Koppelman Family Genealogy

Koppelman Family Tree

This website traces and documents the ancestors, descendants, and lines related to those of Johann Hermann Koppelmann (b. 1811, Badbergen, Germany; d. 1877, Baltimore County, Maryland) and his wife Anna Catherine Maseman Koppelmann (1803-1884).

Thanks to my mother’s cousin, Miss E. Ruth Hedeman (1910-2006) who created a hand-drawn family tree, and organized the first known Koppelman family reunion in Baltimore in 1981, much information has been preserved about the lines descending from J. H. Koppelmann through his two sons, John George Koppelman (1835-1891), and John Henry Koppelman (1840-1902). Miss Hedeman, in turn, relied on the capacious memories of her aunts and good friends Charlotte Koppelman Betz (1906-1999), and Bertie Koppelman Bopp (1902-1991). All that is documented here grows from the work and recollections of these women.

When Ruth Hedeman began her genealogical research, she had the advantage of knowing all of her Koppelman aunts and uncles: seven in all, not counting spouses. Although as a child, I knew and loved my grandparents, William Herman Koppelman, Sr., and Katherine Schwarz Koppelman, I never had the opportunity to meet any of my Koppelman great-aunts or great-uncles, nor my grandmother’s nine brothers and sisters.

Origins: Badbergen to Baltimore

Johann Hermann Koppelmann emigrated to Maryland in 1834 from Lower Saxony, Germany. His Lutheran family came from a cluster of small villages called Badbergen, Gehrde, Wehdel, and Groenloh, which belonged to the parish of St. Georg. When he left for America, Lower Saxony was known as the Kingdom of Hannover, part of the region called the Artland. This area is still proverbial for its rich alluvial loam and its flat, moist landscape, riddled with bogs and moors, much of a piece with that of the Netherlands, with which Lower Saxony shares its western border. Another branch of the same Koppelmann family immigrated to Missouri in the 1850s, sailing from Bremen to New Orleans and then up the Mississippi River.

In America, the name Koppelmann appeared in a variety of spellings. Some of the variations I have found in the history of our family in America are Koppleman, Coppleman, Coupleman, Koppeleman, Cappellman, and Cuppelman. Some of these spellings may be attributable to the attempts of census-takers and map-makers to spell names phonetically. Even in the archives of Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church, the church most closely associated with our family’s history in Baltimore, the name appears in a variety of spellings, sometimes with one n, sometimes with two.

By the mid-19^th century, Johan H. Koppelmann, now calling himself John H. Koppelman or Herman Koppelman, and his sons were prosperous produce farmers, or “gardeners,” as they were then known, in the Gardenville/Raspeburg area of Baltimore County, a few miles northeast of the city of Baltimore. The 1872 Clemms Map of Baltimore, published by Simon J. Martinet, depicts Koppelman farms north of Herring Run, between Belair Road and the Philadelphia Road, not far from Brehms Brewery. Land records trace John H. Koppelman’s earliest purchase of 24 and a half acres there to 1840.

They were part of a tightly-knit community of German Lutheran immigrants who settled in the area. Koppelmans helped to establish the first Evangelical Lutheran church in the area in 1842--Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church--which still exists today on Belair Road at Moravia Avenue, across from the Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery, outside Baltimore. The archives of the church list Herman Koppleman as a member of congregation in 1842. He was elected a deacon in 1848, and an elder in 1859. Koppelmans continued to be active in the church until at least the 1980s. Numerous gifts to the church, including a white marble podium carved in the likeness of an angel, donated by Mrs. John H. Koppelman and Mrs. William H. Lutz, and still in use today; a stained glass window donated by John Harman Koppelman; a marble plaque commemorating the church’s centenary donated by Mrs. John Harman Koppelman, and cemetery gates donated by Mrs. John Harman Koppelman and William Herman Koppelman, Sr., testify to the family’s long-standing dedication to Jerusalem Lutheran Church.

For about 100 years, this community of German Lutheran immigrants worshipped together, farmed together, and intermarried. Thus the Baltimore Koppelman genealogy during this period contains many German surnames such as Bauer, Betz, Bopp, Breeback, Brockmeyer, Buchwald, Bush, Emmel, Fetsch, Fischer, Franz, Geise, Geissdorfer, Gleitsman, Gutekunst, Hedeman, Heusler, Hutschenreuter, Klinger, Knauer, Kotsch, Krebs, Lassahn, Lutz, Malwitz, Marx, Maier, Meier, Meise, Melchior, Nortrup, Phillippi, Raab, Reineke, Roemer, Rohrbaugh, Rommel, Schaub, Soeder, Schwarz, Stecker, Sterner, Vogt, Volz, Weilbrenner, Walker, and Weber, as well as English surnames of early Virginia and Baltimore County families such as Barger (Rockbridge Co., VA), Milbourne (Loudon Co. and Frederick Co., VA) and Burton (Baltimore Co.). Numerous family graves bearing these names can be found in area cemeteries, including Jerusalem Lutheran Church. Many Koppelmans, Schwarzes, and Schaubs, Vogts are buried in Parkwood Cemetery, near Parkville, Maryland, north of Baltimore. Many Koppelmans are buried in Baltimore Cemetery, and many from another branch from the Bremen area can be found in Greenmount Cemetery. (Browse obituaries of Koppelmans and related families.) Many family graves are documented on findagrave.com.

The Next Century: Assimilation & Attenuation

By the 1940s, assimilation, education, mobility and war began to dissolve this German Lutheran community. Ties with the church began to attenuate. Koppelman descendants began to intermarry outside this small group, and from this time on, surnames began to change, to include such English names as Harris, Conley, Thanner, Morrison, Lynch, Williams, Hicks, Gover, Sexton, Dutton, Hawkins, Hardy, Thomas, Couser, Milbourne, and Jones. Some descendants moved as far away as California, yet a surprising number remained in Maryland and the mid-Atlantic states.

This page is just beginning. In time, it will include the all of the family tree traced by Prof. Hedeman; birth, marriage and death information; family photographs, news clippings, and maps. One day, I hope I will be able to add information pertaining to ancestors and descendants who remained in the Badbergen area--a number of Koppelmans still reside in that town today. We now know that John H. Koppelman and his wife returned to Germany to visit at least once.

The Future: Bringing it All Back Home

It is my hope that other descendants of Johann Hermann Koppelmann will find this website and contact me in order to add information to the site--as well as to re-knit the familial bonds that have attenuated as the family as grown and dispersed. Ultimately, I hope to organize another Koppelman family reunion. If you think you may be related to this Koppelman family, or would like information on related Koppelman lines, please contact me.

waldonia2000 @ yahoo.com

last updated 9.8.08