Recap of Research from 2020-2022, pt.2

Headline: A Dis-Entanglement Project Leads to New Discoveries!

I have often referred to a dear fellow collaborator, Regina Hiller, as my Genealogy Angel. She is a fountain of knowledge and always willing to answer all my questions, help transcribe the illegible scribbles of the Church records and make comments on people in my Ancestry.com tree when she finds a birth, marriage or death record that I do not have.

A week ago, Regina made a comment on a fellow by the name of Johann Conrad Möller, a resident of Niederthalhausen, where the Eichenauers also lived and worshiped for generations. Her comment was, “probably identical with Hanß Curth Möller”. This led me to look for the Hanß Curth Möller in Niederthalhausen that she was referring to.

I discovered, to my immediate dismay, that I had 3 gentlemen named either Hanß Curth (old form) or Johann Conrad (new form) in Niederthalhausen who married within just a few years of each other (in the 1740s), and I had several more that had been included in my tree because they were mentioned as the father of a particular child when he or she was either baptized or married that could have been one of these three men.

I do not like loose ends, especially when it means that I have multiple instances of the same person appearing separately in my tree. So, I set about the task of straightening it all out. It took me an entire week, about 100 file cards, the perusal of two Church books covering 150 years and a lot of deduction. But in the end, my tree is all the better for it.

To be quite honest, not a single one of these Johann/Hanß Conrad/Curth Möllers is a blood relative. All this is background for the real story:

We do have a Hanß Curth Möller from Niederthalhausen in our family linage. He is my 7th great-grandfather. He did not originally become involved in the Dis-entanglement Project, because he was clearly from an earlier generation. You may be able to figure out your relationship with him from the following:

Hanß Curth Möller was the father of Anna Catharina Möller, who was the mother of Johann Michael Mürer, who was the father of Anna Christina Mürer, who was the mother of Johann Konrad Eichenauer, who was the father of Anna Margretha Eichenauer (wife of Johann Tobias Rödiger) and of Johann Friedrich Eichenauer (husband of Anna Katharina Rödiger).

So if you are an Ohio Roediger, you are descended from Anna Margaretha Eichenauer, and if you are an Ohio Eichenauer, you are descended from her brother, Friedrich. From there, hopefully, you can pick up the thread that leads back to you. If not, send me a comment, and I will see what I can do to clarify their relationship to you.

What I knew about Hanß Curth Möller a week ago wouldn’t have filled a thimble. I knew that he was the father of Anna Catharina Möller. I knew that he was buried in Niederthalhausen on 27 March 1735, age 74 years, 6 months. So, I also knew that he was born about September of 1660 because of his age at death. I did not know the name of his wife or when they were married. Nor did I know his specific birth date, where he was born, nor the names of his parents. I also did not know anything about any of his other children.

The problem is that the Church books in Niederthalhausen don’t begin until 1686, so it is hard to connect the dots between Möllers who were born, married or died prior to that date. BUT, as a result of the Dis-entanglement Project, I remembered that there are Niederthalhausen Church records imbedded (and hidden) in the Beenhausen Church book covering the years 1649-1684, as well as records for Oberthalhausen and 6 other villages besides Beenhausen.

Map is from the Meyersgaz.org website

Niederthalhausen is marked by the red dot. Oberthalhausen is to the west and designated simply as "Ob".

Hanß Curth Möller's baptismal record: "am 28 7bris" (28 September)

Once my Möller Dis-entanglement Project led me to this Church book, I discovered that our ancestor, Hanß Curth Möller was born in Oberthalhausen, not Niederthalhausen. Although Hanß Curth Möller's father's name is mentioned in his baptismal record, it is difficult to read and I am uncertain what it was. But my best guess is that his father's name is Hans Möller.

His baptism in Oberthaalhausen  prompted me to examine the Oberthalhausen Church book and, in turn, led me to discover that Hanß Curd was married in Oberthalhausen in 1693 to Catharina Beißheim.

"Anno 1693, am 27. Aprilis ist Hanß Curd Möller und Catharina, Peter Beißheims von Niederthalhausen, nachgelaßen Tochter copuliert word" (on 27th of April, in the year 1693, Hanß Curd Möller was married to Catharina, the daughter of the deceased Peter Beißheim of Niederthalhausen)

I also discovered that his first three children, including his daughter, Anna Catharina (our direct ancestor) were born in Oberthalhausen, and the last two (that I am aware of) were born in Niederthalhausen.

Armed with this information, I was able to find Catharina Beißheim’s birth, confirmation and burial records; as well as the marriage record of her parents on 9 February 1654 in Niederthalhausen, which revealed her mother’s name to be Eulalia Weckman, daughter of Martini Weckman. Her father, Peter Beißheim’s burial record reveals that he was buried on “Dom. Sexagesima”* in 1686 in Niederthalhausen, age 70. This puts his birth at about 1615-1616. At the time of his death he was serving as Mayor of Niederthalhausen and church warden. 

 *Sexagesima is a Sunday roughly equivelent to 60 days before Easter on the Church Calendar and happened to fall on the 7th of February in 1686.

Peter Beißheim’s wife, Eulalia, was buried on 4 March 1684, at age 52. This puts her birth about 1632.

So, putting it all together, I am very happy to announce that the Eichenauer-Roediger linage has been extended once again and I now add another identifiable 9th great-grandfather to my Tree. The following chart provides the details. The Relational Notations below each name in the chart refer to that individual's relationship to me. But, using the linage information previously provided in this Blog post, you can determine their relationship to you.

I am very pleased to have been able to learn so much about our ancestors over the last 10 years. As we close out 2022, I wish all of my cousins, both in the USA and in Germany, all the best in 2023.

--Stephen Roediger

Recap of Research from 2020-2022, pt. 1

I note with some frustration that I have not posted a blog in over two years. Believe you me, it is not because I have set the research aside. Rather, it is because I have been deluged with information since the big bad COVID struck.

This is in the main due to new collaborators appearing in my life. In 2020, I  received a message from Natalie Apel. She was born in Rohrbach, just 3/4 mile from Tann but now lives close to Hamburg. She had an interest in learning about her ancestors, so we began corresponding. We quickly discovered that we are related at least 3 different ways. Her father's father is my 7th cousin. And her father's mother is my double 5th cousin. I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that we have had a lot of ancestry to discuss and have kept in close contact.

Natalie, and her father, Helmut Apel

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In November, 2021 I contacted Scott in Tennessee. He is a descendant of Emil Grosse, the  brother of George Roediger's second wife, Anna Augusta Grosse. He had posted some very helpful documents about the Grosse family on Ancestry.com. With his help, I was able to learn more about the Grosse family. That, in turn, helped me solve the riddle about how George Roediger, living in Auglaize Co. and Mercer Co. Ohio met his wife, a German immigrant residing in German Village in Columbus, Ohio.

Scott and Kay Dawson

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In May of 2022, I came in contact with Dawn, a researcher from Albany, NY, who answered a query I made about Rixfeld, the earliest known location of our Eichenauer ancestors. She answered and said she didn't know about Eichenauers, but her family came from Rixfeld. After a little collaborating we discovered that she is my 9th cousin, twice removed (specifically, her maternal grandmother is my 9th cousin, and the connection goes all the way back to the tippy top of my Eichenauer tree when the Eichenauers lived in Rixfeld.

Dawn Maynus

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Also in May, or early June, I was contacted by Birgit, who was originally from Schwarzenhasel, but now lives close to Kassel. She was searching online for research pertaining to her home town and discovered my Blogposts on the Diegels of  Schwarzenhasel. After corresponding with her, I learned that her father, Heinrich, is my double 8th cousin. 

Heinrich, Irmtraud and Birgit Marth

It was Birgit’s mother, Irmtraud, who provided the key to unlock the door to completing my research of the Rödigers in Tann. I soon learned that Irmtraud had extensively researched the Schwarzenhasel community and was a major contributor to a book that I already had in my possession, Chronik Schwarzenhasel: Ein Dorf im Wandel der Zeit. But her knowledge goes way beyond the bounds of Schwarzenhasel. I told her that I had exhausted the records in Tann searching for the connection between Henn Rödiger, who is listed in the book 650 Jahre Tann as a farmer with at least 1 horse or ox in 1627 and my 6th great-grandfather, Jost Rödiger, who was born about 1657 and married in 1679. She asked if I had ever heard of the Kopialbuch of 1659. She explained that it was like a census taken of more than thirty villages in the Rohbachtal. The head of each household is listed along with the name of his wife, children and other relatives living in his home. Tann was among these villages, and only one Rödiger family lived in Tann in 1659:

According to the Kopialbuch, the Rödiger household included:

Conrad, head
Margretha, his wife
Johannes (listed as confirmed in the church, so at least 12 or 13 years old)
Justus*
Elisabeth
Catharina
as well as a “Hausgenoßin” (houseguest) also named Catharina.

*Note that “Justus” is synonymous with the name “Jost”. Suddenly, everything clicked, and the Rödigers that I hadn’t been able to connect to the family were included in this list and were Jost/Justus’s siblings.

Once I knew that the “loose ends” were Jost Rödiger’s siblings, then, based on their ages at death, I was able to deduce that their father, Conrad must be the son of Henn Rödiger, the owner of livestock in Tann in 1727.

Every last Rödiger in the Tann church records has now been accounted for.

Prior to any knowledge of the Kopialbuch, I had traced back another part of my ancestry to a Jeorg Büttner who married an Elisabeth Rödiger in 1670. They were my 7th great-grandparents. But without the Kopialbuch, I could not have been certain how Elisabeth Rödiger fit into the family. Now, because of the Kopialbuch, I know that Elisabeth is not only my 7th great-grandmother, she is also the sister of my 6th great-grandfather, Jost Rödiger.

Here is a diagram of the first 4 generations of the Rödigers of Tann:

The Rödiger siblings, Elisabeth and Johannes, were married in a double wedding to Büttner siblings, Jeorg and Catharina.

Johannes Rödiger had only one son, Johann Conrad. And Johann Conrad had 4 children, all girls. So along Johannes’ line the Rödiger name died out and was only continued on through our common ancestor, Jost/Justus.

There is one other significant breakthrough to report, but I will save that for a subsequent Blogpost. Until then …