Automobile: Bad idea?

There is a family myth that my Great Grandfather August was a contemporary of Henry Ford. The myth also alleges that August, while working on a farm with Ford, told him that the automobile would never take off. I have decided to devote some of my research to hopefully confirm or disprove this myth.

Just like with Heinrich Burkel I will stick to the facts:

Henry Ford was born in Southeastern Michigan on 30 July 1863. My Great Grandfather was born a month later on 28 August 1863.
Henry was the first son of William and Mary Ford. William had come from County Cork, Ireland and married Mary Litogot the youngest child of Belgian parents. Her parents died when she was a child and she was adopted by the O'Hearn family - neighbors of her parents.

The map to the left shows the area that was once Henry Fords stomping ground. The area between Ford Rd. and Chicago Rd was farmland belonging to William Ford.

Some sources mention that Henry Ford walked 4 miles to the local Episcopalian Church every Sunday.

Henry was not interested in becoming a farmer like his father. At age 16 he left home and moved East to Detroit where he became an apprentice machinist.

August grew up about 11.2 miles Northeast of the Ford farm. (See Map Below.) He was the youngest son of Sebastian and Catherine Burkel.

The Map at Right shows the distance between August Burkel's childhood home (A) and Henry Ford's childhood home (B).

I am not sure how likely it is that the family myth is actually true. I am inclined to think that it is not for the following reasons:

Although the farms look close - when the boys were 13 they were in different townships. The Fords were in Springwell township and the the Burkels were in Greenfield. The Fords received their mail from the Yew post office and the Burkels received mail from the Greenfield PO.

Also, the Burkels were Catholic and the Fords were Episcopalian. They probably did not know one another from Church.

I could not find any information about schooling. It is possible that they went to elementary school together. Perhaps with more intense research of Henry Ford I might be able to determine where he went to school as a boy. I am not sure if I would be able to confirm that August went to the same school.

It seems like it is possible that August may have worked on the Fords farm - but not likely. Henry was the oldest and August was the youngest. There were three older Burkel brothers that may have enabled August to have some time to work on the Ford farm. Most of the evidence that I have found indicates that sons worked on their own family farms, though.

Considering that Henry could not wait to get away from the farm and August ended up with a farm about 3 times the size of his father - it is probable that they had different career paths in mind.

So, to say that Henry Ford and my Great Grandfather were contemporaries is absolutely a fact - but whether August told Henry that the automobile was a bad idea will remain a topic for debate for future generations.

Heinrich Burkel

Part of any family history search must involve (if involuntarily) the search for famous relatives. In our case we may have a possible connection to the nineteenth century Romantic painter Heinrich Burkel.

Heinrich Burkel was born on the 29th of May in 1802 in Pirmasens in Bavaria (in the South). He was the son of an innkeeper. The plan was for Heinrich to take over the family business but at age 11 he got into a spot of trouble with the police. He had made a caricature of Napoleon. This imagination and propensity towards humor would be a recurring theme throughout his artistic career and would contribute greatly to his popularity.

At age 20 he began seriously studying to be an artist. He learned oil painting in Munich, Schleissheim, and the Netherlands. He first traveled to Italy in 1827 and visited four more times between then and 1853 sometimes staying as long as two years. He married Johanna of Hofstetten. Since Hofstetten is located slightly West of Munich where Heinrich lived for most of his career I am going to guess that he met her sometime in his twenties.

Heinrich enjoyed a prolific career having painted more than 1000 paintings. He was part of the Romantic movement of the middle nineteenth century. The ideas of this movement were in reaction to the new ideas of Science discoverd as part of the Enlightenment that were now challenging the notions of life and nature. The visual arts that came out of this period attempted to capture the depth of untamed nature. The artists wanted to portray nature as a fearsome and supreme entity of human existence. It seems almost like they were saying that the scientists and the enlightened could try to figure it out - but they could never challenge the authority of nature.

For nearly 30 years Heinrich was rejected by the Munich Academy of Art - but in 1858 he was granted an honorary membership. He was also granted honorary memberships to the Dresden and Vienna Academies of Art. He participated in the World Expos of 1862 in London and in 1867 in Paris. He died of a long illness on June 11 1869.

His legacy lives on; however. On May, 30 2008 a painting by Heinrich Burkel was auctioned at Sothebys for 34,100 pounds (52,759.52 USD). He has works in museums in London, Australia, Russia (At the Hermitage no less!!) and all over Germany.

In 1925 the Burkel Gallery in Pirmasens Germany acquired three of Heinrich's paintings. The "Amalfi Cave" 1845; "After the Hunt" 1830; and "The Horse Round Up" 1861-1863. During the second World War the paintings - along with other works from the collections were taken to the Husterhoh School shelter to protect them from allied bombing raids. In March of 1945 American troops arrived in Pirmasens and six months later the museum reported at least 50 works lost or stolen, Burkel's work amongst them.

Fast forward to October of 2005: the William H. Bunch Auction and Appraisal Company in Concordeville, PA lists the three paintings up for bid in a future auction. The paintings were advertised in print and on the web and were seen by a member of the staff at the Burkel Gallery in Pirmasens. The museum identified the paintings and contacted the German authorities, who contacted the auction house. The consignee (who's name was not published) voluntarily returned the paintings.

On Feb, 10 2006 the US Ambassador to Germany returned the three paintings to the mayor of Pirmasens - Dr. Bernhard Matheis.

Proving or disproving a link between my family and Heinrich Burkel may be impossible. For now I can only look at the facts that I have and piece together a possible scenario.

The facts are small in number. I know that my Great-Great Grandfather Sebastian was born in 1809 and came to the US from Le Havre, France in 1847. I know that it is listed on his emigration documents that he came from Lorraine, France which is located about 5 miles from Pirmasens. Lastly, with the help of a German website I was able to plot the distribution of people with the last name of "Burkel" [spelled with umlaut over u] in Germany. There are relatively few Burkels and the distribution is mainly in the Central and Southern regions.

If you look at the two maps on the left carefully and fit them together you can see that Heinrich Burkel indeed came from the same region of the world as my ancestors. The Blue map on the left is a map of France with Lorraine being the darker shade of blue. The map in the middle is Germany and the red dot represents Pirmasens. The map on the right is a map of Europe - can you see how to fit the other two maps together like puzzle pieces?

So this is what I think might be possible:

Heinrich is born the first or one of the first sons of an innkeeper in Pirmasens Germany. I am guessing this because some sources indicate that Heinrich was originally supposed to take over the family business - usually the responsibility of the first son. Seven years later Sebastian is born. Since the North of France and the South of Germany had bigger populations of Catholics it is not outside of the realm of possibility to say that Sebastian was possibly a younger or later of many sons and daughters.

Somewhere along the timeline Sebastian may have left home to go to France. There was a lot of farmland available there - maybe he went to have his own farm and start a family. It is reasonable to suspect that he was adventurous as he left Europe for the USA.

Looking at the surname distribution map above it is easy to see that there are not a huge number of Burkels living in the region of Germany surrounding Pirmasens. I don't know if this makes it more or less likely. It would seem that at this time it is just as likely that Sebastian moved from central Germany where the distribution is greater.

It is probably something that I will never be able to have the answer to unless (in the very unlikely event) there is a living ancestor of Heinrich Burkel who is willing to allow me to compare DNA. I guess in a way this is sort of frustrating. I am not any closer than I was when I started this journey strictly speaking. I really don't know much for certain - but I do know at least that after all of this research it is still a possibility. I can not automatically rule it out just yet and I may have to live the rest of my life just knowing that it is possible.

SOURCES

Wikipedia

European Wikipedia

World Lingo

Artfacts.net

Sotheby's Website

Article from German Abassadors Webpage

Art Prints on Demand