (February 1744), Bild 201 (11 July 1747), Bild 205 (6 January 1750) and Bild 227 (September 1757).
- Halle Corpus bonorum of 1753 (Archion 364116), Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evangelisch-lutherischen Landeskirche in Braunschweig, Archion online viewer: Bild 87, p. 127 (“Aus Linse, Rocken”), Bild 89, p. 131, and Bild 90, p. 133 (the hearths).
- Halle Kirchenbuch “Trauungen 1736–1799” (churchRegister 390646), Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer: Bild 100 (1777, Harderode, the Rennemöller marriage); Bild 149 (8 November 1792, “Müllermeister in der Mittelmühle zu Linse”). Also: Bild 2 (24 August 1736), Bild 6 (12 November 1739), Bild 8–20 (the marriages of 1741–1753), Bild 20–87 (October 1753 – 1773, with Bild 29, 44–45, 47 and 79), Bild 88 (9 June 1774), Bild 88–138 (1774–1790, with Bild 104, 29 October 1778, Bild 132, 1789, and Bild 139, 10 February 1791). Transcriptions:
- Halle Kirchenbuch “Taufen Beerdigungen 1766–1799” (churchRegister 390648), Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer: Bild 65, entry 30 (20 August 1777, “der Mittelmüller Heinrich Waßemann” as godfather). Also: baptisms Bild 4 (February 1766), Bild 11 (5 April 1767), Bild 12 (June 1767), Bild 19–20 (1768), Bild 33 (29 May 1771), Bild 40 (12 November 1772), Bild 45–49 (1774), Bild 53–70 (1775 – September 1778, with Bild 57, 59, 64, 65, 67 and 70), Bild 101 (1785), Bild 113 (1788), Bild 117 (1789), Bild 136 (3 February 1792), Bild 186 and 191 (1798, 1799); burials Bild 219 (30 April 1770), Bild 223 (1771), Bild 231–267 (1775–1791, with Bild 241, 1778, and Bild 264, 23 July 1790) and Bild 277 (1795); and the baptism name index, Bild 199–205. Transcriptions:
- Halle Kirchenbuch “Taufen Beerdigungen 1800–1814” (04-03075, churchRegister 390649, 188 images) and “Trauungen 1800–1808” (04-03076, churchRegister 390650), Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer. Also: Trauungen, Jg. 1804, Nr. 3 (Brand–Sporleder); Begrabene, Jg. 1803, Nr. 36 (Bild 167, written p. 310, the Brünig child) and Jg. 1800, Nr. 24 (Johanne Marie Brand); Begrabene, Jg. 1804, Nr. 27 (Bild 170, the Mittelmüller infant); Taufen, Jg. 1805, Nr. 21, Jg. 1809, Nrs. 16 and 17 (Bild 96, written p. 187), Jg. 1810, Nr. 36 (Bild 110), Jg. 1812, Nr. 20 and Jg. 1813, Nr. 36. The volume has no surname index of its own; images 185 to 188 run to an Ende marker.
- Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Abteilung Wolfenbüttel, catalogue entries in Arcinsys: NLA WO, 4 Alt 19 Nr. 5086 (Anton Dempewolf, Mittelmüller at Voldagsen, security deposit, 1712); 202 N Nr. 1425 (Christoph Dempewolf, lessee of the upper mill at Deensen, with mill inventories of 1732 and 1745, 1743–1746); 40 Neu 4 Nr. 1355 (Georg Dempewolf, “Mühlenpächter aus Halle,” a meadow in the Haller Forst, 1815–1841). Catalogue level only; originals only.
- Northeim, Konfirmationen Trauungen Beerdigungen 1734–1775 (churchRegister 382957), Kirchenkreis Northeim, Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evangelisch-lutherischen Landeskirche Hannovers, Archion online viewer: Bild 51, the marriage of 27 November 1749.
- NLA WO, 50 Neu 2 Wick, Nr. 47 (1770–1844, 2 vols.), Vererbenzinsung der Mahl- und Ölmühle in Linse, in the ducal Chamber’s records for Amt Wickensen. Catalogue entry read; document unread.
- Linse Kirchenbuch 1815–1853 (signature 04-03142, churchRegister 390716) and Linse Kirchenbuch 1854–1875, Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer. Full variant-name sweep of images 2–90 of the earlier volume, producing 29 hits and the bound-in W surname index at image 89; high-resolution reading of the 1832 marriage and baptism, the 1855, 1858 and 1861 death entries, and the 1857 baptism, 30–31 August 2026. Transcriptions:); the 1832 infant death (Verstorbene, Jg. 1832, Nr. 2); the 1838 stillbirth (Geborene, Jg. 1838, Nr. 10 and the unnumbered row following, Bild 27, written pp. 46–47); the 1846 marriage (Proclamierte und Copulierte, Jg. 1846, Nr. 1, Bild 58, written p. 149); the 1847 deaths (Verstorbene, Jg. 1847, Nrs. 1, 3 and 4); the 1852 death of Hanne Caroline Wilhelmine Waßemann geborene Brand (Verstorbene, Jg. 1852, Nr. 1, Bild 81, written p. 194); the volume’s own alphabetical surname index at written p. c. 197, Bild 83, B section read in full; and, in the 1854–1875 volume, the 1855, 1858 and 1861 deaths (Bild 46, 47 and 48, written pp. 215, 217 and 219) and the 1858 Leßing marriage (Trauungen, Jg. 1858, Nr. 3, Bild 35).
- Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Abteilung Wolfenbüttel: NLA WO, 13 W Nr. 1690, Aufn. 045–046 (the valuation of the commune of Linse, 6 December 1811), and 13 W Nr. 1747, Aufn. 0284–0287 (the land-tax roll of the Canton Eschershausen, 1812, Commune Linse), Arcinsys online viewer.
- Johann Georg Heinrich Hassel and Karl Friedrich Bege, Geographisch-statistische Beschreibung der Fürstenthümer Wolfenbüttel und Blankenburg, vol. 2, Topographie des Weserbezirks (Braunschweig, 1803), Linse and Thran entries, read in full: the Linse entry’s two Mahlmühlen on two tenures, one let on Erbenzins by the Chamber and one an Erbmühle; and the Thran entry’s Privatmühle of four gears, its 18½ Morgen, the Flotho Spedition of 1750, and the words nach Linse eingepfarrt. The manuscript collectanea behind it, Hassel’s Kollektaneen, gathered c. 1780, are at the Landschaftliche Bibliothek, Kapitel X, 2.