| Notes |
- Toenies (Tonies) was from Eicksen #6 by Rothenuffeln. He was baptized on 1 October 1748 in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bergkirchen. Apparently there were no male heirs for the family life and name was carried by the daughter, Anna Marie Engel Schnaken - the name in those days went with the house, rather than with the individual. So after Tonies Heinrich Brink married Anna Marie Schnaken, and having moved into her house, he was known as Tonies Heinrich Schnake, born Brink. He was a peasant farmer, Three children were born to this union.
Information provided by Roy Johnson
In 1773 Toenies Brink of Rothenuffeln married Anna Maria Engel Schnake, moved to farmstead no. 19 in Unterluebbe, and took the Schnake name. They bore two sons and a daughter. The oldest son inherited the No. 19 farmstead.
Information provided by Roy Johnson
In 1777 Anna Maria died and May 1777 Toenies married Anne Marie Ilsabe Stumpelmeyer. Since he lived at the Schnake farm he was still called Schnake, so was she, and so were their two sons and four daughters. Only one son, ernst Henrich, survived to adulthood. He moved to a new residence at No. 48 Unterluebbe. (The records show that as late as 1762, there were only 42 houses in the village, so we know this was a new residence.) In the late 1700s and early 1800s, new residences were being opened up. A new peasant category was created, that of "Neubauer" (New Farmer). These "new farmers" were given only a few acres, sometimes only a garden spot, to farm, and therefore had to work away from home as day laborers. Sometimes the grant was for military service. Apparently Ernst Henrich acquired one of these new houses. Since it was a new residence, it would not have a name, so Ernst Henrich kept the Schnake name instead of taking the name of the farmstead where he moved. This is an interesting situation, as the descendentws of this line have no actual Schnake ancestry before Toenies, but must trace their past family trees through the Brink and Stumpelmeyer lines. This is why I have referred to them as the "Brink-Stumpelmeyer Schnakes".
Descendents who came to America include: Maria Schnake (Donnig, Fortmeier), b. May 24, 1822, Unterluebbe #43, d. May 12, 1917, USA. Emigrated early 1850s. M. Sophie Caroline Hehrt in New Minden, Illinois, 1866. I have two family histories from this line. One history is of the descendents of Henry F. and Caroline's fourth child, August Carl Schnake, supplied to me in 1972 by Pauline Schnake Pixley of Des Moines, Iowa. The other is of the ancestors of Marsha Schnake Anglin of Lebanon, Missouri, a descendent from another of Henry F.s offspring.
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Schnake b. August 8, 1841, Unterluebbe no. 43, Westphalia, Germany, emigrated before 1864, d. April 12, 1897 St. Louis, Missouri, m. Anna Elizabeth Kleiboeker b. December 25, 1838 d. 1929; marriage date February 8, 1864. Information came from Lois (Schnake) Stone of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts 3/1/96. She writes that he was a farmer and carpenter who loved to hunt and fish. He married Anna Elizabeth here; they bought a farm near Hoyleton, Illinois, and lost it because the person they bought it from did not have title. They moved to St. Louis and he worked as a carpenter. She came to USA on a ship at age 15 (1863) with a brother (records lost) and a friend.
Information provided by Roy Johnson
Anna Marie Engel Schnake and Toenies Brinck had a son, who inherited the estate, but she only lived a few years before she died in childbirth. Toenies kept the Schnake name and married again. There are at least two descendents from that marriage who came to the U.S. They have no Schnake ancestry at all but are named Schnake.
So a large number of American Schnakes actually go back through the male line to Brink.
Seems the records for a few of the local villages in this area of Germany were not kept with the records for the Bishopric of Minden, but rather in the smaller church of St. Martini. Back in the middle ages (1300s), a couple of local nobles rebelled against the Principality of Minden. they got their comuppance and lost their land. It became church property and the Bishop got permission from the Pope to set up a monastery and make this land monastery property.
He set up the offices for the monastery of St. Martini but never got around to establishing the monastery itself. Instead, he took the land as his own private domain and used the monastery officials to collect the rents.
The Schnake family and a lot of others in the villages of Unterluebbe and oberluebbe were serfs on this land, so they became serfs to the so-called "monastery" and their records were kept in the church of St. Martini, the "patron", I suppose, of this "monastery."
When elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg (later Prussia) took this area over in 1848, it became protestanat (mostly) and he siezed the church property. However, using the "monastery" officials to collect the rent was handy, so he never abolished the "monastery" - no need to since it didn't exist anyway. His descendents became the kings of Prussia. The Schnakes and others were his serfs, but their landlord was listed as the "Monastery of St. Martini."
This left an unusual situation - nearly unbroken set of records from the 1500s to the 1900s kept in one place.
In the 1980s the St. Martini church opened its archives, and some local scholars wrote articles about the area, which were collected into a pamphlet. I have a copy of that pamphlet and a house-by-house listing of families in those two villages, plus some good articles about the area in general. Some of these I have translated and you will find links to them on the Schnake page.
Brinks mostly did not live in Unterluebbe or Oberluebbe, as I recall. Still, there are some mentioned and I will check to see if there are more. These records pre-date the church records by a century or more.
Information provided by Roy Johnson
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1748 - 1796 (47 years)