The founders of these family trees were Eberhard Jacob Bardelmeier and Marie Horstmeier from the village of Lienen in Germany.
Eberhard Jacob was a son from the second marriage of Eberhard Jacob Doomann to Catharine Sophie Brokmann. Doomann was formerly married to Anna Catharina Bardelmeier, the heiress of Bardelmeierhof in Westerbeck. Through this marriage he became Kolon (leaseholder) of the farm and as a matter of course adopted the surname Bardelmeier.
Since Eberhard Jacob was a son from a second marriage he could not succeed his father at Bardelmeierhof. Probably he lived a rather poor life with wife and eight children. This may be the reason that five children emigrated to the United States, settling in nearby counties of Illinois and Missouri, and, from the beginning of the 20th century, in California.

Fragment of a map showing the parcelling of farm lands in Hamel Township, part of an atlas published in 1906. Two of the parcels are owned by (Heinrich) Rudolph Bardelmeier, the youngest son of the family, who settled in Hamel after his immigration in 1864. The name of Ernst Bardelmeier is not to be found, possibly because after his death in 1901 his farming was not continued by a direct relative.
Source: Standard Atlas of Madison County, Illinois, published by Geo. A. Ogle & Co, Chicago, 1906.
Link: www.loc.gov/resource/g4103mm.gla00032/?sp=14&q=madison%20illinois.