A place in the world

There is something very fundamental in the human psyche that makes us want to know where we come from. Something about us makes us want to discover our roots, our place in the world.
I can identify with this. Although I know who my parents and grandparents were, things get a little fuzzy when going any further back in my family’s history.
I know that my ancestors came to this country from Germany some time in the mid-1800s, and that my great-grandfather was a tailor. Beyond that, the origins and details of the Clan Bradow have remained shrouded in mystery. In a very vague sort of way, I’ve always been under the impression that my forbears left their homeland in something of a hurry.
Last week, with the help of Annette Schmelzeisen, an exchange student attending Hazen High School who is from Germany, and her father Volker Schmelzeisen, I came into possession of some definitive data concerning my family’s origins. Using the materials they provided, I was able to do some additional research on my own.
I want to thank the Family Schmelzeisen for their most kind and generous efforts. At least, I think I do. It seems that my vague impression concerning my ancestors’ immigration to the New World was fairly accurate.
But I digress.
The earliest written record of the family is from the year 1251, when a Prussian nobleman granted some land to one of his underlings in return for some military service. The land, located some miles west of Berlin, included a village by the name of Bredow (the same spelling the German branch of the family uses to this day). The underling, now a man of property, added the name of the village to his family name just to show how important he was. They became the Von Bredow family, meaning “from the town of Bredow.” Just goes to show you; once a show-off, always a show-off.
Now that he had some real estate, my ancestor thought it would be cool to have a coat-of-arms, too. The one he came up with probably says more about the overall character of our family than anything else.
It consists of a shield; a helmet from a suit of armor; a flowing, sable and red cloak; and a goat with golden horns and hooves. My wife took one look at it and said, “That’s you all right, you old goat.”
Aside from my better half’s scurrilous remark, what interested me most was the device, or design, on the shield. It is a kind of ladder used by an attacking army in the middle ages to scale the wall of a castle. Judging from this and other evidence, it would seem that the family’s primary means of increasing their holdings was to take property away from other people - violently if necessary.
I used to joke about having an innate desire to invade Poland every spring. Somehow, I don’t seem to find that as funny as I used to.
Apparently, it was the continuation of this type of land acquisition, long after it was fashionable, that led to the hasty decision to “get the heck out of Dodge” so to speak. Them as could went so far as to get the heck out of Europe altogether. In 1843, they gathered up their liquid assets, secured passage on a ship named the Resource and came to America. From thence, elements of the clan proceeded to points west.
The family diaspora eventually resulted in there being Bradows, or Bredows, on every continent except Antarctica. I guess the property values down there just don’t make it worth the effort.
By the way, the village of Bredow isn’t there anymore. It got leveled during WWII. So much for the enduring value of real estate.