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