| Genealogy of the Schelle Family Branch |
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| Click on the family branch you are interested in to see a clickable surname index with links to individual pedigrees. Schelle Family Ancestors Brown Family Ancestors Chandonia (Chandonnet) Family Ancestors Van Holsbeke Family Ancestors |
| The Thelen and Margraf Family Web Site |
| Our Schelle family ancestors consist of 4 distinct branches: The Chandonia (Chandonnet) branch is of French and native ancestry. This branch consists of mainly early French settlers to Quebec in the 1600s and early 1700s who were either members of the French Army transferred to "Lower Canada" forts or fur traders who crossed the ocean to join in the lucrative business as Coeur de Bois or Voyageurs. These families and their desecndants spread from the Quebec City and Montreal area in the 1600s westward into the Great Lakes Region and present day Michigan and Indiana. A few of these families were pioneers in the Detroit Region during the early 1700s. Others were fur traders who wintered in the Mackinaw, Michigan area (LaFromboise family home on Mackinaw Island pictured along with a painting of Madame LaFromboise) and eventually spread west to Fort Dearborn (Chicago), Fort St. Joseph (Niles, Michigan) and other posts to trade furs and goods with the native peoples of the land. Several fur traders married into native tribes such as the Pottawatomi and Ottawa nations because several nations would only trade goods with family. The children of the French fur traders and their native spouses were called "Metis" and many continued in the fur trade for several generations. They eventually settled in areas including present day South Bend, Indiana and Detroit, Michigan. The Van Holsbeke branch came to the United States much later than the Chandonia's. The first Van Holsbeke family immigrated from Belgium between 1885 and 1889. The family was originally from Merendree, Gand, Oost Vlaanderen, Belgium. Augustus "August" Francies Van Holsbeke, his wife Marie Prudence Moorman, and their children settled in the Belgian district of Mishawaka, St. Joseph County, Indiana before 1889 when their first "American" child was born. Their daughter, Marie Augusta Van Holsbeke (1884-1959), married John Charles Chandonia Sr. (1886-1948) in St. Joseph County, Indiana in 1904. The Schelle branch was originally from Germany and can be traced in the "old country" as far back as the late 1600s. The first family member to arrive in the United States was Kurt Otto Willy "John" Schelle via merchant marine ship docked in Baltimore Harbor around 1916. Kurt was born in Cottbus, Germany in 1893 and died in South Bend, Indiana in 1961. His parents, who were both born and died in Germany, were Otto Emil Oskar Schelle (1865-1893) and Bertha Emilie Minna Schulz (1868- abt 1950). Kurt married Hazel Anna Brown in 1917 in South Bend, Indiana. Hazel was born in South Bend in 1895 and died in Dayton, Ohio in 1970. Hazel's parents were Lewis "Cazz" Caswell Brown and Elizabeth Mendenhall. The Brown branch is another that has been in North America for over three centuries. Not much is know about the ancestors of Lewis Caswell Brown, but much is know about Elizabeth Mendenhall's ancestors. The Mendenhall family originally came to America from England between 1660 and 1685 and settled with other Quaker families in Southeast Pennsylvania. The first Mendenhall in America was John M. Mendenhall, Sr. (1659-1743) who married Elizabeth Maris (1665-1707) in Chester County, Pennsylvania. John and Elizabeth's decendants moved from Pennsylvania to establish new Quaker communities in Guilford County, North Carolina in the early 1700s. Next the family decendents moved to the Frederick County, Maryland and Martinsburg, West Virginia areas during the late 1700s and early 1800s. In the mid 1800s, some family members moved to Quaker meeting houses in present day Indiana. |
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