Beverförde to Werries
The Beverförde zu Werries were a Westphalian noble family. The name "Beverförde" comes from the Netherlands. The beaver is called 'bever' in Dutch and Low German and the fjord is synonymous with bay: as beaver bay. Hence the beaver on the coat of arms.
history
By marrying Sophia von Torck in 1464 , Gerd von Beverförde, who came from the Dutch province of Overijssel , settled on Haus Oberwerries, a Limburg fief. In 1616 the Beverförden acquired the Neheimsche House north of the Lippe through a middle-class middleman, and in 1677 also the Unterwerries castle seat , thus reuniting both houses in one hand. The then landlord of Oberwerries had started the new construction of Oberwerries Castle in 1667 , which his widow Ida von Plettenberg, a sister of the Münster prince-bishop Friedrich Christian von Plettenberg , had completed in 1684/92. The Niederwerries house was demolished in 1733 in order to use the building material.
Ida Maria's son, Bernhard Engelbert Christian von Beverförde-Werries (1665–1705) was since 1699 a secret council as well as a district and war council in the bishopric of Münster . In 1699 he married Elisabeth Anna Theodora von Neuhoff zu Wenge († 1706), who brought the estates of Wenge , Bönninghausen, Nierhofen and the Burgmann seats of Horstmar and Nienborg into the marriage. Nevertheless, the family did not succeed in gaining a foothold as an imperial estate.
Bernhard's son Friedrich Christian von Beverförde zu Werries , also called "the great Werries", made it to the position of Prussian Minister of State. In 1733 he got involved in a duel. In 1768 he died childless, with which the house died out. Shortly before his death on January 24, 1768, he appointed his one-year-old cousin Friedrich Clemens von Elverfeldt zu Dahlhausen and Steinhausen as a universal heir, whose father Karl Friedrich von Elverfeldt had once saved him from a firing squad. The testamentary and his descendants took the name of the testator and from then on called themselves Elverfeldt von Beverfoerde zu Werries .
Significant namesake
- Bernhard Engelbert von Beverförde zu Werries (1608–1690), Catholic priest, cathedral waiter and assessor of the Landespfennigkammer
- Bernhard von Beverförde zu Werries († 1636), canon in Münster
- Bernhard Engelbert Christian von Beverförde-Werries (1665–1705), high official and civil servant in the service of the bishopric of Münster
- Friedrich Christian von Beverförde zu Werries (1702–1768), civil servant in the service of Kurköln and the Monastery of Münster, Prussian Minister of State