Life was Fragile in 18th Century Tann

 Life in Hessen in the 18th century was hard for the common people. The healthcare that we take for granted was unknown and people did not understand the effect of unsanitary conditions on their health. As I was transcribing the death records from Tann, the circumstances of one individual seemed to epitomize the difficulties faced by every family in Tann. This is her story:

Anna Christina Vockerod was born in Tann and baptized in the Lutheran Church on 21 January 1703.

When Anna Christina was 23 years of age, she was married to Henrich Bold, who was 7 years her senior. 

Marriage record of Henrich Bold and Anna Christina Vockerod

In due course, they had two sons born to them: Johannes, born on 29 April 1727 and died 6 days later; and Johann Andreas, born on 5 April 1728 and died 27 days later. Her husband, Henrich Bold, died later that same year, on 15 October 1728, at age 32, leaving Anna Christina bereft — a widow at age 25 after just 2 years of marriage.

Two years later, on 10 January 1731, Anna Christina married Johann George Knebel, who was just 7 days her senior. Their births are recorded consecutively. on this page.

Birth records of Johann George Knebel and Anna Christina Vockerod

Marriage Record of Johann Georg Knebel and Anna Christina, widow of Henrich Bold

Together, she and George also had 2 children, Anna Martha, born 26 October 1731 and Johann Tobias, born 18 July 1734.

[Sidebar: Her daughter from this second marriage, Anna Martha Knebell, married Johann David Hoßfeld and had 3 children. One son, Johann Tobias Hoßfeld, married my 4th great-aunt, Anna Dorothea Rödiger (daughter of my 4th great-grandparents, Johann Adam Rödiger and Barbara Elisabetha Bettenhausen). So, this is how I became aware of Anna Christina Vockerod’s story.]

But, Anna Christina Knebell and her second family suffered another series of deaths that typifies the difficult living conditions of 18th century Hessen: On 30 December 1760, Anna Christina died at age 57.

Death Record of Anna Christina Bold-Knebel, neé Vockerod

Three weeks later, on 20 January 1761, her second husband, Johann George Knebell died.

Death record of Johann George Knebel (aka Knöbel)

Four days after that, on 24 January, their son, Johann Tobias died, age 26.

Death record of Johann Tobias Knebel (aka Knöbel)

Three weeks after her brother’s death, on 17 February, Anna Martha, age 29, was also struck down, leaving her husband with two children, ages 4 years old, and 11 months old.

Death record of Anna Martha Hoßfeld, neé Knebel

To put all of this into perspective, Anna Christina lost her first husband and both of their children within 2 years and 4 months of their marriage. Her second husband, and their two children all died less than a month and a half after her own death. And within that 45 day period, 27 other residents of the tiny villages of Tann and Rohrbach also died.

In the church records, there is no mention of the nature of their deaths, nor is there any expression of surprise at the closeness of the times of their deaths to one another. Death was a familiar face in Tann, often the result of disease which could run rampant through a family or even through a village.

As the life of Anna Christina Vockerod illustrates, our ancestors in Hessen often fought a losing battle when it came to raising families. Death by disease ate away at every family. Hopefully, this peek into one woman’s family has given you an idea of the circumstances faced by our 18th century ancestors.

--Stephen

Detours Along the Highway of Genealogical Research

I have been indexing the baptismal records of the Church Book in Tann which includes the years 1791-1822 for several months now.  As you are probably aware if you have followed this Blog at all, Tann is the ancestral hometown of the Roediger and Eichenauer families of NW Ohio.

Sometimes things get a little more complicated then one might imagine when I'm trying to connect these people to my tree. If I could just force myself to stick to indexing, the task would go much faster. But, as I index each new baptismal record I just have to see if this child fits anywhere in my tree.

In this Blog post I am going to let you follow me on a detour I recently took off of the Indexing Task Highway.

Let me use Anna Martha Herdt as an example. This is her baptismal record which I was indexing and then checking to see if she connected with my existing family tree:

From this record I learned that:

Anna Martha was born on 19 November 1805 at 10 in the evening, and baptized on 24 November 1805 in Tann. The Cross above the figures 13/3 64 indicates that she died on 13 March 1864.

Her parents were Johann Heinrich Herdt (farmer) and his wife, Elisabeth, neé Glebe.

Her baptismal sponsor was her father’s sister, Anna Martha, the wife of Nicolaus Büttner from Rohrbach.

Upon reviewing my tree I realized that I already had the subject’s parents in my tree, plus two of her siblings. So I intended to add her to my tree. After all, she is the great-aunt of the husband of the niece of the husband of my 3rd cousin 2X removed. I won’t bore you with the details because the exact relationship is not the focus of this blog. But I will include the path between us at the end of this post.

The real focus of this post is the process that is sometimes necessary to ensure that connections are made with the correct people. (And to show you how much brain power I have to burn to learn). After all, the names in the area around Tann are repeated over and over as the example above proves. Anna Martha Herdt was named after her aunt, Anna Martha Herdt. And this can become confusing. I continually check to see if I might have someone in my tree already who matches the identity of one I am indexing.

In this case, I checked to see if I already had the aunt, Anna Martha Herdt anywhere in my tree. I did not, so I added her as a sibling of Johann Heinrich Herdt, our subject’s father.

Then, I checked to see if there was a Nicolaus Büttner in my tree that might might be a match for the husband of the “godparent”, Aunt Anna Martha Herdt, in the baptismal record. I found that I had two Nicolaus Büttners in my tree. One was born in 1800, so he definitely did not match. The information I had on the other Nicolaus Büttner looks like this:

As you can see, I have no information about this Nicolaus Büttner other than the information about his two children. I believe that he was named as the father of Anna Margaretha, and that either Elisabeth Knebell’s godmother was her mother’s brother’s wife, Elisabeth Scheuch, or that Anna Margaretha Büttner (daughter of Johannes Büttner and Elisabeth Scheuch) was named after her father’s sister, Anna Margaretha Büttner. In either case, the name of Nicolaus Büttner’s wife is never mentioned.

So, in order to figure out whether this Nicolaus Büttner is the match with the Nicolaus Büttner of the subject’s baptismal record, I needed to examine what data I did have. The daughter of Nicolaus Büttner in the above chart was married in 1795, so she was probably born at least twenty years earlier. So, just to get an idea, I will place her date of birth at 1775. Using the rule of 20 (which I just made up), her father would have been born at least 20 years before that, so before 1755. Just knowing the generational patterns of the Tanners--ie. inhabitants of Tann-- that more often than not, couples did not marry until age 25 or 30, this could push this Nicolaus’s date of birth back to 1735 or even earlier. 

I already knew that our subject’s father was born in 1774, so his sister, the godparent, Anna Martha was probably not more than 10 years older or 10 years younger than him. So I assigned a birthdate range for her between 1765 and 1785. So if she was the wife of the Nicolaus Büttner in the above chart, she would have been at least 10 years his junior, and maybe even 50 years his junior. Neither scenario is impossible. Though the latter case is most improbable, the former is at least conceivable. 

However, there is another factor which I needed to consider. If you will recall, the baptismal record said that the godparent and her husband were from Rohrbach. This does not fit neatly with what is known about the Nicolaus Büttner in my tree. In fact, all of the information I have on his known family is that they were firmly established in Tann.

Tann and Rohrbach are less than a mile apart. So maybe the reason the church recorder stated that they were from Rohrbach was to ensure that no one confused that Nicolaus Büttner with the one in Tann.

So, my next step was to determine if there actually was a Nicolaus Büttner in Rohrbach’s church records that fit the bill. If so, I could eliminate the one in my tree as a candidate and add a new Nicolaus Büttner from Rohrbach to my tree as the spouse of my subject’s aunt.

After searching I found this marriage record in Rohrbach:

This basically says that on 2 June 1800, in the evangelisch Kirche of Rohrbach, Nicolaus Büttner, Widower, married Anna Martha Herdt, daughter of the deceased Johannes Herdt, resident of Tann.

I should have mentioned earlier that I also previously had information about the subject’s Herdt grandparents in my tree. They were Johannes Herdt and Anna Margaretha Büttner who were married in 1767 in Tann. I had also known that Johannes had died prior to marriage of the subject, Anna Martha’s parents which took place in 1802. But I did not have a definite date of his death.

In spite of this lack of information, this record reveals a father's name and locality consistent with the the Johannes Herdt family in my tree.

So, my next task was to confirm that the Johannes Herdt, father of Johann Heinrich, and grandfather of the subject, Anna Martha Herdt, and of course, father of the godparent of the subject, actually died before Nicolaus Büttner and Anna Martha Herdt married in 1800.

As I already mentioned, His son, Johann Heinrich’s marriage record stated that his father had died prior to their marriage in 1802. And since Johann Heinrich was born in 1774, I know his father must have died no earlier than 1773. I could possibly narrow that window even more by looking for other children born to Johannes Herdt after 1774.

What I learned was that Johannes Herdt and Anna Margaretha Büttner had five more children after Johann Heinrich. I have now added those children into my tree:

*Johann Adam, born 25 Jan 1777

*Elisabeth, born 30 Oct 1779

*Anna Catharina, born 5 Feb 1782

*Johannes, 6 Jan 1787

*Johann Justus, 26 Oct 1794

This helps me shrink this window and look for a Johannes Herdt in Tann death records who was born before 1747 and died between 1793 to 1802. Working backwards from 1802, I found only one Johannes Herdt who fit my criteria:

This one died on 17 Jun 1798 at age 67 years 6 months and 23 days and was buried on the 19th. This would put his birth date at about 25 Nov 1730. Even though there is no information in this record about family members, the fact that there are no other viable candidates in Tann makes me believe that he is a match with the Johannes Herdt I am looking for. Plus this record also aligns with the statement in Nicolaus Büttner and Anna Martha Herdt’s 1800 marriage record that her father was deceased at that time.

As a further step in trying to confirm that this Johannes Herdt is indeed the father of Anna Martha Herdt, godparent of my subject, I have worked forward from 1794 looking for death records of any of Johannes Herdt and Anna Margaretha Büttner’s children or Anna Margaretha Büttner herself that might solidify that consideration. I found a death record for Johann Adam (b. 1777) who died on 1 Apr 1800 which states that his father had predeceased him. Since this date predates the marriage of Nicolaus Büttner and Anna Martha Herdt on 2 Jun 1800, I know that I am on the right track.

In fact, I am ready to commit myself to accept this as the correct death record of of Johannes Herdt.

But I was still faced with the question of whether this Nicolaus Büttner could possibly be the Nicolaus Büttner I already have in my tree.

Realizing that he was a widower when he married Anna Martha Herdt, I delved further back into the Rohrbach records and discovered that he was actually previously twice widowed. In his first marriage I learned that his father's name was also Nicolaus and his mother was Juliana Goßmann.

He had 7 children from his union with his first two wives and all were born in Rohrbach, and none match up with the children of the Nicolaus Büttner from Tann in my tree.

In addition I learned that the Nicolaus Büttner of Rohrbach was born in 1754 in Rohrbach and died there in 1814. His third wife, Anna Martha Herdt was born in 1768 in Tann. After Nicolaus died, she married Johannes Sunkell in 1816. She died in Rohrbach and was buried there in 1829.

So, to summarize, I believe that I have been able to rule out the Nicolaus Büttner I had in my tree as the husband of Anna Martha Herdt’s godparent and aunt, and to rule in the Nicolaus Büttner of Rohrbach.

All of the above information and more I have dutifully entered into my Master Index and my family tree. I calculate that I spent 6-8 hours and added 27 to 30 new people into my tree while taking this detour and am now quite ready to move on to the next baptismal record.

At this rate, it might take me 5 years to index the baptismal records from this one church book, encompassing just 30 years. That's a happy thought isn't it!

As promised, just for kicks I am including the path that connects me with the subject, Anna Martha Herdt. I have to thank ancestry.com for making this path known to me. I am not sure I could have figured it out on my own:

I am the Son of Roger Dean Roediger, who is the

Son of Alfred Tobias Roediger, who is the

Son of Conrad Tobias Roediger, who is the

Son of Johann Tobias Rödiger, who is the

Son of Johann Henrich Rödiger, who is the

Son of Johann Adam Rödiger, who was also the

Father of Anna Dorothea Rödiger (2), who is the

Mother of Anna Dorothea Hoßfeld, who is the

Mother of Anna Katharina Hildebrand, who is the

Mother of Anna Maria Schlägel, who is the

Wife of George Leonhard Schuch I, who is the

Son of Leonhard Schuch, who was also the

Father of Valentin Schuch, who is the

Father of Anna Katharina Schuch, who is the

Wife of Heinrich Herdt, who is the

Son of Johannes Herdt, who is the

Son of Johann Heinrich Herdt, who is the

Father of  my subject, Anna Martha Herdt

If you have a tree on ancestry.com, this feature appears on each individual's profile page just below the birth and death information. Just click on the link and a list similar to the one I created above will appear. You can then print it out or clink on any person to go directly to their profile page. I think is a quite clever and helpful feature.

By the way, my subject, Anna Martha Herdt grew up and on 30 Dec 1832 she married Johann George Kauffman who was already in my tree and who is the nephew of the husband of a 1st cousin 4X removed from me.

The Self-Appointed Heritage Hound of the Eichenauer-Roediger Family,

Stephen Roediger

Reaching for the Topmost Branches--The Rödigers

 The release of Tann church book records from 1664-1710 has made it possible to extend our knowledge of our Rödiger heritage just a bit further into the past. To make these charts legible, I am limiting them to just three generations. I will start with Johann Tobias Rödiger. He was the father of: 1) Anna Katharina who married Friedrich Eichenauer, parents of five Eichenauers who emigrated to Ohio

2) Justus, father of John Henry Roediger (1874-1952) who emigrated to Ohio

3) George, who emigrated to Ohio with 4 children in 1888

4) Conrad Tobias, who emigrated to Ohio in 1881 at age 15.

As you can see from this chart, I have included the relationship of each ancestor to me, myself and I, to provide perspective. Their relationship to each of my readers may be different, but I will leave that for you to determine. Also, from this chart, it is apparent that I have not fully researched the Schneider side. I shall endeavor to do so in the not so distant future.

However, on the Rödiger side, I have the birth, marriage and death records for Johann Tobias, his parents and his paternal grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great grandparents.

Below is a continuation of this chart, beginning with Johann Tobias Rödiger's grandfather, Johann Adam Rödiger.

As you can see, the birth, marriage and death records for Johann Tobias' great-grandparents is complete, but those for his great-great-grandparents are sketchy.

This is due to the fact that the Tann Church book that has just been released begins in 1664. I have just emailed the Archive in Kassel to see if there is an earlier church book waiting to be digitized, but for now this is as far back as the records in Tann are available to me online.

I have Jost Rödiger's death record (due to the contour of the page I have had to capture part of the record above and below that of Jost):

"1 Aug [1710] Jost Rödiger, 53 Jahr alt"
(53 years old)

That isn't much to go on, but from his age at his death, I know that he was born about 1657, seven years before this church book's records.

I also found his marriage record in this book, which has provided the name of the mother of his children (THIS IS NEW INFO):

"den 23ten Januars [1679] ist Jost Rüdiger mit Anna Margaretha Schlein Coppulirt worde"
(on the 23rd of January [1679] Jost Rödiger was joined in marriage with Anna Margaretha Schlein)

Sadly, the names of their parents are not revealed, and when I attempted to find a death record for Anna Margaretha Rödiger, neé Schlein, I came up empty. Some of these records are difficult to read, so, I may have overlooked it. And I have been unable to find her birth record because it no doubt predates the earliest available church book, or she may have been born in a different village. So, this is as complete as the "tip-top" of Rödiger side of our tree can be for now. And as for Johann Adam's maternal side (the Wiegands), I have had much the same issue. The Wiegands were from the neighboring village of Rohrbach. And the earliest church book I can find for Rohrbach begins in 1701, so is even less helpful.

However, with the church book I do have from Tann, I have discovered that our earliest known Rödiger ancestors had four children: Our common ancestor, Johann Valentin, was the youngest. It appears that Nicolaus and Anna Margaretha may have died from some epidemic as they were both in their twenties and their death dates are less than two weeks apart. It appears that neither married. Valten's oldest sister, Eva married Johann Adam Webber. They had two daughters. So here is the chart, showing Jost Rödiger and Anna Margaretha Schlein's children and grandchildren:

There is an eight year gap between Valten and his next older sibling. I would not rule out the possibility of another child born in that gap, but I have checked pretty thoroughly for that possibility, and can not find such a record. However, this church book seems to be a bit disjointed and out of order, so I may have missed something.

One other thing struck me about this chart. Only one of Jost Rödiger's sons lived to carry on the Rödiger name, ie. Valten Rödiger. And only one of Valten's sons lived to carry on the Rödiger name, ie. Johann Adam Rödiger.

And Johann Adam Rödiger only had one son who lived to carry on the Rödiger name, and that, in spite of the fact that he was married twice and had five children, as you can see in the next chart.

It is a wonder that the Rödiger name even survived into the 1700s, at least through the Jost Rödiger clan.

I have found other Rödigers in this early church book, who may be brothers and sisters (or cousins) of Jost Rödiger. And there are records of those Rödigers marrying and having children. But unless an earlier church book is forthcoming, there will be no way to discover how they are really related.

What I do know is that those other Rödiger branches either died out or moved away from Tann. By the 1800s, only Jost's line continues to appear in the Tann church records.

Your Rödiger-Eichenauer Blogmeister,

Stephen Roediger