Friderike's Hymn-book (Random Pointless Scan)

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I've been culling and reorganizing my books, and in moving a couple shelves' worth of the least valuable antique books you ever saw, I noticed this beautifully hand-lettered personalization of an 1848 German hymn-book. Maybe someone who reads German and can decipher the handwriting will stumble across this and tell me what all that writing below the name says.

I bought this book as a teenager, and I may have bought it for the sake of that hand-lettering, or maybe it was the publication date. I've been obsessed with the past since I was about 14 — not really understanding what I wanted but feeling that I could get closer to it by owning old things. And since my mother liked antiques, I found myself often in antique stores, looking at books that I could afford … which were cheap because nobody wanted them but me. Now I don't want them anymore but I dare not throw them out — who am I to throw out a book that has survived a century and a half?

And, believe it or not, I can connect this to Ainsworth. The reason I have to reorganize my books is because I've been buying so many new ones to study up on the subjects that I'm talking about in this blog, or soon will: World War I, Prohibition, the 1920s, the KKK, the Depression, World War II, etc. They're scattered and piled up all over the place. It's crazy-making.

Also, this is a great way to avoid the hard work of writing blog entries.

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[3/21/2016 update] It turns out that Friderike had a sister, Christine, who married and came to America and here raised a family; and after several more generations' marrying and begetting, Christine's great-great-grandson was browsing the internet one day when he stumbled across the post above and recognized in the hymn-book's inscription the name of his great-great-great-great-grandfather, Matthäus Knaussman. Joseph Cole writes to me:

Friedericke Nehm married Heinrich Hurthle (the handwritten name at the bottom of the page) in Hoheneck on 4 April 1861.

They brought their family to the United States in 1881, following her older brother Gottlieb and younger sister Christine Kass (my great-great grandmother). The three families lived in Riverton Township, Michigan near my hometown of Ludington. Friedericke passed away in 1902. The three siblings are buried in North Weare Cemetery along with many other of my relatives.

So now I know why the little hymn-book ended up at Steeple Antiques, which was in the general area where Fridericke had lived out her life …


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The Ludington Daily News 22 June 1971.

… and also along the route my family traveled every summer to vacation at Lower Herring Lake; and we stopped in at Steeple Antiques and my teenaged self bought Friderike's hymn-book and carried it back to Indiana; and some three decades later, I randomly scanned the inscription and posted it on the internet.

The story ends with me now knowing who Fridericke was, and the hymn-book returning to her family.