I found this labelled photograph at my local antique market this month. It says:
“Georg Christoph Schrage
born 27.11.1837 in Hevensen, Hannover
died 4.4.1916 in Leipzig
This photograph was taken in London in about 1860”
So Georg was born and died in Germany, but spent some time in London in between. Oooh, how I love an international genealogy treasure hunt!
I assumed his birth place Hevensen was actually located in Hardegsen, 110 km South of Hannover in the state of Niedersachsen. Hannover was/is the largest city in the area. St.Lambert was/is the church of the Hevensen Lutheran congregation. I reached out to the church administration and am so grateful they could give me the information that Georg had indeed been born on that day into the family of pastor Karl Emil Schrage and Johanne Charlotte Antoinette née Rabies. This was the village that Georg grew up in:
His story’s next chapter unfolded in London. Wow, that must have been quite the contrast for young Georg – out of the idyllic village of Hevensen into the buzzing life of London! London’s population was about 3 million in 1860! I wonder how this came about? I mean, any city in Germany, like Berlin or Cologne or Hamburg, would have been a big change for a small town boy. His father was a pastor, and somehow he could finance his son’s move overseas. Or had Georg done some training in a renowned export company in one of those cities I mention above, and collected enough means to end up in London in his early 20s.
I find a Geo C. Schrage in the 1861 Census, living in the “Airly (or “Aisly”) House” at what today is 1a Cleveland Road in East Islington, London. The Census marks 1839 as his birth year. It could have easily been a mistake by the census taker, or his landlord listed him and didn’t know the exact date. Georg was said to have been born in Hannover, and his occupation was a “commercial traveller of fancy goods”. Oooh, fancy goods – what were they, I wonder? China, jewellery, perhaps?
It’s not too often that I need to find UK records, so I’m not that familiar with all the different ways to access them. But mentions of one George Christopher Schrage in The London Gazette between 1863-1868 showed up on FindMyPast. The London Gazette was/is one of the official public records where certain statutory notices, like bankrupcies, are published. I was too curious, I had to get access to that, so I signed up for a one-month-subscription of the platform. Had I only known that the online Archive of The London Gazette lets you access the same records for free…. Oh well, you live and learn. Note to self: don’t forget to always google first.
My curiosity paid off, though. In 1863, Georg split up from his business partner Charles August Renninger from Schrage & Renninger to continue the business on his own.
I find his former business partner, presumably a fellow-German, in the 1891 Census, listed as a china merchant. I wonder if that was their joint venture of “fancy goods” in the 1860s as well?
Georg did not thrive on his own. In 1866, Georg owed money to his creditors.
In October 1868, he filed for bankrupcy and the final hearing in Georg’s bankrupcy case was to take place in front of the court in March that year.
Georg was living at No. 1, Monkwell Street in Cripplegate at the time. If Georg was broke at the time, I wonder who took him in for several years? I think pretty much right after his last bankrupcy hearing, Georg packed up his belongings and left London. I cannot find him in the 1871 UK Census.
My next clue was Leipzig in Germany where Georg apparently died in 1916. The churchbooks of Leipzig are not available online either, so I couldn’t access his death record. But I was hoping that George made Leipzig his home for a while. And there he was, I found him in the Leipzig city directories! He was listed in 1877 for the first time, a tradesman of raw tobacco. He set up his business in Leipzig in the same year.
This might have been his office building at No. 3, Wintergartenstr.:
I wish I knew what Georg did after he left London. Did he go into hiding from his creditors? Where did he live between 1868 and 1877? Did he recover from his London ordeal and try his hand at business somewhere else in the world, before showing up in Leipzig in 1877. Spoiler alert – this time he was going to make it!
While his business remained in the same address until 1892, he moved around at least 5 times in the next years, living at different addresses around the city of Leipzig.
Unfortunately, the city directories only name the head of the household – that was Georg – so I cannot say who else might have lived with him.
In 1913, Georg moved to No. 23 Kaiser-Friedrich-Str. in Gohlis-Leipzig where he lived until his dying day on April 4, 1916. It worked out well for Georg after all. He stayed in Leipzig for 30 years! And indeed, I don’t find his name in the 1917 city directory for the first time. Instead, his widow Margarete Schrage is listed living in the same address. Yeii, Georg had found time and means to get married and I now knew a family member by name!
Georg’s wife Margarete must have passed away in 1932/33 cause in 1933, a new head of household appears in the city directory: Elisabeth Schrage, a teacher, living in the same address at Kaiser-Friedrich-Str. 23. Was Elisabeth Georg and Margarete’s daughter?
A year later in 1934, Elisabeth is gone (perhaps married?) and instead one Margarete Schrage, a bank clerk, is listed. Perhaps she was the second daughter of Georg and Margarete?
In 1948, Margarete Schrage was still living in the same building (at the time known as the Viktor-Adler-Str.), but I don’t know anything else about her.
Thank you, Georg, for taking us on your journery back in time! Georg, the trooper, the man of second chances, the small town adventurer who fell flat on his nose in the metropolis of London in the 1860s, and picked himself up and started anew in Leipzig.
Someone kept his photo for 160 years! Perhaps it belonged to one of his daughters, Elisabeth or Margarete, or his family back home in Hevensen? I feel sad that it has got lost in history now. But at least Georg got to tell us about his exciting adventures one more time.
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