The Thran Mill
Where the Lenne falls into the Weser stood a third mill, at Thran. Steinacker names it and its owner in 1759, the war councillor (Kriegsrat) von Nölting. Hassel and Bege describe it in 1803 in more detail than either Linse mill: a private mill with an overshot wheel driving grinding, oil, fulling and tanbark gears, on a single homestead of 18½ Morgen on the right bank of the Weser, about three hours from Wickensen, and “parished to Linse” (nach Linse eingepfarrt). The 1803 description lists Thran as a separate place in the Lower Börde, between Heyen and Kemnade. Because it belonged to a war councillor, not to the duke or a Häger family, it is missing from Rustenbach’s count of Häger mills and from the register of about 1580. “Auf der Thran” is still a street name at Linse.
Thran was a landing as well as a mill. Olaf März describes “the Tran” as the shipping point of the Brunswick Weser district, on the right bank of the Weser at the mouth of the Lenne, in the commune of Linse: “warehouse and forwarding buildings with a private mill attached.” The Floto family of merchants, from Bevern, founded the business before 1753 (Hassel and Bege say 1750) and ran it with Bremen merchants. In 1759 Johan Burchard Floto held a smallholding at Linse whose new stone-roofed barn was “in fact his goods warehouse.” Iron from the Karlshütte at Delligsen, glass from Grünenplan and Holzen, and linen from the district of Wickensen went out through it. The Halle registers show the landing at work: “Mr. Floto, merchant at Thran,” a sponsor in November 1772; Phil. Frid. Kentel, “clerk at the Thran,” in August 1775; the merchant Jo. Eberhard Flotho, whose first children were born “at the Thran,” in June 1776; and Daniel Faber, “clerk at the Thran,” beside Friderich Floto at a Halle baptism of 1778. The Thran mill of the later records was possibly the Floto company’s private mill of 1759, but that has not been shown. Even earlier, in 1737, C. Temps, miller at Thran, went to law against J. B. Flotho of Thran over the forced sale of a mill at Thran, thirteen years before the forwarding business was founded. The file is listed in the catalog of the ducal high court, but the file itself is missing.
| Years | Holder | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1737 | C. Temps | “Müller zu Thran,” in a suit over the forced sale of a mill |
| 1759 | von Nölting | owner |
| 1763 to 1768 | Conrad (Franz Conrad) Dempewulff | “der Müller von der Thran” (probably) |
| to 1788 | Deneke | “the Tran miller” |
| 1791 | Johann Friedrich Boerms | “Müller zur Thran” |
| 1792 | a Booms household | godmother “Friedricke Justine Booms von der Thran Mühle” |
| 1803 | a working private mill with four gears | |
| 1805 | a miller Dempewolff | at Thran on one of three readings |
| 1811 to 1812 | the widow Lüders | a mill of three runs |
| 1832 | Heinrich Christian Ludewig Wesemann | leaseholder |
Its millers before the Wesemanns can be traced only in pieces. Conrad Dempewulff was “the miller from the Thran” in July 1763, when he had twins baptized, and his wife was “from the Thran” in September 1768. By May 1771 he held the middle mill at Linse. The Thran miller Deneke, who fought Johann Heinrich Wesemann over the dam from 1775 to 1788, is in none of the Halle books. A Keuneke wife of 1771 and 1778, born Deneken, was of a Fischbeck family and possibly his kin. Two Deneke millers lived at Esperde, the next parish to the west. In 1781 Ilse Marie Beijen, wife of the miller Deneke, aged 64, and her son Johann Christoph, aged 23, died of dysentery and were buried together, and the miller Heinrich Christoph Deneke died about 10 June 1790, aged 66 years and 5 months, and was buried on 15 June. Neither entry names a mill or a place. The Thran miller may have been of this Esperde family, but that is a theory, not a finding. Within three years of the dam suit Deneke was gone: in 1791 the Thran miller was Johann Friedrich Boerms, and a godmother of 1792, “Friedricke Justine Booms from the Thran mill,” was possibly of his household. A miller Dempewolff of 1805 was at Thran on one of three readings of his entry, and the outgoing tenant of the Bodenwerder town mill in 1807 was also a Dempewolf. One milling family may have worked both the Thran mill and the Bodenwerder mill before the Wesemanns, but nothing connects the sightings beyond the name. In 1811 and 1812 “the widow Lüders at Thran” held the mill with three runs.
The Wesemanns came in 1832. Heinrich Christian Ludewig Wesemann’s marriage entry that year calls him “prospective master machine-miller and leaseholder of the Thran mill near Linse”. The word leaseholder matters. A hereditary holder, as the Wesemanns were at Linse, is never called a leaseholder. In one word the entry separates the son’s lease at Thran from the father’s hereditary tenure at Linse, and it fits Thran’s private ownership: one leases a private mill from its owner. As a private mill, Thran was neither a hereditary-rent holding nor a farm tenure, which is why no buyout file for it exists.
Through the 1830s the family held two of the three wheels on the lower Lenne, the father on hereditary rent at the middle mill and the son on lease at Thran. That was a stronger position than the lawsuits alone suggest, but it did not last. By 1852 the son was a landless lodger. George Wesemann was born at the Thran mill on 30 July 1838, because his father held it then (see Wesemann Family). Who owned the mill in 1832, and when it disappeared, are not known. It is not in the heritage register, and no photograph or ruin of it has been identified.
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/.
- 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.
- Robert Rustenbach, “Häger und Hägergerichte in den braunschweigischen Weserlanden,” Zeitschrift des historischen Vereins für Niedersachsen (1903), pp. 557–645. Transcribed at kaese.name/Heimatgeschichte/1903_Haeger/.
- Open-web and browser research sweeps of 19 and 29 August 2026.
- 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 “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:
- NLA WO, 7 Alt, Fb. 2 V Nr. 1590 (1737), Temps, C., Müller zu Thran./. J. B. Flotho, Thran, wegen Subhastation einer Mühle. Fonds 7 Alt, Prozessakten, Jüngere Prozessregistratur, the Justizkanzlei’s own registry. The catalogue entry records “Akte fehlt”: the file is missing from the holding and cannot be ordered. Located in Arcinsys, 5 September 2026.
- 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).
- NLA WO, 8 Alt Wick, Nr. 63 (1775–1788), Erbenzinsmüller Heinrich Wesemann of Linse v. Tran-Müller Deneke.
- NLA WO, 7 Alt, Fb. 2 Va Nr. 2281 (1791), Boerms v. Johann Hr. Wesemann.
- 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: 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.
- 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).
- Esperde Kirchenbuch 1738–1824 (churchRegister 390620), Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evangelisch-lutherischen Landeskirche Hannovers, Kirchenkreis Bodenwerder, Archion online viewer: Bild 55, p. 53 (the burials of 1781) and Bild 68, p. 66 (the burial of June 1790).
- NLA HA, Hann. 80 Hannover, Nr. 13997, read at item level, September 2026.