Tekoppel in the USA and Canada

Koppel
The name Te(n) Koppel(e) occurs in different forms in the Achterhoek a part of the province Gelderland. A koppel was in the Middle Ages a communal meadow, often owned by the church. People who lived there were called Koppelman. That name still occurs in the family. The family branch Tekoppel in the US and Tenkoppel in Canada stems from Boek 1: Ten Koppel in the Family Archive. Using, for example, Google Translate, that chapter can easily be translated into any desired language.
Emigration to the US dates from 1845 and 1846 and to Canada from 1945 and 1948.

Emigrations
America was discovered by the emigrant. Initially the wave emigration started around the Teutoburg Forest in the Kreisen Minden and Teckelenburg (Germany). The wave then spread to the west. However, inspirational messages from America must have reached faster than the movement of this wave of East Netherlands. In a letter written on April 27, 1845 by the District Commissioner in Zutphen to the Gouverneur van Gelderland (the current Queen’s Commissioner), we read that the relocations from the municipalities of Eibergen and Winterswijk in the previous year “should be attributed to the favorable reports by emigrants from the neighboring Prussian congregations to their relations there about the improvement of their condition in America as a result of several merits notwithstanding reduced labor because they had to pay no or little taxes“. Relatively speaking, the Achterhoekers make a large part of the emigration in East Netherlands and Prussia.  And if we look at the statistics, the number of emigrants to other countries in those years was negligible.

The factors that made emigration mature accumulated:
a) population increase;
b) inflation: although wages did not rise (a day laborer earned about 8 pence per day),           this was not the case with the prices of meat and butter. In some cases they went up           200%; rye price fell very sharply;
c) unstable secondary occupations, mainly caused by mechanization;
d) the tax burden, between 5 and 10% for various acts such as handling and
slaughtering cattle. In front of that time increasingly a noose around the neck.
e) The potato crises of 1840 will also have its bit contributed to mass emigration.

In 1832 there was a nationwide cholera epidemic.

March 21, 1846 Newspaper: DC – Dordtsche Courant
Dordrecht, 20 March. Mr. Goundie, Consul General of the United States of North America for Switzerland, has announced in the daily newspapers that an edict has been issued by the State of New York, by which the ship’s captains, or the owners and owners of their ships, during the time of two years responsible for the means of subsistence of the emigrants which they bring with them. This law has been necessitated by the multitude of poor emigrants who fill the New York hospitals.

June 8, 1846 Jannes te Koppel arrives in District of New York, Port of New York with the ship FACTORY with captain J.A.A. van der Linden.

In 1847 there was a devastating famine. Potato diseases, failed grain harvests etc., everything came together. A lot of people came through it to life. Families often had to pass from several family members dying farewell in a very short time.

In the initial period, the following numbers are from the Eibergers to the US left:
30 to New Orleans
12 to Evansville
5 to Louisiana
5 to Louisville
13 to New York

It is thus, inter alia, against the stream over the Mississippi.

From New York the emigrant went to Evansville and Louisville. In that neighborhood there may still be an Eibergen settlement. We come across many Dutch and German (Prussian) names in the area of Evansville.

The move was all the more remarkable because the life of the Achterhoek farmers was claimed by a large degree of stability. Many letters returned from the many emigrants to the Achterhoek. There remain very enthusiastic stories, wearing those letters from hand to hand. Everyone noticed that it had to be great there.

For instance, from Lichtenvoorde in November 1845, Jan te Koppel [165] (family Ten Koppel), in April 1846 at age 24 Jannes te Koppele [182] (family Ten Koppel) and on April 23, 1849 at 34 years old his sister Hendrike [179] emigrated to America. We suspect that around this time several Koppels have emigrated to America. The family now lives (2012) in Evansville (Indiana) and is called Tekoppel.

As far as we know, no correspondence has been left from our relatives who left from the Netherlands to the US. But Jan te Selle, who emigrated from Winterswijk in 1865, wrote the following in dialect:

“Another letter Mother and Brothers, of which I can no longer remember my heart to write it to you. I often think of Holland as that Old Fatherland, when I think about how many people there are and also some of my own brothers. how they have to work from the early morning till late and then with a little compensation, I often think they were here, and I think of my own how to put it on the table three times a day so much bacon and meat if we only lust, oh what a stir I have with many of my brothers. The lord Thank you for giving me such a possession, but before I went to marriage I constantly prayed to the Lord and asked as David did, I will go up. When I left Holland, Brother Jan Hendrik had three times as much as I did, but now I have thirty times more than he, the times can change. In the sunday mornings I say to the servant, put the horses in front of the car and that is how I and my wife go in the car and drive to church. Many times tears come to my mind that I think how the Lord has given me such a blessing.”

This indicates that the situation in the Achterhoek was very bad or that in the US very good. And many researchers attribute it to both.

The NRC Handelsblad of 16 March 1847 reports that three ships with cargo are waiting for departure to Baltimore in the port of Rotterdam. Here were possible Achterhoekers who went to Rotterdam via Arnhem. The “Register van Zeetijdingen” reports that on 12 September 1850 the American frigate “Edwina” departed from Hellevoetsluis to New York. The passengers were boarded in Rotterdam. Further research into this has not yet been done by the Family Archive.

In 1862, the Homestead Act came into being in the US. It was specifically intended to attract farmers to the large flat areas. Every head of a family that was at least 21 years old was allocated an area of ​​160 acres from the state. If he settled there for at least 5 years, then only the registration fees had to be paid. That obviously attracted a lot of people.

In the period 1862 to 1873 138 people left from Eibergen to North America and nobody to the south. Much research will still have to be done to oversee the consequences of this “craze”. That there are several Koppels in America (and other parts of the world) is clear. Although it is of course not excluded, one can suspect that they are not all descendants of these few persons.

Jannes (or: Jan) te Koppel
Jan te Koppel born in 1788 at “Het Meeken” in Lichtenvoorde (Boek 1) emigrated to the USA in 1845. The son of his brother, Jannes (born 1822) went later to the USA (see below). We know that Jan arrived with his wife Hendrika Gebbink and daughter Berendina in Baltimore. It is possible that there were only girls in the family so that the name Tekoppel disappeared. We are not sure about that.

The common ancestor of the Dutch family, Ten Koppel, and the USA Tekoppel family was Garrit Jan te Koppel, born in about 1741. He had five sons and lived in Lichtenvoorde (Lievelde), a little village in the east of the Netherlands. One of the sons we mentioned here before, Jan (1788).

Garrit Jan had a son Antonius born 1779 and a grandson Jannes born 1822 who crossed the ocean and arrived on june 18th, 1846 as a bachelor in New York with the ship “Factory” from Rotterdam. He probably not moved immediately to Evansville. In 1855 he arrived in Evansville. There arose the Tekoppel family. His sister Hendrieke, born in 1815, also emigrated and came to the USA in 1849,

Another son of Garrit Jan, named Jan Berend, moved to Barneveld in 1815. There arose the Ten Koppel family.

The economic situation was the reason that people left their homeland. There was not enough property and employability for all the sons in the family. It was economically a very bad time in the first half of the 19th century.

Click here for decendants John Tekoppel 1822 (Jannes te Koppele)

John (Jannes) merried in the USA with Elisabeth ten Hünfeld born in the Pruissen, the same environment, but the current German side. Jannes died in 1861 when he was 39. Elisabeth merried in 1862 with John Nunning. So the Nunning family is close to our Tekoppel family in Evansville.

In Boek 1: Ten Koppel heeft u kunnen lezen dat Jan ten Koppel, die in 1788 op Het Meeken aan de huidige Poelhuttersslatdijk is geboren, in 1845 naar de Vereningde Staten is geëmigreerd. Hij kwam daar samen met zijn vrouw Hendrika Gebbink en dochtertje Berendina van 1 jaar aan in Baltimore, Maryland. We moeten hun spoor nog zien te vinden, maar het is niet uitgelsoten dat er geen mannelijke nakomelingen meer zijn geweest van die familie.

Jannes te Koppele die in 1822 ook op Het Meeken is geboren, zoon van broer Antonius van de zojuist besproken Jan (1788), is in 1846 naar de VS geëmigreerd. Daar kwam hij als vrijgezel aan in New York met het schip Factory vanaf Rotterdam op 8 juni 1846. In 1955 is hij in Evansville ingeschreven. En daar is de familie verder ontwikkeld.
Zijn zus Hendrike is volgens het bevolkingsregister op 23 april 1849 naar Amerika verhuisd, 3 jaar na haar broer Johannes. Zij is op 30 september 1849 aangekomen in Baltimore, Maryland, met het schip Pioneer.
Van Jannes en zijn nakomelingen hebben wij inmiddels heel veel gegevens, maar van Hendrike nog niet. Hiernaar moet nog onderzoek worden gedaan.

Jannes gaat in de VS trouwen met Elisabeth Ten Hünfeld die ook uit de omgeving van de Achterhoek komt (Pruissen) en zijn nageslacht gaat verder onder de familienaam Tekoppel. Jannes overlijdt echter op jonge leeftijd van 39 jaren in 1861, maar laat wel voor het nageslacht in de VS drie kinderen achter, waarvan twee jongens. Echter weet Ancestry.com wel fijntjes uit te rekenen dat de Tekoppels gemiddeld langer leven dan de gemiddelde tijdgenoten die in hun omvangrijke database zijn geregistreerd.
Echtgenote Elisabeth gaat na het overlijden van Jannes in 1862 trouwen met John Nunning en krijgt met hem ook weer kinderen.

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