John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 24

(Today will be reader response day) :

Tobias Kemper of Westphalia , Germany sends this information about the meaning of the name Kemper: In the dialects spoken in Westphalia, there is a word, "Kamp".  This word comes from the Latin "campus" and means something like the ploughed land, a field of a farm near the village.  Often a field is called "Kamp".  A "Kemper" now is a farmer whose farm is not in the village but more in the border of a village next to his land or in the midst of his land.  Based on the history of the Virginia Kempers, Herr Kemper has decided that he is not related to them in any detectable way.

Elke Hall , based on her early life in Germany, offers this comment about goose herders: In many villages, the job of the goose herder, swine herder, etc. was actually something like a "government" job as he was often paid by the village, just as a night watchman of the guard would be.  Since Germans tended to live in villages, not on separated farms as here in America, there often was no place for them to graze their animals.  They had to be watched by a trusty person, who would walk through the village in the morning.  The farmers would open their barnyard gates, and the geese and swine or cows would just follow the herder through the streets and out the village gate to the grazing grounds.  On wash day at the river side, the goose herder had to avoid the bedsheets drying and bleaching on the grass.  "Once a goose ran after me when I was three or four and I have never been so scared in my life."  The herders often doubled as veterinarians.  They knew the animals well and could detect when they not right.  They might administer medications.  In the mountain areas, the herder might take the animals for an extended stay of weeks to the higher elevations where the grass was lush.  In most German farm villages, cows, goats, geese and pigs are not left outside at night as they are in America.  They are brought in every night and housed in the barn.  On the whole the herder was responsible for a precious commodity as a farmer might have only a few cows and a few geese (but always a goose for Christmas).

(Editor's note: I appreciated these comments from Elke, maybe because I have a geese herder for an ancestor.)

Ted Walker , who has visited his ancestor's lands in Virginia, notes the wide spread occurrence of cemeteries on the farms themselves and asks a few questions.  Our Germanna people, but others also, for the first couple of centuries buried their people on the farm.  They all lived on farms and all had land which they could use for the purpose.  Field stones were often piled up to mark the grave but the use of stones with engraved names was very rare.  As a consequence, no information is to be gleaned at the cemetery.  Because details have been forgotten and people have moved, the plots have often gone to weeds, brush and trees.  When a stone today is to be found with information on it, it was often made long after the facts and therefore very liable to have erroneous information.  The Hebron Lutheran Church in Madison Co., Virginia is the oldest Lutheran church building in continuous use as a Lutheran sanctuary in America.  Yet the cemetery associated with it is modern, having been started about one hundred years ago.  It contains graves of an older date but these were moved from their original location and re-interred.  The hope of finding information in the original cemeteries seldom meets with success.  Sometimes, just finding the cemetery is counted as the biggest measure of success.