Mecklenburg

Mecklenburg, Germany

Mecklenburg, a region in northeastern Germany, is the ancestral home of my ancestors, the LABORN family. Carl and Sophia Laborn, with their four daughters, left Mecklenburg in 1857. Carl and Sophia died on the voyage (see Rudolf Poison Ship) and the daughters settled in Niagara Falls, New York.

In the 1800's, the proper name for Mecklenburg was Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Today the region is part of the German Bundesland (state) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It is in the northeast corner of Germany, north of Berlin on the coast of the Baltic Sea. During the cold war years, it was part of East Germany.

Map of present-day Germany, with the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern highlighted.
This map is from http://www.entry.de.

According to an article edited by Carol Gohsman Bowen at http://pages.prodigy.net/jhbowen/garling.htm, in the 1850's Mecklenburg had the third-highest emigration rate in Europe, exceeded only by Ireland and Galicia (part of present-day Poland and Ukraine).

The Laborn family lived in the tiny village of Medow, in the Landkreis (county) Luebz, near the town of Goldberg. Medow and Goldberg share the same postal code (PLZ), 19399. Medow is at latitude 53.57426 N, longitude 12.078 E, due east of Schwerin, due south of Rostock.

Map of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. I have added the location of Goldberg in yellow.
This map is from http://www.entry.de.

Goldberg is the site of a battle between Sweden and Saxony that took place on 07-Dec-1635, during the Thirty Years War. (Source: www.pipeline.com/~cwa/Wittstock_Phase.htm)

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