roger.pape Site Admin
Joined: 17 Mar 2009 Posts: 414 Location: Liverpool, NY
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Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 9:17 am Post subject: Melchior Behg |
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Who was “Melchior Behg”? When adding more plat maps to the Maps page of the website, I came across this name that I had never seen before.
My grandfather Jacob Pape’s farm was just north and to the east of St. Paul’s Cemetery. This land was originally purchased from the government by Henry Bruns. It passed down to my great-grandfather Louis Stuenkel after he married Sophie Bruns. Grandfather Jacob eventually acquired the land by working for his father-in-law for several years. But looking at the 1897 edition of the plat maps (see 1897 plat), one can see that a large portion of that land is shown as belonging to “Melchior Behg”. Did Louis sell some of this land at that time and did either he or my grandfather repurchase it? The 1877 map shows it belonging to “Lewis” Stuenkel and the 1914 map shows it belonging to Jacob Pape. A search of the land records might show whether this occurred, but I do not have ready access to those records.
The surname Behg could not be found in any records for the Concordia area. These old maps have a number of misspellings, often a phonetic spelling of how a name sounded to the recorder. (However, this particular map is better than some of the others, like the 1877 plat.) So I began to consider possible other names that sound similar. One thought that came to mind was the Bek family. Rev. William Bek was pastor of St. John (just a couple miles to the east) during that time period. So far I have been unable to find any trace of a Melchior Bek.
Does anyone know of a “Melchior Behg” or someone with a name that sounded similar? If so, I would be happy to hear about it. |
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