In the Province of Saxony

Google Maps. North of Magdeburg, Germany.

While we await the results of our daughter's mtDNA test, it's useful to look at the region where her 6th-great-grandmother, Dorothea Sophia Gagelmann, was living between 1800 to at least the early-middle 1820s. Dorothea was the mother of Maria Elisabeth Hesse. Maria Elisabeth was born about 1821 (most trees online say 1823) in the Gardelegen area (possibly the town of Klüden), north of present day Magdeburg. This territory changed hands quite frequently during the early 1800s, and was a contested area during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815).

This corner was part of the Province of Saxony (from 1815) in the Kingdom of Prussia and Kingdom of Westphalia (1807-1813). Before that, this area may have been part of the Duchy of Magdeburg (up to 1807). The map below shows some of the complexity for this area in 1812.

Source: Wikipedia. Confederation of the Rhine.

I am still in the early stages of diving into German research, and luckily there are several sessions on the topic scheduled for RootsTech 2026. In the meantime, I am reviewing sources such as the FamilySearch wiki pages on places such as the Prussian Province of Saxony.