| There are several small European towns named Melle: |
| Melle, Belgium has a bicycle road race, a museum, 10,000 inhabitants
and some great beer.
It is just South-East of Ghent. The municipality has a Dutch language web site.
It includes local photos and civic information.
There is even an extensive Flemish Society for Genealogy web page from the same town. |
| Melle, Italy
is a small village in the Italian Alpine foothills. |
The small city of Melle, France has a number of web sites. PaysMellois,
Mellecom.fr
and the Melle Office de Tourisme.
|
Melle, Germany has a civic web site
that is mainly in German.
It is situated near the city of Osnabrück.
This Melle is a world centre for both fish food
and Balloon Art!!! |
[Note: You can find a variety of web language translation tools
at Langenberg.com and Google.com.
A good source for European maps is at ViaMichelin.] |
| I have read rumours about Slovenian, Norwegian and Austrian Melle surnames. |
| In 1997 I made a brief visit to New Melle, Missouri.
They have a Boone-Duden Historical Society. |
| Lola Melle McLanis discovered some
interesting Melle research. She provided information on the following
people and places: |
| 1819: George Alexander von Melle was born in Hamburg,
Germany. |
| He was the son of Johan Ulrich August von Melle. He
studied in Germany and qualified as a surgeon/apothecary. |
| 1841: He moved to Cape Town, South Africa where he
married and had 8 children--5 girls and 3 boys. The three sons were
Theodore Albert Charles, James Abercrombie Gordon, and George James
McCartney. |
| 1855: George took his family to Germany to introduce
them to his parents. Because he had been in S.A. for 14 yrs., he was no
longer recognized as a German subject and was given a passport as a
naturalized British subject. |
| 1875: George passed away at the age of 56. |
| George James McCarthy was born and died in South
Africa. His two sons, Basil von Brandeis Melle and Henry Augustus Melle, also
were born and died in S.A. Basil was a Rhodes scholar. |
| There are rumours and speculation on James Abercrombie
Gordon Melle. He came to the U.S. to visit Theodore Albert Charles Melle
and apparently, that was the last anyone ever heard of him. He may have
died in the San Francisco earthquake. |
| Theodore Albert Charles Melle emigrated to America in
the 1860's, and all of his children and descendants are all accounted
for. |
| Basil George von Brandis Melle
and his son Michael George Melle
were first-class Transvaal Cricket players. |
Alison Melle Just of S.A. has done some research. She
found out that there are several streets and monuments named Melle as well
as the von Melle Park at the University of Hamburg.
She found a book written in 1928, by a
Dr. Werner von Melle which includes a section on Melle history.
There is speculation that this particular Melle family's
original name was Mellen. In this early von Melle family, the children have von Mellen and von der Melle surnames. |
| Elling Melle wrote from
Nokomis, Florida, to provide information on Melle connections in
Norway: |
| His Norwegian "family appear on the slopes of
the mountain 'Mellshorn' at the end of Oerstafjord, a little south of
Aalesund on the Norwegian West coast". |
| "The area is known as 'Melle-bygda' (Melle
community) and was almost exclusively populated by family members on small
farms and Salmon fisheries in the first half of this
century". |
| Capt. Emil Bredenbek Melle (born May 22, 1878, died
June 16, 1950) was the oldest of 12 born to Johannes Melle (born 1848) and
Eugenie Bredenbek (born 1853). "Where Johannes Melle was born I
am not sure, but there are connections to Bergen which had strong
connections to the 'Hanseatic'. Grandmother Eugenie was known to have come
from Bergen, but with the family name (Bredenbek) almost certainly
originating in Germany.." |
| "Today the Melle name, with roots in Norway
has many members in the US, and elsewhere in the world as several of
Father's siblings emigrated, and all were 'productive' :-)". |
