THE ASMUSSEN STORY: JENS AND ANNA ASMUSSEN
FIFTY YEARS 1880‑1930 (2nd
Edition)
MARRIAGE, OUR FAMILY'S BEGINNING, 1880‑1882
Jens Nicolai Asmussen and Anna Catharina Jacobsen were married
on March 7, 1880 in the Langenhorn Lutheran Church, Langenhorn, Germany.
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Jens Asmussen |
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Jens was from Monkebull and Anna from Drelsdorf, two
small farming villages, one north, the other south of Bredstedt, sort of a
county seat, in Schleswig, the northernmost province of Germany. The two
provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, usually referred to together, were located
on the bottom or southern part of the Jutland Peninsula and the northern edge
of Germany. Just to the north on a then fluctuating boundary was the country of
Denmark. At the south end of the peninsula was the large seaport of Hamburg.
Schleswig was only fifty to seventy‑five miles wide with the North Sea to
the west and the Baltic Sea to the east. Water was a part of life and a windy,
balmy climate the result.
The towns where both Jens and Anna grew up were within a
few miles of the North Sea. That part of Schleswig was called Nordfriesland and
included several small islands just off the coast in the North Sea. The people
were hardy, mostly small farmers who raised cattle and sheep and had a lot of
horses.
Jens' father Carsten Asmussen was a farmer who lived in Monkebull. His mother was Lena Catharina Asmussen, nee Jurgensen, who had married Carsten on April 15, 1843. This was Carsten's second marriage. Jens also had a twin sister, Sophie Marie Asmussen born as he was on May 2, 1851. For more on Carsten's earlier life and our Danish heritage, see the separate Asmussen story. As a teenager, Jens also worked as a farmer maybe on the same large farm where Carsten worked. We don't know how much schooling Jens had. I don't believe Jens liked farming although I believe working on this farm enabled him to meet Anna Catharina Jacobsen. Anna was farmed out at the young age of 1012 to work and stay at a large farm. She was first a gleaner, who picked up missed grain left by the harvesters. She also worked in the household, in the kitchen preparing and serving meals to the help and family, and helping to clean the large house. Gradually she worked her way up to more responsibility and became the lead person of the housekeeping staff. She and Jens probably met there as teenagers and fell in love.
Jens' father died on September 14, 1873 in Monkebull at
the age of almost 73. Jens, then twenty‑two, immediately joined the
Prussian (German) Army as a musketier. I do not know why he did this unless it
was something he had wanted to do for some time that his father was against.
There was no war going on. Nine years earlier, the Prussian (German) Army had
marched through Schleswig in 1864 and fought a short war with Denmark to
recover Schleswig for good from the control of the Danes. Maybe Jens, who would
have been an impressionable boy of thirteen when this happened, wanted to join
the Army and his father was against it. Or, maybe he and Anna had a lover's
quarrel. Whatever the reason, he reported to the Prussian Army in Husum on
December 3, 1873 to be a replacement musketier. Husum was sort of the
government center for the area. We don't know the length of his enlistment. On
his military papers, he is listed as being approximately 5 feet 7 1/2 inches
tall. We do not know where he was stationed. For some reason, Jens took a
year's leave from the Army from September 30, 1875 to October 1, 1876. He went
home at that time but no explanation for this year away from the Army is known.
I thought at one time he might have come with his mother to America but we know
now that was not the case. She did not come to America until 1881. Jens was
discharged from the Army on February 25, 1880 at Husum. Husum was a small
seaport city on the North Sea coast about fifteen miles South of Drelsdorf and
about twenty‑five miles south of Monkebull. He rode home on the train to
Bredstedt. Jens had a twin sister Sophie (written as Sophia on occasion) Marie,
who was married on February 29, 1880 to Carsten Peter Lorenzen of Flensburg.
Flensburg was a larger city on the east side of Schleswig
and right at the Danish border. It was also a small seaport on the Baltic Sea.
Much commerce went by ship in those days.
Jens Asmussen and Anna Jacobsen were married March 7,
1880 in the Langenhorn church, which was the Lutheran church for Monkebull. She
was 27 and he was 28 when they were married. It was curious to me why they
married in the Langenhorn church and not the home Drelsdorf church of Anna
Catharina Jacobsen but it was evidently their choice. I am sure the mother of
Jens, Lena Asmussen and his sister Sophie, and her husband Peter Lorenzen, also
his stepbrother Peter and stepsister Christine were there. Christine and Peter
were children of Carsten and his first wife Ingeborg Johannsen who had died in
childbirth with Peter. A few years later, Carsten married Lena Jurgensen and in
time they had the twins, Jens and Sophie. I am also sure that Anna's larger
family was present. That would have been her mother Anna Maria (sometimes
Marie) Jacobsen, nee Hansen, her younger (Anna was the oldest child) sisters,
Doris, Johanna Elise, Christine Maria, and her brothers, Julius Christian,
Carsten Heinrich, and the youngest Siegfried Andreas. Doris and Johanna were in
their twenties, Julius was eighteen, Christine also a teenager, with the two
younger boys, ten and eight years old. Also, I believe there would have been
her grandmother, Catharina Jurgensen Andresen, (apparently known as Karen
Jorgensdatter in Denmark), whom we believe lived until at least 1880. Anna was
named after both her grandmothers, Anna for Anna Petersen, her mother's mother
and Catharina for her father's mother. Her father, Jacob Jacobsen died on Feb.
16, 1879 in Drelsdorf. Anna Maria Hansen Jacobsen never remarried and later
came to America with and to live with her children until she passed away in
1918.
After their marriage, Jens and Anna Asmussen lived in the
family home in Monkebull where Jens had been born and grew up.
We believe that Carsten had also been born in the
same house. About a year later, on March 25, 1881, they had a son, Carsten
Ludewig Asmussen. During this time, Jens was most assuredly working as a farm
laborer. In April 1881, Jens' mother Lena, and his twin sister Sophie, along
with her husband Peter, left for America.
They probably embarked from Flensburg to Baltimore, Maryland,
USA or they could have landed in New York. Sophie, along with Jens' mother
wrote them glowing reports about the prosperity, freedom and opportunity in
America, saying that life in Lyons, Iowa was great and that they should come.
Peter worked in a lumber mill and assured Jens that he could get him a regular
paying job there. The world was in the midst of the Industrial Revolution
and economies were good everywhere but probably more so in America. It did
not take much to convince Jens, who did not like farming as a job or his prospective
future in Germany, to make the big decision. Surely they and their children
would have a better future in America. Jens and Anna talked and planned and
decided to move in the spring of 1882. They made reservations to leave by
boat from Husum on a small ship that would take them to Hamburg where they
would board a larger sea‑going steamship for New York. By the time of
their 2"d anniversary on March 7, 1882, they were getting anxious to
go. About that time, they learned that Anna was pregnant with their second
child. That concerned them some. Could she take the trip okay? Would there
be a doctor on the ship? No matter, they collected what they would take to
America and prepared to leave. They sold the family house in Monkebull, which
should have given them a nest egg.