One of the small vanguard that preceded the great German immigration movement to the United States late in the Forties of the last century was Carl Ernst Ubbelohde, who came to New York city from his birthplace, Hannover, Germany, in 1846 and settled on a farm in Plymouth Township, Sheboygan county, in 1849. This farm is located two miles west of the City of Plymouth, and title to it has remained in the Ubbelohde family to this day.

Carl Ubbelohde before leaving Germany was engaged to Malwine Holle, of Bremen, who followed him to New York in 1849, when they were married there and immediately proceeded to their new home on the before mentioned farm, where they lived until 1875, when they removed across the line to Fond du Lac County, and after living there for eighteen years they retired to Glenbeulah, Sheboygan County, where Mrs. Ubbelohde died in 1894, at the age of 68 years, and Mr. Ubbelohde in 1908 at the age of 84 years.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Ubbelohde came of good families, his family tree traced back to 1676 in a complete printed chart, which is now in the possession of one of the sons, Sheboygan County Highway Commissioner George W. Ubbelohde.

Carl Ubbelohde was through impaired health compelled to abandon college in Germany and was advised by his physician to make a change of climate, which he did, and he came to America, where in the invigorating air of Sheboygan County's Kettles region he regained his health and lived to a ripe old age.

The pioneer Ubbelohde couple bore their full share of the hardships incident to Pioneer life. The present chronicler well remembers the log cabin which served as their first home, nestled among the rugged hills of the Kettles, and to which simple home were attracted many congenial pioneer friends by the fine intellectual atmosphere which prevailed there.

Mr. and Mrs. Ubbelohde were blessed with a family of ten sons and daughters, all of whom lived to become useful citizens. They are in the order of their birth:

Charlotte, born 1851, wife of George Grave, farmer, near Glenbeulah.

William, born 1854, farmer, near Waldo.

Carl, born 1857, lumberman, Castle Rock, Washington.

Amelia, born 1859, wife of William Coon, retired farmer, Fond du Lac.

Theodore, born 1860, retired cheese man and farmer, Hull's Crossing.

Edward, born 1862, retired farmer, Glenbeulah.

August, born 1864, retired farmer, Long Prairie, Minn.

George W., born 1866, farmer and County Highway Commissioner, Township Sheboygan Falls.

Herman, born 1868, steam engineer, Milwaukee.

Mary, born 1870, wife of Fred Emwig, railroad man, Glenbeulah.

All of which constitutes a family record not often matched in individual sturdiness, thrift and progress, a record which the Pioneer is much pleased to give space here, and a record which will find a prominent, honorable and permanent place in the history of Sheboygan County pioneerdom.

It was away back in A. D. 1846 when a lank, blond and blue-eyed young man of nearly twenty-two years left the home of his father, William Ubbulohde, in Hannover, at that time the capital of the kingdom of the same name in Germany, to seek his fortune in the "land of the free and the home of the brave." The young man was Carl Ernst Ubbelohde. Like millions of his countrymen, he had long dreamed of getting away from the political and economic turbulence then suffered by the Fatherland, which later culminated in the war of the German state of Prussia with Hannover, in 1866, resulting in the defeat of the Hannovarians, the dethroning of their good king, George, and the reduction of his kingdom or a province of the conquering state of Prussia: and later (in 1871) came the war in Germany with France, which made still further demands on the German peoples in the form of many men killed and wounded, and of war taxes. Before these wars came the revolutionary movement in Germany (1848), which, after all the hubbub, resulted in no definite readjustment of government, but started many Germans to emigrate to America.

This immigration was anticipated by Carl Ernst Ubbelohde, who came to this country in 1848, two years before the great tidal wave of German immigrants reached our shores. He first tarried in New York City for about a year and a half, was joined there by his affianced bride, Miss Malvine Holle, of Bremen, Germany, where she was born in 1828, three years after the groom's birth in Hannover, Germany, and they were married in New York City in 1847.

After a year or more spent in the eastern metropolis, Carl Ernst Ubbelohde went directly to Plymouth, and in that township acquired an 80-acre farm, on which he "prepared a place" for his bride - the log cabin built with his own hands, which for many years was the Ubbelohde home, wherein the couple's eleven children were born and reared, and when they scattered to find their proper place in the world.

When the log cabin was finished and ready for occupancy, Carl Ernst Ubbelohde returned to New York City to meet his bride, who had come there from her home in Germany, and after their marriage in New York City, as already above recorded, they proceeded together to their new home in Town Plymouth.

Soon after their marriage in New York City, the young couple journeyed on west by the canal-and-lakes route, landed on the lake shore of the then primitive village of Sheboygan, distant in time the several months required then to negotiate the journey from the Fatherland by sailboat and canal boat. From Sheboygan the newlyweds proceeded to Plymouth, which was then only one of the few tiny dots on our county and state maps indicating settlements. But, along with the proverbial westward trend of the Star of Empire, the young Ubbelohdes bravely continued to the eastern foot of the Kettles, two miles west of Plymouth, where they purchased and settled down on an 80-acre tract of wild land, half a mile north of the present County Trunk Highway Z. Here Carl Ernst erected the log cabin with his own hands, unaccustomed as they were to such rough labor, but urged on by ambition to establish a home in what was truly yet a wilderness - a homestead, however humble. This homestead was occupied by the Ubbelohdes until the year 1873, when it was sold to Carl Sass, who had lived on it ever since that time.

The same year, 1873, Carl Ernst and his devoted wife moved to the Town of Forest, in Fond du Lac county, one mile west of the Sheboygan County line, and the duteous wife passed on to her reward in 1893, and the husband in 1904, a patriarch of eight-nine years of many trials and triumphs. They had left homes of proverbial German comfort, culture and refinement to pass through a long and most strenuous period in their lives, during which they reared a large family, lived soberly and were esteemed by all.

Carl Ernst Ubbelohde's children numbered eleven, one of whom died in infancy. The ten grown to maturity were: Charlotte, born in 1851, widow of George Graves of Glenbeulah; William, of Waldo, born in 1854 (wife, Libby Hoyt); Carl Jr., of Castle Rock, Washington, born in 1857; Amalia, wife of William Coon, of Fond du Lac, born in 1859; Theodore, born in 1860, and died in 1927; Edward, of Glenbeulah, born in 1862; August, widower, of Glenbeulah, born in 1864; George Washington, born in 1866, present Sheboygan county highway commissioner, owner of a model farm of 120 acres on Highway 23 in the Town of Sheboygan Falls, halfway between Sheboygan and Plymouth (wife, Antonette Joslin, married in the town of Sheboygan Falls in 1887); Herman, of Milwaukee, born in 1868 (wife, Maryann Amwig of Glenbeulah); Mary, wife of Fred Amwig, of Glenbeulah, born in 1871. All these children of Carl Ernst and Malvine Ubbelohde were born in their homestead in the Town of Plymouth.

The descendants of Carl Ernst and Malvine Ubbelohde now number about 105, most of them residing in Sheboygan County. They hold family reunions annually, attended by most of the members. The last year's reunion was held in Waldo at the home of William Ubbelohde, and this year the Ubbelohde clan will gather in Plymouth. George Washington Ubbelohde's children number five - two sons and three daughters.

The present writer remembers well the time when the Carl Ernst Ubbelohdes lived on their homestead in the Town of Plymouth, and when the children were all young and filled the log cabin to its capacity; when father and mother were kept busy providing for the comfort of their numerous offspring; where peace and harmony, patience and wise parental counsel prevailed, which good influence still is manifest in the family down to the present youngest generation. For example, our present county highway commissioner is known for his cheerful, friendly personality and disposition, although in his present capacity, coming in personal contact with a great variety of other dispositions, his own is often sorely tried but rarely, if ever, yields to impulse to "let go."

A chart of parchment paper about the size of the average kitchen table present a "tree" of the Ubbelohde family, tracing it back to the year 1626. The name of William Ubbelohde, grandfather of George W., appears on the chart as born in Hannover in the year 1784. The chart itself was prepared early in the nineteenth century. It is a fine specimen of its kind in execution, is well preserved, and is mounted on cloth and protected in the shape of a roll or tube. Across the bottom of the chart appear in bold, black letters the Biblical admonishments in German, "Seid fruchtbar. Vermehrt euch," and the "family tree" of the Ubbelohdes witnesses that they have through all their generations lived up to the Biblical advice to be fruitful and multiply, as did Carl Ernst and Malvine Ubbelohde with their eleven children.

The friendly contact of the Ubbelohde family with that of the present writer dates back to the time of their living in Hannover, Germany, where the grandparents of both families maintained very friendly relations, which were carried on even across the Atlantic ocean by the present writer's father, who, on his own departure from Germany to Wisconsin, was commissioned by Carl Ernst Ubbelohde's father to deliver to the son in the Town of Plymouth in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, U.S.A., a pair of leather riding or hunting breeches. This commission was faithfully carried out by the young man who had undertaken it, the father of the present writer. This was in 1849, three years after Carl Ernst Ubbelohde had come to America, and the leather breeches thus safely delivered, proved to be, indirectly, the cause of the present writer's and his sisters' being, for when his father went from Plymouth to the Ubbelohde farm home to deliver the breeches, he casually stopped on the way there at the log cabin of Ferdinand Braun, also an immigrant, who had come there from Cassel, Germany, in 1848, and there he met for the first time Augusta Perpetua Witte, the then 16-year-old young woman who was destined to become the wife of the youthful carrier of the leather breeches the same year in Sheboygan. She was a sister of Ferdinand Braun's wife, Caroline, both being daughters of William and Dorothea Witte, who had emigrated from Germany and settled down in the then village of Plymouth, in 1848, with a family of three sons and three daughters, including, of course, the two daughters already above named.

Mysterious indeed, are the ways and means employed by Providence to perpetuate the human race, the means in the present instance being a prosaic pair of leather breeches to bring about a romantic climax. And no fair-minded reader of this sketch will deny that the writer of it has a justifiable innate penchant for the touch and odor of good leather.

Return to the Sheboygan Page

Return to the Newspaper Articles & Index Page