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Hermann Friedrich DÖRRIEN & his wife, Agneta WOLTERS by Robin Cary Askew Hermann Friedrich Dörrien (aka „Frederick Dorrien‟), a Merchant of London,1 known in nearby Braunschweig (Brunswick).13 was born in Hildesheim, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) in about 1670. And Said to have been one of Braunschweig‟s richest citizens and a town councillor he was baptized there on August 9th of that year at the church of St. Andreas there from around 1339, Bürgermeister Tile von Damm was one of the first (St. Andrew),2 which was the first church in Hildesheim to embrace 3 4 victims of a tax revolt in the city – known as the “Große Schicht” (Great Lutheranism. He was the fifth son of Hans Christian Dörrien (1627-1691), Uprising) of 1374 in which eight town councillors were killed. Tile von “Citizen and Merchant of Hildesheim,” who – at the time of Hermann Damm was caught hiding in the Hagen market on the 19th of April, 1374 and Friedrich‟s birth – was a „Ratsherr‟ (town councillor) there; and then, from 5 immediately beheaded. However members of his family remained “almost 1678 to 1690, its „Riedemeister‟ (deputy mayor). In fact he came from a long without interruption between 1307 and 1671 on the city council of line of merchants and town councillors of Hildesheim. Braunschweig (Brunswick).” 14 His paternal grandfather, Hans Dörrien (1601-1661), „the younger‟, was also a Hermann Friedrich Dörrien however did not follow his father‟s footsteps into “Citizen and Merchant of Hildesheim” – and also served there as both town 6 municipal government. That was left to his older brother, Johann Jobst, who councillor (from 1647) and deputy mayor (in 1649). While his great served as Hildesheim town councillor between 1700 and 1704; and its mayor grandfather, the older Hans Dörrien (1571-1629), who was a “clothier and for thirty-two years – from 1706 to 1738.15 wool merchant of Hildesheim,” served as Bürgermeister (mayor) in the years 1624, 1626, and 1628.7 His great, great grandfather, Jacob Dörrien (c.1541- But Herman Friedrich did follow the example of his father‟s other career as a 1608), while also a wool merchant and clothier, does not appear to have served merchant. In 1644, when just seventeen, Hans Christian had gone to Hamburg 8 to apprentice as a “Kaufmanns-Lehre” (merchant-apprentice) and a year later on the town council of Hildesheim. But his great, great, great grandfather – 16 also called Hermann – was the mayor of neighbouring Alfeld (a.d. Leine) after for the next four in Amsterdam. His grandfather, Hans Dörrien – the 1557.9 And although Hermann Dörrien is the earliest to have been identified younger had also gone to Hamburg as an eighteen-or-so-year-old merchant for this pedigree, it has been noted that, since 1448, Alfeld has had one mayor, apprentice in 1619. He also made even more extensive “educational visits” to one treasurer and eight town councillors all bearing the name “Dorry” – or other cities and states: “Cologne, Rouen, Paris, Antwerp, Flanders, the (presumably) one of its many early variants: Dörry, Dorrien, Dörrien, Dörien, Netherlands and England.” And the older Hans had gone even farther afield: Dorring....10 “Leipzig, Nuremberg, the Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, Brabant, Flanders, France and England.” Hermann Friedrich Dörrien‟s mother was his father‟s second wife, Ilse Margaretha Tappen (1633-1672), who had also been married once before – to Although he never knew either his grandfather or his great grandfather, we Johann Rhese, a medical doctor, who had died in 1658. She married Hans might speculate that these experiences were passed down to Hermann (Johann) Christian Dörrien on August 21st, 1660.11 Ilse Margaretha‟s father, Friedrich Dörrien as family stories and, combined with the more recent Rötger Tappen (c.1590-1673) was himself a town councillor of Hildesheim – experiences of his father, they may have inspired him – or even laid the way and could trace his family back through a long line of town councillors to a for him – to leave Hildesheim and Saxony behind and seek his fortune in the namesake, Rötger Tappen: “Burgher of Hildesheim” and „Ratsherr‟ (town then growing economic magnet that was London at the end of the seventeenth councillor) from 1554.12 This Rötger appears to have been a son of Zacharias century. Tappen: “Patricius” (patrician) of Hildesheim, who lived around 1500, when There is some suggestion that Hermann Friedrich also went first to Hamburg.17 he married Salomé von Damm, whose similarly patrician family was well- Perhaps he also apprenticed there as a merchant (Kaufmanns-Lehre) – as his v 2 Hermann Friedrich DÖRRIEN & his wife, Agneta WOLTERS father and grandfather had done before him. But, if he did, he must have was a member of the congregation and where he had his children baptised – decided that his future mercantile prospects would be even brighter in beginning with his eldest son, Liebert on July 4th, 1701. London. And he arrived in England sometime before the end of 1693 – when “Anno 1701 ... 4 Juli | Liebertus Dorrien Son to Mr. Friederic Dorrien in he would have been twenty-three years old. During the process of his Bushlane” 22 naturalization in England, he was certified to have taken the sacrament on After Liebert, they had nine more children – eight of which were also Christmas Day, 1693 “in the true Protestant High German Lutheran late baptised at the Trinity Lane Church. The last of these being Elizabeth, who Parish Church, Trinity the Less, London.” He was joined in this by a fellow was baptised on November 19th, 1712. communicant, Georg Stein.18 Mr. Stein was then – or would soon become – r his partner in business and they would share the same house together with “Anno1712 ... 19 Nov. | Elizabeth Dorryens, daughter to M . Fr. Dorryen d 23 their apprentices (see inset quotation next below). Their naturalizations were March in Sweathin’s [St. Swithin‟s] Lane” complete less than two years later in 1695, on March 15th – having both But she may not have been their youngest child. Although I have been taken the oath on the previous January 29th.19 unable to find a record of their youngest son John‟s baptism at the same And so it would seem likely to have been in England where Mr. Dorrien church, his death on December 9th, 1784, at the age of seventy, would married Miss Wolters in August of 1700 – when he was about thirty and she indicate he was born in about 1714. At which time Frau Dorrien (née about twenty-six.20 This Miss Wolters (or Wolter) turns out to be the sister Wolters) would have been about forty. of one of Mr. Dorrien‟s young apprentices, by the name of Peter Wolter, who But it was still in this Lutheran Church in Trinity Lane that Hermann was tragically murdered, less than a year later by his erstwhile friend and Friedrich Dörrien – now going by the more Anglicised version of his second fellow apprentice Herman Strodtman, in whose confession, made on the eve Christian name, Frederick – specified in his will he wished to be buried. of his execution (18 June, 1701), he mentions the detail of his master‟s “I Frederick Dorrien of London Merchant ... my body I commit to the Earth marriage. to be devoutly yett privately buryed in the Lutheran Church of the holy Trinity 24 HERMAN STRODTMAN was indicted at the Old Bailey, on three ſeveral in Trinity Lane London ....” indictments. The firſt was for the murder of Peter Wolter, his fellow He does not mention his wife in his will – from which we may conclude she ſervant, on the 27th of April, 1701: the ſecond, for breaking open the houſe of Meſſieurs Stein and Dorien, and ſtealing a watch and other had died sometime before he wrote it on February 3rd, 1732. In Werner things, the property of the ſaid Peter Wolter; and the third for ſtealing Constantin von Arnswaldt‟s book on the Dorrien family, published in 1910, divers goods, the property of Herman Frederick Dorien, on the day she is referenced as actually having died about five or six years earlier in before mentioned. ... The Confeſſion of HERMAN STRODTMAN: 1726. Von Arnswaldt also gives her year of birth as 1674, indicating she “... About the year 1694, my father ſent me to ſchool to Lubeck, where I would have been about fifty two years old at the time of her death. continued till Michaelmas 1698. From thence I went to Hamburgh, and ſtaid there till I ſet out for England. I arrived at London in March Harmen Friedrich ~~ Hildesheim (Andr.) 1670 Aug. 9., † following, and (together with one Peter Wolter, who came with me to London 1740 (γ 1733) Kaufmann in London ~ . 1700 . England) was bound apprentice to Mr. Stein and Mr. Dorien, . m. Wolters * . 1674 . † . 1726 . 25 merchants, and partners in London. Peter Wolter and myſelf, having Englische Linie: been fellow-travellers, and being now fellow-’prentices, we lived for ſome time very friendly and lovingly together, till about Auguſt laſt, And though Von Arnswaldt repeats the mistaken „1740‟ year of death for when his siſter was married to one of our maſters, Mr. Dorien. ....” 21 „Harmen Friedrich (Dorrien)‟, he does include the alternate and correct year However, there is no record of this marriage having taken place at the of „1733‟ in brackets. So perhaps we may place some cautious reliance on German Lutheran Church in Trinity Lane, London – of which Mr. Dorrien the dates he gives for Mr. Dorrien‟s wife. But there are no clues as to either v by Robin Cary Askew – updated September 2011 – Hermann Friedrich DÖRRIEN & his wife, Agneta WOLTERS 3 where she was born or where she died.

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