This report is a translation of a loan agreement¹ entered into by our Wessling ancestors in 1835 and represents the oldest known document involving them. There are, of course, many other references to our Wessling ancestors which date to earlier times, for example, an entry in the local parish's marriage book of 1728 or the census returns of 1824. But those references were made by others who were recording a, more or less, public event. Lingen did not establish its Standesamt until the 1870's. This document, on the other hand, involves a recording of a private event.

In the year 1835 on the fifteenth of February in the city of Lingen, before the undersigned Notar ² and the designated witnesses³, appeared the married couple, Neubauer Johann Heinrich Wessling and Anna Aleid geboren Kuhr from Lingen Stadtflur, who on account of a loan, executed a promissory note as follows.

The Eheleute Wessling borrowed from Kaufmann B. A. Oosthuis of Lingen the sum of 200 Gulden Preußich Courant.

The debtors agreed to make annual payments applied to the principal in the amount of 200 flor., which was to be computed from the above date at 4.00% annual interest, and to pay the customary expenses (probably property taxes, assessments, fire insurance, etc.)

For the security of the principal, the interest, and the expenses the debtors pledged their property⁴ in Lingen situated in the Wulve Stege in addition to a dwelling house thereon and a field as well as land in the Dankelmanns Kamp, of which 20 Scheffelsaat ⁵ of Ackerland were subject to an existing mortgage (Special Hypothek) which had been recorded in the Hypothekenbuch.

The terms of the loan were understood by the parties as the document had been read aloud, slowly and distinctly, before their signatures were made and the official seal was applied.

The note may have been formally discharged on November 10, 1850 as according to another document, "Die auf der Neubauerei Wessling liegende Schuldsumme von 200 Gulden zugunsten des Seilers Claashen vom 9. Juni 1836 wird am 29 Oktober 1850 zurückgezahlt und deswegen zu diesem Termin gelöscht".⁶  

1. See Appendix I for a copy of the original text.

2. Johann Lambers from Darme Sande had the title of Königlich Notar.

3. The witnesses were Schuster Bernhard Vehr and Weber Heinrich Korbes, both of whom were from Lingen.

4. See Appendix II for a copy of a section of an 1875 map.

5. A Scheffelsaat is the equivalent of approximately 0.1182 Hektar.

6. See Remling correspondence of December 23, 1996.