Christian Boss

Other Events:

• Name: Christian Baas
• Name: Christian Bahs
• Eby ID Number: Waterloo-133799
• Occupation: 1861, Hespeler (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Laborer
• Residence: 1861, Hespeler (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Directory: 1867, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Directory: 1867, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
• Occupation: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Farmer
• Residence: 1871, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• Occupation: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Farmer
• Residence: 1891, Waterloo Twp., Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; Lutheran
• House of Industry and Refuge: 1903, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada

Notes:

After 1850, mainly Lutherans would continue to come from the same German states as before, as well as from Bavaria, Saxe-Altenburg and Saxe-Meiningen.¹¹¹ While many later emigrants gravitated to the industrializing towns, others continued to settle on in pockets of small lots all over the township, as the landless Mecklenburgers did in Pine Bush (BLB3-6).¹¹² Some of the 30,000 mercenaries in the British army at the end of the American wars were men from Mecklenburg who chose to take up land in Upper Canada rather than return to their homelands. Messages home about opportunities in the New World attracted clusters of interrelated Mecklenburgers like those who settled on "Lot Six of the Third, the small tract informally subdivided by Michael Bergey in the late 1840s. Mecklenburg men usually laboured for a while in Preston or Hespeler before leasing and later perhaps buying small lots. As well as clearing their own land, most continued to work for Jacob Hespeler at New Hope, as recorded in his ledgers of the 1850s and 1860s.¹¹³ Some cleared land, chopped or sawed wood, or burned charcoal to supply Hespeler's distillery. Others worked as labourers building the Galt and Guelph Railway in 1854 or Hespeler's Upper Mill Dam in 1859. Men with special skills, such as the stonemasons Johann Baumgartner, George Krieg and Henry Knack, could command better pay. Some who worked for several years first in Preston, New Hope or Berlin were able to buy larger acreages in the Pine Bush area and in nearby Puslinch Township, across the townline.<sup>114


114</sup> Those who came from Mecklenburg-Schw'erin included the Bohn and Baas families in 1854; the Gillow brothers (John, Friedrich and Helmuth), Friedrich Krueger and Johann and Joachim Fink in the later 1850s; Johann Ernst Luhsow (Lisso, Lesser), Heinrich Spekin (later Speckeen), Friedrich Jonas and Christoph Prestien in the 1860s. Several smallholders from Mecklenburg are recorded in the Pine Bush area, according to the 1861 assessment rolls (their names often anglicized and spelled phonetically). Daniel Baetels, Henry Bucholes, John Fink, John Gelow, John Lesser are all noted as labourers with five acres each. Elizabeth Bloomfield, Linda Foster and L.W. Laliberte, Ihe Waterloo Township cadastre in 1861: "A system of the most regular irregularity" (Guelph: Department of Geography, University of Guelph, 1994), pp.43,93. Another cluster of migrants from Mecklenburg settled on the southern edge of Berlin

Waterloo Township through Two Centuries Elizabeth Bloomfield

Christian — Wilhelmine "Mena" Press. Wilhelmine was born 22 Dec 1832, , Germany; died 23 Sep 1925, Kitchener, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada; was buried , New Hope Cemetery, Hespeler (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]

Christian — Dorothy Sophia "Sophia" Papke. Dorothy was born 7 Apr 1814, , Germany; died 10 Jun 1879; was buried , New Hope Cemetery, Hespeler (Cambridge), Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada. [Group Sheet]