The Deppe family starts off with the author’s great great great great grandfather, John Henry Deppe (cite). He was born in 1827 Asemissen, Lippe Detmold, now known as Nordrhein-Westfalen, West Germany. John Henry was the son of Johann Heinrich Deppe, an officer in the Prussian army, and Anna Katherine Elizabeth Deppe. His sister whose name is unknown, died while she was sixteen, causing much anxiety within John Henry’s mother. Whenever John Henry became of age, his stubborn father intended him to join the army and follow in his footsteps. His mother, now protective of her precious son, had a different idea in mind. Secretly, Anna Deppe collected a fund for John Henry to emigrate to America. In 1848, Anna Deppe’s wish for her son to have a…show more content… Simultaneously horrified and excited, he began to work his way inland. Eventually he settled in monroe County and found employment in the millwright trade with his friend, George Christman. John Henry spent several years in this line of work until purchasing a farm at pine run, near a lake commonly known as Big Lake. He began to build a variety of mills, including the first cement mill in Lehigh Valley.
After gaining a well known reputation, he moved his family to New Bern, North Carolina. Roughly thirty miles south of New Bern, there is a small village known as Deppe’s Crossing due to the large amount of building materials that were exchanged there. It no longer exists today, but some still refer to it as it was in the late 1870s. Having a large business with two locations, work became exhausting for John Henry, then known as the master of his trade. Few dared to compete with his millwright businesses.
John Henry was the true definition of the American dream. He travelled to the East Coast of the United States to find a better life than what was promised to occur in Asemissen. Not only did he succeed, but he prospered with a well-known business and large
