However, the area around Damme which had also been under the Bishop of Muenster was attached to the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. The area around Osnabrueck(including Engter & Venne), in which power had constitutionally alternated between a Catholic bishop and a Protestant prince since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, was now incorporated into Hannover.
Napoleon invaded Hannover later in 1803, gave it back in 1806, and incorporated the western half of Hannover, including Osnabrueck and Heiligenfelde as well as all of Oldenburg, into the Frech Empire until 1813. In the aftermath of the War of 1812, the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg and the Kindom of Hannover were restored and some modest reforms were made by ruling families to appease Napoleonic sentiments.
My own ancestors, the Dreyer family of Engter, like many farmers in Hannover, received their emancipation from a form of serfdom or villeinage called "Leib-Eigenthum" (literally "bodily ownership"). Their emancipation was granted by King George IV of Great Britain & Hannover in the year 1825. (Previously the Catholic bishop at Osnabrueck had been "the owner" of the Dreyers). As a result of this action, farmer Dreyer was allowed to purchase over a 30 year period the land to which he had previously been bound.
The royal ties of Hannover to Britain were finally dissolved in the year 1837 with arrival of Queen Victoria on the British throne. Hannoverian succession would not allow a woman to be ruler, and so the ties were broken. The first act of the new King of Hannover, Ernest August, was to abolish the parliamentary constitution. His new constitution, made the legislature entirely consultative with no control over the executive. Crown lands were once again regarded as the private property of the king. This beginning of "the Victorian era" was, of course, the same year that Huntersville Church, Penntown, and Oldenburg were founded.
By this time the German immigration to the Midwest had begun in large numbers. The reasons were many, but they more economic than political, although the repressive measures in Hannover and the failure of the Revolutions of 1848 to provide a unified and more democratic Germany were contributory factors.
Many peasants of northern Germany migrated because they were landless. By law, land passed only to the eldest, or during some periods, only to the youngest son. The others received a modest payment from the one who inherited the land, and had to work as tenants on their brothers's or someone else's land. This practice was continued by will by many German immigrants in this country, but here the opportunity to buy land was much greater.
Many immigrated because of the potato famine which affected Germany as well as Ireland. The potatoes turned black with rot in the fields. Others left becouse of the impact of the industrial revoltion in England which destroyed the cottage linen-making industry around Osnabrueck. (There probably had been a similar impact of the industrial revolution of the the woolen-making cottage industry in Yorkshire, England, which may have caused the Sunman family to leave a few decades earlier). Other families simply saw a new opportunity in America.