Zellmer origins
Records at Zion
Lutheran Church, Readfield, Wisconsin (less than 5 miles from Christof
Zellmer's farm in Wolf River), show two men named Johann Gottfried Zellmer
of that parish had been born in Romanshof, Kreis Czarnikau, Posen in 1812
and 1847. The wife of the elder Zellmer was Anna Caroline Dietrich, also
born in Romanshof. Their relationship to my great great grandfather
Christof is still unknown but we believe that the elder man might have
been a brother or cousin. Romanshof and Czarnków lie, about 25 miles
south of Christof's birthplace in Klawittersdorf. We have located the marriage
of Anna Caroline and Johann Gottfried in the Lutheran kirchenbuch of Czarnikau,
but did not find information linking them to Christof.
Czarnków
is a good sized town nestled at the base of a bluff above the River Notec.
Its location and the tree-lined roads in the valley make it difficult to
photograph from a distance but it is quite attractive and could be taken
for a county seat in along a midwestern river such as the upper part of
the Missouri. In the central square, in front of the red brick church
sits a soviet era tank on a stone memorial pedestal. Blooming Chestnut
trees, found everywhere in western Poland, brighten the scene. The river
valley is broad and is intensively farmed, especially in the area just
north of the town. The settlement, now called Romanowo and earlier
called Romanshof, is strung for a couple miles along a single lane under
the bluff, with fields, divided by drainage ditches stretching across the
bottomland to the riverside. We believe that Romanshof might well have
been part of a large farm or manor belonging to a prominent family and
worked by tenants. We wonder if its name could have come from early Roman
activity in the area.
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