I have been working on filling in the blanks pertaining to the children of Johann Henrich Rödiger and Anna Sidonia Schneider who married in 1788. According to Johann Henrich's death record, when he died on 15. July 1824 in Tann, he and Sidonia had had 12 children. 6 preceded him in death and 6 outlived him.
I have managed to track down 11 of the 12. The twelfth remains at large. I have scoured the birth/baptism and death records from Tann (where the other 11 were all born) and found no indication that there ever was a twelfth child. Perhaps the recorder got it wrong when he was trying to add it up. So, for now, I am going to present the eleven that I know about. Five died before their father and six outlived him.
You can visit my tree to see the particular info on each of the children. I also have found the spouses of the children who married and in some cases, I have already found some information on the grandchildren. Here is the link to Johann Henrich Rödiger's Fact Page. This should open for you in a new window. If you don't have an Ancestry.com account, please see my last post for info on what happens when you click the link above.
To summarize for those of you that don't have an account, here is a Family Group Sheet that I screen shot from my AncesTree which just skims the surface:
As you can see, all of Johann Henrich and Anna Sidonia's children were born in Tann, and most also died there. However, two of the daughters required a bit of investigative work. Barbara Elisabeth (3) died in Hainrode, about 9 miles NW of Tann. That is because she married a native of Hainrode, Johannes Pfeiffer and moved there after their marriage which took place in Beenhausen, halfway between Tann and Hainrode.
Another daughter, Anna Dorothea (which I just realized should be marked as Anna Dorothea (2)--more about that in a moment) married a native of Rohrbach, which lies less than a mile SE of Tann on the Rohrbach creek which also runs through Tann. If you stand on the hill above Tann you can easily see Rohrbach. They were married in the Lutheran Church in Rohrbach and resided there for the rest of their lives.
I was going to pull a photo out to illustrate the proximity of Tann to Rohrbach, but, the laptop that had a brain transplant a few months back, up and died on me last week. I think it is beyond saving this time. Fortunately, this time everything was backed up. Unfortunately, I won't have access to my photos until the new laptop arrives next week.
Now about all those Barbara Elisabeths and Anna Dorotheas.
As you can see, the first two Barbara Elisabeths died quite young. In the Lutheran Church in Germany, there was always what they called Gevattern or Gehalten. A rough translation would be godparents, people who were to be supportive to the parents in the raising of the child in the Lutheran faith. Usually the child was named after their godparent, but not always. And usually this godparent was a relative, but again, not always. In the case of the three Barbara Elisabeths, BE (1) and BE (3) were named after their paternal grandmother, Barbara Elisabeth (Bettenhausen) Rödiger. However, BE (2) was named after Barbara Elisabeth Brill from Gerterode and to my present knowledge, was not related.
As for Anna Dorothea (1) and (2), they were both named after their father's sister. AD (1)'s record says "the fathers's sister, Anna Dorothea, the wife of the church treasurer (Kastenmeister), Johann Tobias Hoßfeld" while AD (2)'s baptismal record says simply "the father's sister, Anna Dorothea Röddiger". But, as luck would have it, the father, Johann Henrich had two sisters that I know of.
And both are named Anna Dorothea. And both of his sisters were alive and well when both of Johann Henrich's daughters were born. You can see my dilemma. I know which aunt was AD (1)'s godparent, but it isn't clear which was AD (2)'s. Well, it really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. I'm sure they knew who was what. But it does point out that it wasn't always the case that a "duplicate" name was used in situations where the first had already died. Both of Johann Henrich's sisters married. At least one had children. I have't researched the other yet. I just thought you might find this all interesting.
And speaking of Anna Dorothea, wife of the Kastenmeister, Johann Tobias Hoßfeld. Her family will be the subject of my next blog post.
Steve
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