Our Holtz-Radeloff Great-Great-Great-Great (4x) Grandparents

In December (2015) I posted pictures of some very old headstones that turned out to be those of our third great grandparents, George and Elizabeth Holtz. You'll of course recall that George and Elizabeth had a son, John, whose union with Anna Moll (and survival of a cross-Atlantic voyage in 1854) produced a daughter, Lena, who in turn married Johann August Friedrich, which led to the birth of Arthur Lester who married Edyth Lillian Grohndorf and inspired the creation of this blog. George (Joachim) Holtz was born in 1797 and Elizabeth Radeloff in 1804, and both were probably christened in the parish church of Dreveskirchen in Blowatz, a municipality of what was then the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg.

The church in Blowatz (Dreveskirchen)

The Dreveskirchen parish records have recently been scanned, published, and indexed, by the LDS, and I've been happily browsing through their 694 pages. They go all the way back to 1740 and should, if the Holtz's and Radeloff's were natives, contain the baptismal, marriage and death records of George and Elizabeth's parents and grandparents, pushing the family tree back at least another two generations.

Title page from the Dreveskirchen Parish Records, 1740-1786

So far, I've found the marriage record for George's parents, and the birth record for Elizabeth's father. The wedding of our 4th great grandparents, Johann Christian Holtz and Margarethe Elizabeth Lütjen, took place at Dreveskirche on November 10th, 1780. Our 4th great grandfather, Hans Joachim Radeloff, was baptised at Dreveskirche on February 1st, 1769. The names of his parents (our 5th great grandparents!) appear to be Johann Radeloff and Anne Viek Steinhagen. Among the godparents listed for the young Hans Joachim are, possibly, his namesakes: Hans Brinkman and Johann Joachim Radeloff. I can't make out the third name, but she appears to be the latter's wife.

Marriage record of Johann Christian Holtz and Margarethe Elizabeth Lütjen, Dreveskirche, 10 Nov 1780.

Baptismal record of Hans Joachim Radeloff, Dreveskirche, 1 Feb 1769.

The records go back even further, another 30 years. I'm still trying to reconstruct the genealogies. But no matter how far back I go, I think I'm safe in assuming that I'll find no princes or princesses there. Our lineage is thick with serfs and peasants. The House of Mecklenburg had dominated the aristocracy in the region since the 12th century. But we should be proud that our lineage persevered through the Middle Ages intact, and (hopefully) untainted by the privileged dynasties which the revolutions in Europe and America were (at least partially) successful in abolishing.