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

Heinrich Nicolaus Roediger, Reprise

In the Blog Post "George Roediger, pt 2--In America" I introduced the information that I knew about George's oldest son, Heinrich Nicolaus, who went by "Henry" here in America. At that time I had not been able to access specific information about his death other than the date and place. Since then I have been to the Auglaize County Library and Probate Office in Wapakoneta and want to present what I found.
First, in the Probate Office, the County Record of Deaths revealed the following:
Roettinger, Henry N., Male, died 23 Dec 1905. He was single, age 32Y 8M 6D. He was born in Tamgreis, and died in St. Marys. He was a laborer, white and died of a contusion. His residence at the time of death was in Washington Twp, Auglaize Co, OH. Vital Statistics: Class 5, Sub-Class 1, No. 5.

As you can see, his last name was mangled, as was the place of his birth. I believe that what the recorder meant to write for his place of birth was Tann Kreis. Kreis being the German word for circle or in geographical terms, "district" and is often used in describing an area surrounding a particular location. According to his baptismal record, found in the church records of the Lutheran Church in Tann, He was born in House #52 in Tann on 17 April 1873 at 2 in the afternoon. He was baptized in the home on 4 May 1873. He is described as a child born out of wedlock, and named in the baptismal document as Nikolaus Scheuch. His parents are described as Anna Martha Scheuch, daughter of the Bürgermeister, Nikolaus Scheuch; and George Rödiger, son of the farmer, Tobias Rödiger. A month and a half after his birth, his parents were married in the Lutheran Church in Rohrbach on 1 June 1873. (Rohrbach is just .7 miles SE of Tann, both being situated on Rohrbacher Straße, which runs along the Rohrbach Brook).

After locating the newspaper accounts of Henry Roediger's death, I found the cause of death listed in the county records rather strange, if not totally inaccurate. I found three newspaper articles describing his death. The first two are from the Auglaize County Republican and the third from the Auglaize County Democrat. All were issued on December 28, 1905.

First, the clippings from the Republican:

As you can see, these newspaper reports chronicle the accident, and attribute Henry's death to a broken neck which was the result of his horse and buggy being struck by a passenger train engine. He was a hired hand on John Arnett's farm, and as is known from the 1900 census which was cited in the Blog Post "George Roediger, pt 2--In America", he had also been living with the Arnett family.The article from the Auglaize County Democrat provides mostly the same story but is more gruesome in detailing the accident. Just warning you! The Democrat also misspells Henry's surname and provides information about his family which seems suspect to me:

There are Roettgers in the area, but it is unfortunate that the reporter was unable to distinguish between the two families. And so the line about his parents living in southern Indiana is also suspicious. Maybe I am wrong, but as far as I know, George and Augusta never lived in Indiana, even for a short while. I do know that in 1900 (Census) George was renting land in Washington Twp, Auglaize County; at the time of his marriage to Augusta (1902) he was living in St. Marys, his son George Harry was born in 1903 in Washington Twp (county birth records), Auglaize Co; his daughter, Hulda Alice was born in June, 1905 in Hopewell Twp, Mercer Co (county birth records); and in 1910 (census) he owned land in Section 30 of Hopewell Twp, Mercer Co. adjacent to William Weir. It is possible that George went to southern Indiana and was there at the time of his son, Henry's death in 1905, but if so, he had been there less than 6 months before Henry was killed and stayed no longer than 5 years afterwards according to the records I have. Some of you who have researched this more thoroughly may have deed records or other documents which would narrow this down even further. If there is any info that substantiates or refutes the Democrat's claim I am all ears.

Thus it was, by the close of 1905, George Roediger was bereft of all of his first family, save one (Anna Margaretha Agnesa), and had begun a new family with Anna Augusta Grosse-Schmidt. Together they had two children, George Harry born 24 Aug 1903, and Hulda Alice born 5 June 1905.

George Rödiger, Immigrant (to Ohio), pt. 1--Life in Germany

I have changed the name of the post, because I made a silly blunder in entitling it "George Rödiger, Last Rödiger-Eichenauer Immigrant to Ohio." Thankfully, a reader connected with John Henry Roediger's line corrected me in the comments. For an explanation of the change see the comments at the bottom of the post. I ALWAYS appreciate feedback and corrections. I have been known to make mistakes. Sometimes I catch them and sometimes I don't. And while catching that mistake, I realized that I had been twice wrong. Not only was George not the last, he was also not the next to last. So to recap the order in which our ancestors arrived:

Tobias Eichenauer arrived in 1867
Conrad and Adam Eichenauer in 1880
Conrad Tobias Rödiger in 1881
Justus (Gus) Eichenauer in 1883
George Rödiger in 1888
Johann Heinrich Rödiger in 1893
Lizzie Eichenauer in 1896.

So George was in fact, the third to last to emigrate!

Now that I have set the record straight, I will just write about George, and about his family prior to emigrating.

If you have been following this blog, you will wonder why I am not following up with "The Eichenauer Geography, pt. 2"? It ain't ready yet. And I just spent all morning looking for George Rödiger's passenger list record--so it is fresh in my mind. So just bear with me. I shall do the follow-up on the Eichenauer Geography. Soon. Hopefully.

George Rödiger, the subject of this blog post, was an older brother of my great grandfather, Conrad Roediger. George was the next to last of the Eichenauer-Roediger clan (that I know of) to immigrate to the USA, George's nephew, Johann Heinrich (John Henry) Rödiger being the last. This George did in 1888 with four of his children. I made a brief mention of George when I wrote a post about his first wife, Anna Martha Scheuch, on May 29, 2017 entitled "The Baptismal Record of Anna Martha Scheuch".

George Roediger (clipped from his second marriage wedding photo)

George Rödiger was born in the village of Tann, in the District of Hersfeld-Rotenburg on 24 May 1854. He was the third child of Johann Tobias Rödiger and his second wife, Anna Margaretha Eichenauer. He had an older stepsister (25 years older), Anna Katharina Rödiger, who married his mother's brother, Johann Friedrich Eichenauer. That makes his stepsister his aunt as well. (I'll wait while you work that one out . . . Got it? OK good!)
He also had a four full siblings, two older and two younger than himself: Katharina Elisabeth (5 years older), Gustav (Justus) (3 years older), Katharina Elisabeth II (3 years younger) and Conrad Tobias (11 years younger).
All of his siblings reached adulthood and married, which I must tell you from my experience indexing records in Tann and neighboring villages during this time period, was rather unusual. Unfortunately, as you will soon learn, George's own family more or less followed the normal pattern.

Evangelische Kirche von Rohrbach

George married Anna Martha Scheuch on 1 June 1873 at the Lutheran Church of Rohrbach, just a few kilometers up the road from Tann.
Over the next 13 years, Anna Martha gave birth to 9 children. Sadly, as often happened, three of their children died less than three months old, another at age two, and a fifth child at age six. To add to George and Martha's sadness, on 1 May 1886, their house and barn burned to the ground. And even after much investigation, the cause of the fire was never discovered. (An account of this event was recorded in the book, 650 Jahre Tann, Geschichte und Brauchtum, p. 375)
Then, on 5 June, just a month after the fire, Martha gave birth to her last child, Anna Katharina, and on the 6th, Martha died during "Wochenbett" a period of 6-8 weeks following delivery. Usually this means that there were complications resulting from childbirth (from what I have been able to learn from the good old internet) probably due to unsanitary conditions. Their last child, Anna Katharina died just 2 months later, leaving George with four children, ages 13, 9, 5 and 2 and no home for himself, nor his livestock. The book, does say that within a year a new abode was built. The German text is unclear to me. Perhaps Regina could weigh in on this. The text reads, "Der durch diesen Brand erforderlich gewordene Neubau würde in den folgenden Jahren nachhaltig mit dem Schulneubau in Verbindung gebracht." My reading of this might mean that his new house was built in conjunction with the building of a new schoolhouse, or that his new house was attached to the new schoolhousel.
There was a story in our family that George Rödiger helped build the schoolhouse in Tann. The article in the book about the fire and the subsequent rebuilding lends credence to that story. When mom and I visited there in 2014, we saw the schoolhouse, which today is a community center. And ironically, the fire department is now attached to this building.

Yep. That is me, touching the former schoolhouse. The Fire Department is attached to the far end, but out of the frame

Nevertheless, George soon decided to join his younger brother, Conrad Tobias (my great-grandfather) and his cousins in Ohio.

So, in November of 1888, he packed up his belongings and headed for the port of Bremen. In the Subsequent Remarks column of George's baptismal record someone wrote (and I roughly translate): "On June 1, 1873 George married Anna Martha Scheuch, who died in 1886 on the 8th of June. In November 1888 he emigrated to America with four children."

And according to his obituary, George and his children arrived in America on December 6, 1888. When searching for the passenger list, I relied on Ancestry.com to provide the image just by entering a few of the known factors into the search parameters. I got nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but nothing that had anything to do with this George Rödiger. There is a George Rödiger who immigrated in 1878. That has me curious, but I have forced myself to ignore that record for the time being.

So, I did it the hard way. And by the way, sometimes it takes some heavy lifting or pure luck to find a record. In this case it took me about 4 hours. This is the process I used (just so you know I am actually WORKING on this stuff).

Originally, I did not know which port they departed from, nor did I know which port they arrived in, Stateside. Since all of the New York and Baltimore Arrivals are indexed, and George did not appear to be in them, I decided to go start with the possible ports of departure. Usually, our German immigrants either left from Hamburg or Bremen and occasionally from Amsterdam or Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Since all of the Bremen Passenger Lists from that time period were systematically destroyed after 3 years to make room for new ones--I'd like to have a heart-to-heart chat with the bureaucrat who made that policy. Grrrr--I started with the records from Hamburg. They are also indexed on ancestry.com, but a search did not return any correct records. So, I began going through each passenger list of each ship bound for the US during the month of November. Then, since I got no satisfaction, I continued on until the end of 1888. Nada, Nichts, Zilch. Grrrr again.

So, I turned my attention back to the arrival passenger lists. Eenie, meenie, miney, mo. How come spell check is going crazy all of a sudden? Anyway, I had to choose between the two most obvious ports of arrival, New York and Baltimore, and just hope George didn't decide to do the New Orleans route. That would really make me growl. Still, it was a toss up, and fortunately for me I chose Baltimore. On December 3, 1888, the SS Hermann out of Bremen docked at Baltimore Harbor and listed the passengers that disembarked. On page 10, the Rödigers were indexed as the Pridiger family, passengers #549-553. I have offered a correction to the Index Committee, so maybe in the future it won't be like pulling teeth for others to find this record.

There is more to the right of this image, but to provide the entire record would make the important stuff too small to read. So, I will summarize what you can't see. The Rödigers, who were housed in Steerage, left Germany and were arriving in Maryland as "protracted sojourners" with one, count them, 1 piece of luggage among them. Talk about starting over from scratch.

In case the above script is still a bit illegible, I will transcribe:

#549--Georg Rödiger, age 34, male, occupation: Blacksmith

#550--Nicolaus Rödiger, age 15, male, occupation: none

#551--Conrad Rödiger, age 11, male, child

#552--Elisabeth Rödiger, age 9, female, child

#553--Margaretha Rödiger, age 4, female, child

I was surprised to learn that George was a blacksmith. I hadn't seen that occupation associated with him before. And everyone arrived safely. That didn't always happen, and with their recent difficulties, well ...

And the date of arrival was three days earlier than the date given in George's obit. But close enough to make it findable.

We will probably never know the actual departure date since the records from Bremen are gone, but a the arrival link in the chain serves us pretty well.

I was planning on continuing on with their saga in Ohio, but since this is already lengthy, another "Pt. 2" is in order. I'll get back to it, I promise. George's woes are not over (sort of like "A Series of Unfortunate Events" in real life, sad to say). So, until next time, or maybe the time after that ...

The Baptismal Record of Anna Martha Scheuch

The Baptismal Record of

Anna Martha Scheuch,

daughter of Nikolaus Scheuch and Anna Christina Schade

from the Evangelische Kirchenbuch von Tann, Taufenbuch [Baptism Book], 1851, p. 89, #440

(obtained from microfiche at the Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evangelische Kirche von Kurhessen-Waldeck in Kassel, Germany)

The last post presented Nikolaus Scheuch and Anna Christina Schade’s Marriage Record. Now we will take a look at one of their daughter’s baptismal record. This child is Anna Martha Scheuch who would marry George Roediger (son of Johann Tobias Rödiger) and have 9 children with him.

I am trying a bit different style in this post, which frees me from using a spreadsheet to present the facts. Let me know what you think.

Main Header:

Gemeinde Tann; Jahr: 1851; Monate: Julius bis November, Seite 89

[Church] Community of Tann; Year: 1851; Month: July 1848 to November

Column 1:

Fortlaufende Nummer des Bandes—Consecutive number of the volume

440

Column 2:

Geburts Ort Straße, Hausnummer, Gutsname oder Kolonatsnummer und dergleichen

Birthplace, Street, House number, __ or __ and the same

Tann, Nro: 52

Tann, [House] Nr: 52

Column 3:

Tag und Stunde der Geburt—Day and Hour of the Birth

der zweite October, Nachts. halb elf Uhr

the second of October, 10:30pm

Column 4:

Ort und Tag der Taufe—Place and Day of the Baptism

Tann, der 12te October

Tann, on the 12th of October

Column 5:

Geschlecht und Namen des Kindes—Gender and names of the children

Weiblichen Geschlechts, Anna Martha Scheuch

Female gender, Anna Martha Scheuch

Column 6:

Namen und Stand der Eltern—Name and [social] status of the parents

Nikolaus Scheuch II, Landbauer, und dessen Ehefrau, Anna Christina, geb. Schade

Nikolaus Scheuch II, farmer, and his wife, Anna Christina, née Schade

Column 6:

Namen und Stand der Taufpathen—Name and [social] status of the godparents/sponsors

Anna Martha, des Landbauers u. zeitigen Bürgermeisters, Nikolaus Scheuch I’s wife, geb. Fey

Anna Martha, wife of Nikolaus Scheuch I, the farmer and current mayor

Column 7:

Nachträgliche Bemerkungen—Subsequent Remarks

Am 1/6 73 mit George Rödiger verheirathet; † d. 6 Juny 1886

On 1 June 1873, married to George Rödiger; died on the 6th of June, 1886

MEINE NACHTRÄGLICHE BEMERKUNGEN:

(If you’ve been paying attention, you now know that I am about to make some subsequent remarks of my own)

1. You may have noticed that the father of the baptized child, Nikolaus Scheuch, has the designation “II” after his name and the husband of the sponsor, also Nikolaus Scheuch has the designation “I” after his name. Don’t confuse this with Junior and Senior. Think of it like this: The sponsor’s husband is the oldest person in the community with the name Nikolaus Scheuch, and the father of the baptized child is the second oldest person in the village with that same name. “I” could be the grandfather or uncle of “II” or even no known relative at all.
2. From p. 320 of the book 650 Jahre Tann, Nicolaus Scheuch is listed as the Mayor from 1850 to 1879, so the Nikolaus Scheuch I of the baptismal record is no doubt the same person as that listed in the book.
3. It is a good idea to pay attention to the names of the baptismal sponsors. Often they were close relatives of the parents of the child being baptized, a brother, sister or parent. And at some point we will no doubt learn of the relationship of Nikolaus II to Nikolaus I.
4. Frankly, I am stumped on the terms Gutsnamen and Kolonatsnummer. I have asked for help on gutefrage.net and have been told that no such term as Gutsname exists in German (gutefrage means “good question”). However, what I usually find in this column is a house number. Since villages were so small, each house had a number rather than a street address. By about 1900, however, Tann had begun using street addresses.

Transcript of Nikolaus Scheuch and Anna Christina Schade's marriage record

The Marriage Record of

Nikolaus Scheuch and Anna Christine Schade

from the Evangelische Kirchenbuch von Tann, Traubuch [Marriage Book], 1848-1849, p. 30, #97

(obtained from microfiche at the Landeskirchliches Archiv der Evangelische Kirche von Kurhessen-Waldeck in Kassel, Germany)

Anna Martha Scheuch was the first wife of George Roediger, son of Johann Tobias Rödiger and Anna Margretha “Gretchen” née Eichenauer. This marriage record belongs to her parents.

I have not yet deciphered some of the text, but will present what I know, and will provide an update if and when the unknown portions can be deciphered. My English translation of the German text is in RED. My best guess will be bracketed with question marks, or if I am unable to make out an entire word I will mark that with an underscore.

The Marriage Book during this time period has a main header and then seven columns with sub-headings. The page from which the marriage record of Nikolaus Scheuch and Anna Christina Schade is taken provides the following information. Note—The seventh column is for subsequent remarks, which in this case is blank so is not included in the table:

Main Header:

Gemeinde Tann; Jahr: 1848-1849; Monat: September 1848 bis Dezember 1849

[Church] Community of Tann; Year: 1848-1849; Month: September 1848 to December 1849

Fortlaufende Nummer des Bandes Consecutive number of the volume	Namen, Stand, Herkunft, Alter, Konfession und Wohnort des Bräutigams Name, Social Status, Provenance, Age, Confession and Residence of the Groom	Namen, Stand, Herkunft, Alter, Konfession und Wohnort der Braut Name, Social Status, Provenance, Age, Confession and Residence of the Bride	Ort und Tag der Gerichtl[iche] Ehe Anzeige oder obergerichtl[iche] Bescheinigung Place and Date of the legal marriage notification or supreme court certificate	Kirchliche Angebote Church Banns	Tag und Ort der Trauung Day and Place of the Marriage
97	Nikolaus Scheuch, Landbauer, ehel. Sohn des Landwirthes Konrad Scheuch und dessen Ehefrau Agnese geborene Hildebrand, 26 Jahre alt, evangelische Konfession, zu Tann. † 25/3 80 Nikolaus Scheuch, farmer, the legitimate son of the farmer, Konrad Scheuch and his wife, Agnese née Hildebrand, 26 years old, Lutheran Confession, from Tann. Died on 25 March 1880	Anna Christina Schade, eheliche Tochter des ?Künster?, Justus Schade, und dessen Ehefrau Anna Martha geborene Scheuch, 19 Jahre alt, evangelische Konfession, zu Tann. † 15 ?Sept? 188?9? __ __ Hersfeld Anna Christina Schade, legitimate daughter of the ?artist?, Justus Schade, and his wife, Anna Martha née Scheuch, 19 years old, Lutheran Confession, from Tann. Died on 15 ?Sept.? 188?9? __ __ Hersfeld	Hersfeld, am 14te November, 1849 Hersfeld, on the 14th of November, 1849	__ den __, __ den 2. 9. und 16ten Dezember 1849 __ den __, __ den 2nd, 9th and 16th  of December 1849	Dezember 26, Tann December 26, Tann

 The death date given for Anna Christina Schade on the chart reflects what I believe to be written there. However, the year could be 1880, and the month might possibly be October. See what I had to work with!