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

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 …

Correction Concerning George Rödiger

Now that I am retired, I have been working hard on creating a database of abstracts from the Church records of Tann, Hersfeld-Rotenburg, Hesse.

I have completed the goal of abstracting the marriage records from 1830-1850 and connecting as many of those couples to my tree as possible.

Currently, I am working on the baptismal records from the Churchbook covering 1830-1909.

My immediate goal is to abstract the records from 1830 through 1850, then add all of these children to their parents in my Family Tree on ancestrydotcom. It is taking me about 2 hours to abstract the records for each year. At this moment I am finishing the year 1837.

Which brings me to the reason for this Blog post: I found an error in a baptismal record that I have already placed in my tree on Ancestry and I want to set the record straight.

The record is for George Rödiger, but probably not the George Rödiger our USA Roedigers are familiar with. This George is the son of Justus Rödiger, the son of Johann Heinrich Rödiger and Anna Sidonia Schneider. Johann Heinrich and Anna Sidonia were also the parents of Johann Tobias Rödiger. And he should be very familiar to any Roediger or Eichenauer in Ohio who has been following this Blog. Johann Tobias first married Anna Eva Heÿer and together they had Anna Katharina Rödiger who married Johann Friedrich Eichenauer, progenitors of the Eichenauers in Ohio. After the death of Anna Eva Heÿer, Johann Tobias married Anna Margaretha Eichenauer (Johann Friedrich's sister) and together they had (among others) Justus, father of John Henry who came to Ohio; George, widower, who brought his four children to Ohio, then married Anna Grosse; and Conrad Tobias who came to Ohio as a 15 year old boy.

So, George Rödiger, of the corrected baptismal record, was a first cousin of those I highlighted in red, above. And here is the image of the first 5 columns of his baptismal record.

I mis-translated the date "dreißigster Dezember" as 17. December. It should be translated "30". If it had actually been the 17th, it would have been written "siebzehnter". EDITED

Many of the letters are probably unfamiliar to you. These records, for the most part, were written in the old German script. For those unfamiliar with the German alphabet  the "ß" character equals a double "s" and the Umlaut (those two dots over the vowels) transcribes as: ä (ae), ö (oe), ü (ue). I haven't figured out the ÿ equivalent yet. Maybe one of my German readers can instruct me on this.

EDITED: (have received some help with the "ÿ" from some German friends--the 2 dots over the "y" do not constitute an umlaut, but rather just help to identify the letter "y" when handwritten. So when typing this letter, whether in English or German, it should appear as "y" without the 2 dots above the letter.)

But, here is my translation:

Column 1: George was the 154th birth to be recorded in the 1830-1909 church book of Tann.

Column 2: His parents lived in Tann at House number 11, and presumably that was where he was born.

Column 3: He was born on the 30th of December [1837] in the 3rd hour of the morning (Morg. 3 Uhr), ie. 3am.

Column 4: He was baptized on the 1st of January 1838.

Column 5: He is listed as a boy/male (Knabe), and given the name George.

The record is spread over two pages with three more columns, but since the Remarks column was blank I didn't include it here:

Column 6: The names of George's parents--Justus Rödiger, a farmer (primarily of land cultivation Landbauer) and his 2nd wife (Ehefrau), Anna Katharina, born (geb.) Gossmann (Goßmann), from Friedlos. Here is a link to Google Maps so you can see the location of Tann in relation to Friedlos--https://goo.gl/maps/LsvZRLvd6xXADTYj7

Column 7: The name of the Baptismal Sponsor (Gevater)--George Heÿer, son of the brick maker (Ziegelbrenner), Johannes Heÿer.

NO EXTRA CHARGE: the brick maker, Johannes Heÿer is George's 4th cousin, and first cousin of Anna Eva Heÿer (highlighted in blue text above). I'll bet even the church recorder wasn't aware of those facts.

The Man Behind the Curtain,

Stephen Rödiger

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

Switching Gears—Where did the Weifenbachs come from in Germany?

BACKGROUND
Sometime after my great-grandfather, Conrad Tobias Rödiger, arrived in Ohio, he met Anna Christina Weifenbach, who was a lifelong resident of Washington Twp., Auglaize Co. Ohio. Christina lived with her parents, Conrad Weifenbach and Christena Diegel and her 8 siblings in the brick farmhouse on the corner of Wiefenbach Rd. (named after her family, but is misspelled) and Bay Rd.

This is about 2 miles south of old Rt 33. Her parents had been married in 1866 by Christian Wessling, Minister of the Gospel.

Conrad and Anna Christina (Diegel) Weifenbach

The Weifenbachs attended the  Weifenbach Church situated across Wiefenbach Rd from the Weifenbach homestead. The church no longer exists but many of its members ended up attending Salem Methodist Church in Wapak.

My great-grandfather, Conrad Tobias Roediger, had purchased land about 1 mile north of old Rt 33, on the west side of Bay Rd and on the north and south sides of Kruse Rd. I believe that he attended the Weifenbach Church and that my grandfather, Alfred Tobias Roediger, was baptized there.

In 1889, Conrad Tobias Roediger and Anna Christina Weifenbach were married and subsequently raised three daughters and my grandfather, Alfred Tobias.

Top: Carrie and Bertha; Bottom: Anna Christina (Weifenbach), Alfred Tobias, Conrad Tobias and Mamie Roediger

So, in addition to the Roediger and Eichenauer families, I have an vested interest in the Weifenbach family as well.

ANCESTRAL HOME
Up until this year, all I knew about the Weifenbach German origins I had gleaned from record of the ship "Atlas" on which Anna Christina's grandparents and family had traveled to America.

This ship arrived in the port of New York on 6 August 1846. The Weiffenbachs who stepped off of the ship are described as follows:
Joh. Weiffenbach, age 37, male, peasant
Catharine Weiffenbach, age 32, female
Christine Weiffenbach, age 17, male
Anna Gela Weiffenbach, age 5, female
Conrad Weiffenbach, age 3, male
Catharine Weiffenbach, age 1
All were listed as being "from Nieder Aula, with destination being Ohio"

At the time that they immigrated in 1846, ship records typically were content to only provide the name of the country of origin. Since Germany didn't become a nation until 1871, the most I would have expected to find was that they were from one of the 39 sovereign states formed after the downfall of Napoleon. A few of the major states included Prussia, Bavaria and Hesse. So, imagine my surprise when their place of origin was given as Nieder Aula, a very specific village. And imagine my delight when I discovered that there appears to only be one village by the name Niederaula in all of Germany. The name derives from the fact that it was situated on the Aula river. Nieder is a German adjective which means "low" or "lower". There is also a village named Oberaula. Ober means "upper". So Niederaula is down the Aula river and Oberaula is up.

And here is the Kicker. When I Google-mapped Niederaula I discovered that it is only 13 miles from Tann. Tann to Niederaula map link. This makes me wonder if my great-grandparents realized how close their home villages were to each other. Déjàvu--this is the same question I asked in regard to the Diegels in my last Blog Post.

This is the "Wappen" (Coat of Arms) of Niederaula:

As you can see from the ship record, questions immediately arise about "Christine" who is listed as a male and is of an age which makes me seriously doubt that she is one of their children. Being 17, she (or he) would have been born about 1828 or 1829 and Johannes and Katherine were not married until 1841. The other difficulty I faced concerning Christine, was that of the six Weiffenbachs on the Atlas, she was the only one I could not find a baptismal record for.

So, now that I established where they were from, I began searching in earnest for the records for this family. Just recently the church records for Niederaula were digitized and posted on Archion.de, so I have been busy researching the Weifenbach and Berlet families in Niederaula. And what I found is on the whole AMAZING. On the Weifenbach side I have been able to to get birth, marriage and death records back to my 4G Grandparents. Additionally, I have learned the names of my Weifenbach 5G and 6G great-grandfathers. Unfortunately there is a 19 year gap in the records between 1754 and 1773. And there is a generational jump that takes place in the Weifenbach family during that time period that prevents me from connecting the dots any further back with any certainty.
However, on the Berlet side I have been able to find birth and marriage and most death records back to the Berlet 6G grandparents and know the name of my 7G grandfather. In addition, my 6G grandfather, Johann Caspar Berlet married Elisabeth Baum in 1747 in Niederaula and I have learned that her parents, Johann George Baum and Anna Catharina Eicheberg were married in 1722 in Niederaula and her father, Jost Eicheberg would be my 8G grandfather. This means that I have made it back into the late 1600s with this family. This is very exciting since I really had no record of the Weifenbach part of my family in Germany until very recently! So much progress in so little time. You can find the Ancestor Tree of Conrad Weifenbach HERE and then choose the file "Conrad Weifenbach Ancestors as of 20191107.pdf"

As I mentioned earlier, of the six Weiffenbachs on that boat, I have only found birth records for Johannes and his wife and the three youngest Weiffenbachs.

So, for now, I will share the birth records I found for the five I have found and throw in Johannes Weiffenbach and Catharina Berlet's marriage record for good measure.

Johannes Weiffenbach Baptismal Record:

März 11 [1810]--Johannes, des Ackermanns, Philipp Weifenbach, daher, und deßen Ehefrau, Anna Maria, geboren Hofmann, Sohn; gebohren am 5ten ejus der Morgens zwischen drei under Uhr. Gevatter, Johannes Sippel, Ackermann in
 ?Friedlos?, Schwager des Vaters vom Kinde.

11 March [1810]--the farmer, Phillip Weifenbach from here and his legitimate wife, Anna Maria neé Hofmann had a son, Johannes who was baptized, born between 3 and 4 o'clock on the 5th of the same month. The baptismal sponsor was Johannes Sippel, farmer in ?Friedlos?, brother-in-law of the father of the child. I gather that this means that Johannes' father has a sister who married Johannes Sippel (twigs for further research).

Catharina Elisabetha Berlet Baptismal Record:

Am 28ten April [1815], Catharina Elisabetha, des Johannes Berlet hiesigen Einwohners und Ackermanns und deßen Ehefrau, Barbara Elisabetha gebh. Fink, ehel. Tochter, gebohren am 23ten l. M. Mittags 12 Uhr. Gevatter: Catharina Elisabeth des Johann Valentin Berlet Ehefrau.

28 April [1815]--Catharina Elisabeth, legitimate daughter of Johannes Berlet, resident and farmer [of Niederaula] and his wife, Barbara Elisabeth Fink, was baptized, having been born on the 23rd at 12 noon. Sponsor was Catharina Elisabeth, wife of Johann Valentin Berlet.

Johannes Weifenbach and Katharina Elisabeth Berlet Marriage Record (I have captured this in two parts, the first being the information about the groom and bride, and the second pertaining to the dates:

Johannes Weiffenbach, Ortsbürger und Landbauer in Kirchheim, des weil. Einwoh. und Landbauers zu Nieder Aula, Philipp Weiffenbach, und deßen Ehefrau, Jakobina Maria, geb. Hofmann, jetzt Witwe von Adam Kurz; ehe. lediger Sohn, geb. März 5, 1810, reform. Konfeßion.

Katharine Elisabeth Berlet, des hiesigen Auszugers und Kirchenältesten, Johannes Berlet und deßen Ehefr. Barbe Elisabeth, geb. Fink; eheliche Tochter, geboren April 23, 1815

Johannes Weiffenbach, born 5 March 1810, citizen and farmer in Kirchheim, legitimate son of the resident and farmer of Nieder Aula, Philipp Weiffenbach and his wife, Jakobina Maria Hofmann (who is now the widow of Adam Kurz)

Katharine Elisabeth Berlet, born 23 April 1815, legitimate daughter of Johannes Berlet, who lives outside of the village,  and his wife, Barbe Elisabeth, neé Fink.

Place and Date of Civil Registration: Nieder Aula, November 13, 1841
Dates of Church Banns: November 14, 21 and 28
Place and Date of Wedding: Nieder Aula, Dezember 5, 1841

I do not think you need me to translate any of this, but note that the village name was written as two words. On today's maps, it has been compacted and appears as "Niederaula".

CHILDREN:
1) Angelica Weiffenbach (and again I divide this record in two parts because it stretches across two pages in the original document):

#429--Nieder Aula, [Geburt:] Januar Sieben, 5. Uhr, morgen.
[Taufe:] Niederaula im Pfarrhaus, Jan. 23.
[Geschecht und Namen des Kindes:] Mädchen, Angelica (vulgo: Anna Gela) Weiffenbach

[Namen und Stand der Eltern:] Johannes Weiffenbach, Landbauer; Katharina Elisabeth, geb. Berlet, deßen Ehefrau
[Namen und Stand der Taufpaten:] Angelica Berlet, der Mutter eheles. Schwester

Taken together, this record states that the little girl, Angelica (name in common language is Anna Gela) Weiffenbach was born on 7 January [1841] at 5 am to the farmer, Johannes Weiffenbach and his wife, Katharina Elisabeth, neé Berlet, and baptized at the Pastor's house in Niederaula on 23 January [1841]. The baptismal sponsor was the mother's sister, Angelica Berlet

This child, Anna Gela Weiffenbach, married Johann Conrad (Conrad John) Eichenauer, the youngest son of Johann Konrad Eichenauer and Anna Katharina Jacob, and brother of Anna Margaretha and Johann Friedrich Eichenauer in Auglaize Co, Ohio. Just so I don't lose anybody here, Johann Friedrich was the father of all of the Eichenauers who immigrated to Auglaize Co. and Mercer Co., Ohio; and Anna Margaretha was the mother of George and Conrad Tobias Rödiger who immigrated to the same area. Hope that helps.

2) Conrad Weiffenbach:

#429--Kirchheim, [Geburt:] Zehnten Julius, des Morgens um sechs Uhr.
[Taufe:] am 23 Julius dahier
[Geschecht und Namen des Kindes:] ein Knabe, Conrad Weiffenbach 

[Namen und Stand der Eltern:] Johannes Weiffenbach, Tagelöhner dahier, gebürtig aus Niederaula; et. ux: Catharina Elisabetha, geborene Berlet, gebürtig aus Niederaula
[Namen und Stand der Taufpaten:] Conrad ?Stürz?, Schneider zu Mengshausen, in Amt. Niederaula

Taken together, this record states that the small boy, Conrad Weiffenbach was born at 6 am on 10 July [1843] to the day laborer here, Johannes Weiffenbach (who was born in Niederaula), and his wife, Catharina Elisabetha, neé Berlet, and baptized here on 23 July [1843]. The baptismal sponsor was Conrad ?Stürz?, tailor from Mengshausen in the district of Niederaula.

3) Anna Catharina Weiffenbach:

#429--Kirchheim, [Geburt:] vierzehnten Julius, des Mittags um zweÿ Uhr.
[Taufe:] am 27 Julius dahier
[Geschecht und Namen des Kindes:] ein Mädchen, Anna Catharina Weiffenbach  

[Namen und Stand der Eltern:] Johannes Weiffenbach, Tagelöhner dahier, gebürtig aus Niederaula; et. ux: Catharina Elisabetha, geborene Berlet, gebürtig aus Niederaula
[Namen und Stand der Taufpaten:] Anna Catharina, des Christoph Stanges und dessen Ehefrau Anna Elisabeth, geboren Müller, eheliche Tochter, zu Lingelbach im Amte Oberaula

#515--the little girl, Anna Catharina Weiffenbach, was born in House #27 in Kirchheim on the 14th of July [1845] at 2 pm to Johannes Weiffenbach (born in Niederaula), and his wife, Catharina Elisabetha, neé Berlet (born in Niederaula) and was baptized here on 27 July [1845]. The baptismal sponsor was Anna Catharina, the daughter of Christoph Stang and his wife, Anna Elisabetha, neé Müller from Lingelbach in the District of Oberaula. I included the headers here for your reading pleasure. As you can see, they are using printed forms with headers. Prior to 1830, many of the records were just handwritten, lumping all the information into one paragraph.

From the above, I have learned that the parents, Johannes and Anna Catharina (Berlet) Weiffenbach were both born in Niederaula. They were married in Niederaula, but Johannes is said in the marriage record to be from Kirchheim, which is just a stones throw (3 miles) to the northwest. Their first child was baptized in the pastor's house in Niederaula, and although the child's birth has been recorded as taking place in Niederaula, there seems enough scratching out and adding in of information to make me wonder whether that is correct. After all, her father was living in Kirchheim when married, and the rest of her siblings were born in House 27 in Kirchheim.
Here is a google map showing the driving distance between the two villages:

Forested and cultivated land lies between the two villages which lie next to the Aula, which appears to be just a creek.

I think that I have, by this time, been able to establish the ancestral home of the Weifenbachs of Auglaize Co. Ohio. There is a rich vein of Weifenbach ore to be mined there, but that would be way too much info for one Blog Post. So, I want to conclude this Post with a bit of frustrating news:

I have been unable to determine where the Weifenbachs lived between 1846 (when they arrived in New York) and 13 August 1866 (when Anna Gela, the oldest daughter married Johann Conrad Eichenauer in Auglaize Co). That is 20 years unaccounted for!
In 1870, the Weifenbachs who came on the "Atlas" appeared in the Census in Washington Twp, Auglaize County except for Christine (or is it Christian?) and Anna Catharina (the child listed as 1 year old on the ship record). So what happened to those two girls? Either or both could easily have married or died or both during that 20 year period.
According to the ship record, their destination was Ohio. But, I have yet to find them in the 1850 or 1860 Census. This is not surprising as the indexing on Ancestry.com for those years is mediocre at best. Names are horribly misspelled. Even in the 1870 census the Weifenbach family was listed as "Viepenbeck". I am sure they were not listed in Washington Twp in the 1850 census because I have looked through those records with a fine tooth comb, but haven't had the time (nor inclination frankly) to go page by page through all of Auglaize and Mercer Counties. So, next stop is the Recorder of Deeds Office in Auglaize Co to see when the Weifenbachs bought land.

So, as usual, the more questions that get answered, the more questions that arise. But, as soon as the opportunity presents itself, I WILL follow up.

Stephen Roediger
(Roediger-Eichenauer Family Historian)