Sources

Everything on this site comes from the sources below. The margin notes on each page link here, so you can check any claim for yourself.

Research

• Rainer Atzbach, Sandkærgårds lade i Grønhøj fra 1791: Kartoffeltyskernes eneste bevarede verdslige bygning. Kuml 71 (2022). In Danish with an English summary. The building archaeology of the only surviving colonist barn.
• Niels Kayser Nielsen, Kartoffeltyskerne: vellykket indvandring eller national konflikt? Bol og By 18, no. 1 (2002), pp. 37–58. In Danish. Settlement, housing, the potato and how the colonists were received.

History

• Kartoffeltyskerne og deres efterkommere. Kongenshus Mindepark. In Danish. Departure dates, arrival on Alheden, the descendants' association and the barn.
• Henrik Frank, Kartoffeltyskerne og Frank slægten. WikiTree. In Danish. The 1759 advertisement, the columns of May 1760, colony names and farm numbers.
• Kartoffeltyskere. Den Store Danske, lex.dk. In Danish.
• Frederiks Kirke, Viborg Kommune. lex.dk. In Danish.
• Kartoffeltyskere. Danish Wikipedia. Numbers, colonies, language, surnames and memorials.
• Potato Germans. English Wikipedia.
• Kartoffeltyskere. Grænseforeningen. In Danish.
• Kartoffeltyskerne. Dengang.dk. In Danish. Daily life, the potato and the colonists' reception.
• Dänemark. Deutsche Kolonisten (Jutta Rzadkowski). In German. Recruitment regions and the colonies in Schleswig.

Family

The family facts come from original records wherever they survive. The Frederiks parish church books on Arkivalieronline begin in 1814, so for the colony's early decades the census, the colony's own records and the local history fill the gap.

• Danish parish registers (kirkebøger), read on the Danish National Archives' Arkivalieronline: Frederiks (burials 1815 and 1833), Kragelund (marriage 1837, baptism 1848), Balle (burial 1860), Funder (marriage 1875), Søvind (baptism 1879), Søby (baptism 1880) and Silkeborg (marriage 1908).
• Thorning parish register, burials of Jacob Pedersen Döhr, 1816 and Ane Cathrine Michelsdatter, 1827. Arkivalieronline.
• Census of 1787, Frederiks parish. Arkivalieronline.
• Census of 1860, Balle parish, Hvinningdal no. 28. Arkivalieronline.
• The heath colonies' archive at the Danish National Archives, described in the finding aid Hedekolonierne (1679–1927). Andersen's farm histories draw on its yearly reports to the Rentekammeret.
• Valdemar Andersen, Alheden: Frederiks sogns historie, 2nd edition (Kolding, 1980; first published 1953). Digitised by Danske Slægtsforskere. The farm histories (pp. 189–212) are based on the colony officials' yearly reports for 1763–1792 and the colonies' tenancy register from 1810; the colonist families are described on pp. 234–243.
• Jens Peter Aaboe, diary entries from the years 1833–81 (Dagbogsoptegnelser i årene 1833–81), on the sale of Leonhard Frank's house.
• Church records of Eschelbach and neighbouring parishes in Baden and Hesse: births of 1713, 1721, 1749 and 1756, and marriages of 1701, 1741 and 1743, as transcribed by family researchers.
• Eschelbach (Sinsheim), Tairnbach and Bödigheim. German Wikipedia.

The crest and images

• Auswanderung, 1759 / Kartoffeldeutsche in Dänemark / Wappen. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, R 4 Nr. 12955, via Archivportal-D.
• Frederik Vermehren, En jysk fårehyrde på heden, 1855. National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), KMS1496. Public domain.
• C.G. Pilo, Portræt af Frederik V. National Gallery of Denmark (SMK), KMS4578. Public domain.

Places to visit

• Inn and Museum Grønhøj Kro. VisitDenmark.

Researching your own family

If your family has roots on Alheden, or carries one of the colonist surnames, these are good places to begin:

• Kartoffeltyskerslægter, a genealogy database of colonist families, maintained by a working group of descendants. Registration is free.
• Kartoffeltyskerne på Alheden, the descendants' association founded in 1985.
• Danish parish registers and censuses, free to read on the Danish National Archives' Arkivalieronline. Frederiks and Thorning parishes are good places to start, though the Frederiks church books there begin in 1814.
• Karup Egnsarkiv, collection A260 "Kartoffeltyskerne": documents, maps, songs and newspaper cuttings from the anniversaries in 1959, 1984 and 2009. Not digitised, so contact the archive.
• On the German side, the regional state archives, such as the Hessian State Archive in Darmstadt, which you can search through Archivportal-D.

Further reading

• Valdemar Andersen, Den jyske hedekolonisation (1970). The standard Danish work.
• Etlar Kramer Johansen, Fra fremmed land de kom: Kartoffeltyskernes historie (1999), also in German and in English as From Foreign Land They Came. On where the colonists came from, the colony villages and their descendants.
• Jørgen Nielsen and Stine Bitsch-Larsen, De sydtyske kolonisters bosættelse på den jydske hede (Viborg, 2005). On how the colonists settled the heath.
• Chr. Jacobsen, Fra Alheden (Viborg, 1990). Includes a plan of Grønhøj colony village with the occupants of each house in 1760 and 1761 (pp. 119–120). Digitised by Danske Slægtsforskere.
• G. Nørgaard Jepsen, Kartoffeltyskere i Midtjylland (1983). Digitised by Danske Slægtsforskere.
• Frits Hastrup, "Tyskerkolonierne i Nørrejylland. Byer og boliger", Fra Viborg Amt 1989, pp. 7–46, and 1990, pp. 86–127.
• F. C. Carstens, Bemærkninger over Alheden og dens Colonier (1839; new edition with Etlar Kramer Johansen, 2000).
• P. M. Rørsig, Fra Alhedens første Kolonisation (1925).
• Alexander, Jacob and Mary Eichhorn, The Immigration of German Colonists to Denmark and Their Subsequent Emigration to Russia in the Years 1759–1766 (2012). In English and German, drawing on Danish and German archives.
• Otto Geisler, Kartoffeltyskernes historie på Alheden (2011). Includes the thirty names on the 1959 memorial stone.