Preface

Researched and written by Alfred Erichsen

This Drewes history primarily covers a 200 year period of time, 1760 – 1960. Writing history is easy if you are spinning a story. It is more difficult if you’re trying to find out what really happened.

A good example is “The Drewes Families” in the “South Edmonton Saga,” a historical record of the early days in the South Edmonton/Ellerslie area. It is widely quoted, so it must be right. It was written by a non-relative of a later generation, 90 years after the fact. The writer starts the history with a most important disclosure: “It is difficult to determine the number of families or the relationship of the Drewes families that lived in the South Edmonton area many years ago.” As a result there are many inaccuracies, but we applaud her effort – she tried her best.

One of the complicating factors is the German norm of that era of using 3 first names. The parents would often use the same 2 first names for all of their children and identify them by the third name.

Another complicating factor is that before 1920 there are few government records. You have to use church records. The Lutheran Church in Germany did not record births, only baptisms. One of the problems that arise is that the baptismal records sometimes only record the godparents, not the actual parents. If the child wasn’t baptized, there is then no record. If there was a church funeral there is a record. If there was no church funeral, there is only an unknown date.

Christoph Heinrich Drewes married Catharina Ilse Elling on March 21, 1819 in St. Dionysius Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fallingbostel. They went on to have 3 children: Johann Heinrich Drewes (born in 1820), Catharine Ilse Drewes (born in 1824), and Casten Heinrich Drewes (born in 1828).

To illustrate the problem let’s go back to Germany in the years 1810 – 1830. Many organizations have gone through the church records and sell the results on the internet. For example, the Mormon Church sells its search via Ancestry.com and Ancestry.ca. They say that Christoph Heinrich and Catharina’s son Casten H. had the following children:

Johann Heinrich Christoph (born on March 13, 1856)

Johann Heinrich Friedrich (born on July 30, 1860)

Heinrich Wilhelm (born on July 27, 1863)

Geog Christoph Wilhelm (born on February 10, 1866)

Ilse Marie Dorothea (born on September 7, 1869).

The above has been confirmed by Marianne Roehrs by reviewing Church records in Germany.

However, another search brings up very similar data with some slight differences. It shows that a Johann Christoph Drewes (born in 1815) had the following children:

Johann Heinrich (born in 1853)

Wilhelm (born in 1859)

Marie (born in 1860)

Gottfried (born in 1884)

The two searches may appear to be talking about the same family. Many of the names and dates are similar, and in both cases Casten’s oldest son Johann Heinrich has no wife or kids. However, the family from the second search is actually a different Drewes family and they are not relevant to our family history at all.

To complicate things a little more, another record shows that a Karsten (note the spelling) Drewes was baptized in Fallingbostel on November 26, 1830. He married Maria Dorothea Marwede and they had a son named Heinrich Wilhelm Christian (born in February 1869). Are you confused yet?

While we will never know the relationship of this Drewes to the rest of the Drewes of that era, we can take him out of the family tree. Karsten and his son became followers of a revivalist Lutheran preacher named Louis Harms who travelled the Luneburger Heide heath. The family became determined to carry the gospel to the Zulus of South Africa and Karsten’s son became a missionary there. When Karsten died on September 19, 1869, he was buried in the cemetery in Hermansburg, South Africa.

So a genealogy based on baptismal records has some flaws. It can often be improved by burial records, as long as a church or some other record keeper has left a trail.

In Canada and the USA, it is possible to visit the cemetery and go through the grave stones to find additional information. The problem in Germany, along with other European countries, is that gravestones are not considered permanent. After a period of time, 50 – 100 years, the stones are removed and often destroyed and the plot is recycled.

A comment on photographs, supposedly of ancestors. The first relates to relatively low cost photos. These were the result of the Eastman Kodak Company. Commercial production of the Kodak camera evolved after 1888. Pictures of German peasants supposedly taken before 1900 don’t exist because the technology was not widely available and it was too expensive for the peasant class to afford.

And so it is family and other records that may help find a more complete story.

This family history is being written between 2018 and 2022 from the information I have found and I consider accurate. The possibility exists that other family members might have an old birth, confirmation, or death certificate that could enhance our knowledge. I may be able to make some changes based on the additional information if you contact me.

I would like to acknowledge the work that Diane Drewes of Lompoc, California did to produce a genealogy of the Drewes Family using Ancestry.com and the research of the Mormon Church. As the result of her research, she produced “Our Drewes Family History, Fourth Edition, 2005.”

We are grateful to Madeline Steinkamp and Elaine Osuna for information they shared with us on the Heuer family.

A special thanks to Marianne Roehrs of Soltau, Germany for her visits to local German churches and other searches she made for me. Marianne and I share a common great-grandmother, Dorothea Marie Engel Benecke/Wischoff. A thank you to Marianne’s nephew Wilhelm Lehmberg of Rotura, New Zealand who made two stopovers in Canada to help search the family history. And thank you to Marianne’s godson Friedrich Rumpel of Soltau, who made numerous visits while working on electrical installations in Canada for “Siemens”.

My mother Martha (Drewes) Erichsen left many diaries and other notes providing an insight into the family. As well, her Uncle Henry Drewes left farm records, church records, diaries and photographs that covered the family from his arrival at Strathcona, Northwest Territories in 1894 until his death.

Henry Drewes' farm record

(1937)

Finally, a thank you to numerous members of the Kruse Family that helped with information, especially Violet Kruse and Jeness King.