The Siblings of Anna Eva Heÿer (or How to Create Chaos in Your Family Tree)

Today I made a classic mistake. I made an assumption and let that assumption lead me out onto a false limb of the family tree. I am very thankful that I caught it within a few hours and corrective action won't be too severe. And I thought, maybe, if I share this with you, it will serve as a caution when doing family research, as well inform you of what I have learned.

It all started when I started looking for Anna Eva Heÿer's baptismal record. Anna Eva was the first wife of my great-great grandfather, Johann Tobias Rödiger, and the mother of Anna Katharina Rödiger who married Johann Friedrich Eichenauer. Five of Anna Katharina and Johann Friedrich Eichenauer's ten children emigrated to Ohio. So, now you should be able to figure out Anna Eva Heyer's relationship to you.

From the marriage record of Johann Tobias Rödiger and Anna Eva Heÿer, I have gleaned a number of facts that would help me to learn more about her family:

The top half of this record gives us some facts about the groom, but I want to focus on the bride, found in the second paragraph. It reads "Anna Eva Heÿer von Kalkobes, des deselbst gestorbenen Gerichtsschöpfen, Nicolaus Heÿer, hinterl. ehel. Tochter. Copuliert am 7ten April [1828]".

This roughly translates to Anna Eva Heÿer from Kalkobes, the surviving daughter of the deceased "volunteer judge", Nicolaus Heÿer, from the same place. Married on 4/7/1828."

From this, I learned her father's name and occupation (I am trying to learn exactly what a volunteer judge's role in the community was and how much legal training he would have had). And I learned that her family was from Kalkobes. I have had trouble finding Kalkobes on a map. I think it must have been absorbed into Bad Hersfeld at some point. I did find a reference to it being located southeast of Heenes, which is, itself, less than 3 miles northwest of Bad Hersfeld. Here is a Google Map showing Tann in the north and directions from Heenes to Bad Hersfeld.

This Google map does not show Kalkobes, but I found a map from about 1858 which clearly shows Kalkobes.

So, this gives you the placement of Kalkobes in relation to Bad Hersfeld and Tann, our ancestral home.

Once I had satisfied my curiosity about the location of Kalkobes, I went looking for the church records. There is a church book which has records from 1830 to about 1945 and another which covers 1773-1789. Which means that I have nothing previous to 1773 and nothing between 1789 and 1830. There is a slight chance that Kalkobes might have been part of a group of churches during the gap years, but if it was, I haven't found the records. They may turn up later.

I have also learned some important facts from Anna Eva Heÿer's death record in Tann:

Her father as I have already learned was Nicolaus Heÿer, her mother was Anna Katharina Lehn and she was married to Tobias Rödiger at the time of her death. Her birth date is given as 28 May 1789 in Kalkobes and it is noted that her birth information was provided by the widower. She died on 26 March 1847 in House #8 at 5 am. She was 57 years, 9 months and 26 days old. The arithmetic is spot on here. She was buried in Tann at 2 pm on 28 March 1847. There is info in the column reserved for remarks that I have yet to decipher (this is where my limited knowledge of the old German script and vocabulary becomes glaringly apparent). It probably is a description of the cause of death, but I can't be sure.
However, the information I did glean from this record should help me find her baptismal record. So, I turned the Kalkobes church book (KB 1773-1789). She was born in 1789 and the book runs through 1789 so it looks like I will find her baptismal record. I found that the baptismal records actually  ran only until the end of September in 1789. But since she was born in May that was good news. However, when I searched the page for May, 1789, her record was not found.

Remember that her husband provided her birth date and place. So, maybe he got it wrong. Maybe she was born before, and there was still hope of finding her baptismal record. So, I began page by page looking for children of Nicolaus Heÿer and Anna Katharina Lehn from 1773 until 1789. And I found 9 children born to Nicolaus Heÿer and Catharina Lehn plus children born to a Nicolaus Heÿer and a woman with the maiden name of Koch. I was soon able to determine that this Nicolaus Heÿer was a different person. So I concentrated of the other nine entries and entered them into my database and family tree. It then looked like this:

As you can see, I actually have 11 children listed. The next to the last is my step-great-great grandmother whose actual record I haven't found, and the last is known because she was the godparent of her sister, Anna Eva's daughter, Anna Katharina Rödiger (future wife of Friedrich Eichenauer).

This is where I jumped the rails and headed off in the wrong direction. And I should have had a clue of this problem when Nicolaus and Katharina had two children in 1776, just 6 months apart. It niggled, but checking all of the other gaps between children, I didn't find any other problems. So I ignored it.
What I didn't realize at the time--although it was right in front of me--was that the mother of some of the children was given as Catharina Elisabeth Lehn and some of them as Anna Catharina Lehn.
This is my worst nightmare. Well not really. I've had worse. But, I normally take every precaution to avoid making a mistake like this. I admit, I got a little carried away. It is unprofessional and if placed in a public tree, would #1, lead the lemming-researchers off the rails with me (mixed metaphor--duly noted) and #2, blemish my reputation with those who are careful to document each fact.

Enough with the self flagellation, already. Once I realized that there were three different Nicolaus Heÿers inhabiting the same space-time continuum, two of which had married women with the maiden name of Lehn, I was able to quickly sort it out. Now my corrected family chart looks like:

I feel much better, but I still haven't found Anna Eva's baptismal record, nor that of her sister, Anna Katharina. That is frustrating. And there is no marriage record for their parents in this church book either. So, I will have to consider the options:

1) If Anna Eva's birth date and the place is correct, then it was accidentally left out of the Kalkobes church book.

2) If the date is incorrect but the place is correct, then her birth may yet be found, but not until the rest of the Kalkobes church books are located. This is the option which seems most likely to me because her husband was born in 1797 which would have made him almost 11 years her junior. That would be very unlikely and I don't believe that I have seen that scenario in any of the German church records I have researched. That being especially true of a first marriage, which theirs appears to be. My hypothesis is that the last two numbers of her birth year were transposed, turning 1798 into 1789 and then her age at death was calculated. Where-oh-where are those missing church books?

3) If the date is correct but the place is incorrect (and just because a family lived in a certain village, it doesn't necessarily follow that the record would be recorded in that village's records) then a look at the records in the surrounding villages would be a logical approach.

4) And if neither the date nor the place is correct then ... well, it doesn't bear thinking about.

5) Oh yes, there is a fifth option, and I only mention it because you might think I never considered it, but I have. What if she wasn't baptized Lutheran. Maybe she was Catholic or Jewish? My answer is that since at least five of her siblings were baptized Lutheran, if she had been baptized into some other "religion", no doubt that would have been made crystal clear in her marriage or death record, because switching religions was a HUGE deal in that time and place. So, yes, I did consider it, for like a nanosecond.

Yep, that about summarizes my day and where I stand in my attempt to verify Johann Tobias Rödiger's knowledge about his wife's birthday. The search will continue. Since option #2 is not currently possible, I will try option #3. Next stops, Wehneberg and Heenes. Wish me luck and "drück mir die Daumen" (That means "keep your fingers crossed for me" but literally "press your thumbs for me". I'm getting of an age when it is hard to cross my fingers, so pressing my thumbs works better these days. Anybody have an emoticon for this?

Steve