The Beckmeyer, Duvel, Ehlert, Erich (Erxmeyer), and Mollenbrock families were from Lippe Detmold.

Beckmeyers/Berkmeiers lived in the village of Oberschonhagen. The Duvels, Ehlerts and Mollebrocks lived in the village of Belle in the parish of Wobbel.

The Erichs (Erxmeiers) lived in Maspe, Belle, Bellerson,and Borkendorf.

District of Lippe

The Principality of Lippe is a historical German State located between the Weser river and the southeast part of the Teutoburger Wald (Teutoburg forest) in North Rhine-Westphalia. It became a principality in 1789 the counts of Lippe-Detmold were granted the title of "prince". It was one of the smaller states of the German Empire and remained independent during Napoleonic times. In 1815 Lippe Detmold became a member of the German Confederation.

The capital of Lippe was the town of Detmold. Towns include Blomberg, Honr-Bad Meinberg, and Wöbbel. The records for the village of Belle are in Wöbbel.

1822

"As to the geology of the province, the soil belongs to the ancient limestone formation, of the same sort as the rocks on Jura, to which the Germans have give the name of muschelkalk. The other substances are marble, clay that is well adapted for ordinary earthen ware, and the sandstone that is called quadersandstein in Germany. The lands are fruitful, although the greater part of the country is mountainous; it produces corn, fruit, lint and hemp. There are large forests of oaks, and extensive tracts covered with trees.

The industry of the country is principally confined to cotton spinning, the manufacture of linen and woollen stuffs, and also to those tobacco pipes that are made of carbonated magnesia, and are know in commerce by the name of ecume de mer. The inhabitants, who are almost all Calvinists, have enjoyed a representative constitution since the year 1819, and before that period they succeeded in abolishing the impost on wines and several other articles; the duties on spirits, stamps and playing cards, are the most important, which have been retained. The people in some powerful nations might be desirous of similar reforms.

.......The military force amounts to seven hundred men."

Universal geography: or a description of all parts of the world .... Volume 7 By Conrad Malte-Brun, 1822

"The present prince of Lippe-Detmold stood uder the regency of his mother, not being of age when his father died in 1802. She gave a very liberal constitution in 1819, and in 1820 resigned the government to her son. The country is partly very mountainous, but part of it is very fertile. Ther are many large and ancient forests. Wood is a staple ware, and the country is very productive."

A Physical, Political, and Statistical Account of the Wold and Its Various Division by James Bell, 1832

"The climate is temperate, but the atmosphere is frequently loaded with fogs and vapours; the winter is cold and wet; the summer, especially in the Heath, very hot. The natural productions are corn, flax, hemp, potatoes, rapeseed, garden vegetables, and timber. The inhabitants are common domestic animals, poultry, game, fish, and bees. The mineral products are gypsum, lime, clay, marble and freestone; and there is a salt-spring from which 36,000 bushels of salt are annually obtained. The staples are flax and timber, of which large quantities are exported. The breeds of horned cattle and sheep are good. Swine and goats are numerous. The horses breed on the Senner Heath are hardy and spirited. There are no manufacturers of any importance. Thread,, coarse yarn, and linen are made in some parts; there are likewise several tannieries, spirit-distilleries, paper-mills, oil-mills, and saw-mills. The exports besides flax and timber are cattle, linen, and meerschaum pipes manufactured at Lemgo.

......The contingent of the army of the German Confederation is 721 men.

The English cyclopaedia, Volume 3 By Charles Knight, 1867

"In every on of its few small hamlets and villages the stranger may perceive great barns of a very peculiar construction, — which I shall presently have occasion to describe more particularly, — with vast high roofs, and quaint inscriptions cared in wood over doorways, important that within is heaped goodly store of grain, and hay and straw, food for man and fodder for beast, and always making reverent acknowledgement of the truth that "the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.""

Chapter I, At The Pied Lamb The Sacristan's Household, by Frances Eleanor Trollope, 1869

"A great, nearly square, timber framed, brick building, low at the over hanging eaves, but with a sloping roof so extraordinarily and disproportionately vast as to run up to the height of a tall, three storied house at its sharp apex. This roof is of bright red tiles, just sufficiently weather-stained and moss-grown to be picturesquely mellow in their tone of colour. The cross-timbers of the house beneath are black, and rudely, though lavishly carved, the interstices between them being painted a warm cream colour. The building although nearly square, is yet not quite so, and stands with its narrowest side, or gable end, towards the road. In the middle of this gable-end yawns an enormously wide and lofty arched doorway, the centre of which is precisely beneath the topmost angle of the towering roof; and the long lines of tiling slope rapidly down on either hand, and terminate in projecting eaves not more than ten feet from the ground. The reason for making so seemingly disproportionate an entrance as the great arch with its heavy wooden folding-doors is not apparent until you step within the threshold but then it becomes at once obvious. The whole centre of the building is a large and lofty barn, piled high with hay and straw and sore of grain. It is, too, a storehouse for farm implements, and so huge are is proportions, that a harvest wagon laden with sheaves and drawn by three or four sturdy horses can pass easily through the doorway, and stand beneath its ample shelter. From the barn, which entirely occupies the central length and breath of the building, is the only possible ingress to the dwelling house. On the right hand and on the l Nearly all the light and air which reaches these apartments gains admission through the wide-open doors of the barn. Nearly all the light and air; but in the special dwelling which I am endeavouring to describe there was a range of small lattice casements under the eaves, into which the last low rays of the setting sun managed to penetrate. The majority of these barn-dwellings have absolutely no exterior windows whatever."

Chapter III, A Lippe Detmold Farm The Sacristan's Household, by Frances Eleanor Trollope, 1869

Inscription over the door was typical of the area.

"Within is goodly store of food for man and beast. Behold, nowhere shall you find a garner fuller filled, or more overflowing with abundance. Gerhard Lehmann and Marthe Sieger, his wife, built this dwelliing"

See German Genealogy: Lippe

See also A Story and History of my Ancestors of Wöbbel, Lippe, Germany by Fred Richter

A Google map search of Belle, Germany gives great detail of the area.

Wonderful house inscription images of Maspe on the Der Genealogische Abend (Abend Genealogy)

Der Genealogische Abend Naturwissenschaftlicher und Historischer Verein für das Land Lippe e.V connects to pages of other towns and villages in the area that have painted houses — including Belle and Reelkirchen.