This One is for My Aufderhauer Cousins--A Tangled Web

This blog post pertains to the Aufderhaar-Roediger branch of the family (shout out to Susan)!--you have cousins in Luzerne Co, PA that you may be unaware of.

To understand my starting point, find George Roediger (1854-1934), son of Johann Tobias Rödiger and Anna Margaretha Eichenauer in your family tree.
George was married twice. I have blogged previously about the multiple tragedies that struck his first family. Suffice it to say here that of the nine children born to George Roediger and his first wife, Anna Martha Scheuch, all except two died in childhood. Their first child, Heinrich Nikolaus never married and was struck and killed by a train at age 32. The only surviving child of that marriage, Anna Margaretha Agnesa married William Wesley Aufderhaar and had 9 children. So, Anna Martha Scheuch's only surviving descendants descend from this Roediger-Aufderhaar union.

So this blog post is of especial interest to the William Wesley Aufderhaar descendants. But, as is often the case, due to the tangled web of relationships, George Roediger's wife, Anna Martha Scheuch was his second cousin twice removed and so is also my fourth cousin once removed. "What a tangled web we weave, when our ancestors we  retrieve". Yes, I just made that one up. I know--pretty lame, but true.

Here is how Anna Martha Scheuch is related to all us non Aufderhaar-Roedigers (I know the type is very small and I had to leave off Anna Dorothea Rödiger's parents, Johann Adam Rödiger and  Barbara Elisabeth Bettenhausen, but hopefully the description below the chart will help you):

FOLLOW THE ORANGE BALLS

Anna Martha is the daughter of Nicolaus Scheuch (1823-1880) and Anna Christina Schade (1830-1889). Nicolaus Scheuch is the son of Conrad Scheuch (d. 1874) and Agnese Hildebrand (1804-1851). Agnese Hildebrand is the daughter of Nicolaus Hildebrand (1777-1843) and Anna Dorothea Hoßfeld (1780-1837). Anna Dorothea Hoßfeld is the daughter of Johann Tobias Hoßfeld (1756-1834) and Anna Dorothea Rödiger (1761-1825). Anna Dorothea Rödiger is the daughter of Johann Adam Rödiger (1718-1802) and Barbara Elisabeth Bettenhausen (1734-1804).

Anna Dorothea Rödiger is the sister of Johann Heinrich Rödiger (my GGG grandfather) who married Anna Sidonia Schneider (my GGG grandmother). Their son, Johann Tobias Rödiger became the progenitor of all of the Roedigers and Eichenauers who came to western Ohio in the second half of the 1800s. All of those named in this paragraph were born, married and died in Tann, Hersfeld-Rotenburg, Hesse.

Now that I have established our common interest in Anna Martha Scheuch, I will now endeavor to show how certain immigrants to Luzerne Co, PA are related to her, and thus to the Aufderhaar Roedigers.

FOLLOW THE STARS, Then note the 1st and 2nd generation of Schaubs in Luzerne Co, PA in the red box

I have already stated that her parents were Nicolaus Scheuch and Anna Christina Schade. But, I climbed up the Scheuch side of that tree to establish a link with Johann Adam Rödiger. Now I need to climb up the Schade side of the tree, but not too far. Anna Christina Schade's parents are Justus Schade (d. 1873) and Anna Martha Scheuch (d. 1873). (I am sure that there is another double relationship between this Anna Martha Scheuch and her son-in-law, Nicolaus Scheuch, but I haven't pursued that line of enquiry yet*). Justus Schade and Anna Martha Scheuch had at least one other child besides Anna Christina. Her name was Catharina Elisabeth Schade (1828-1860, Tann). Catharina Elisabeth Schade married Heinrich Schaub in Tann. Their first son, Justus Schaub, was born in Tann in 1851 and arrived in the USA in 1867 He is the first cousin of Anna Martha Scheuch about whom this blog post revolves . He migrated to Luzerne Co, PA where he married twice. First to Barbara Elisabeth Manns. They had one daughter, Alice K. Schaub who was born and died in Hazleton, Luzerne Co, PA (1883-1918) and never married.

In 1889, Justus Schaub married, second, Mary Elisabeth Schmidt. She was a native of Luzerne Co, but her mother, Elisabeth Bube had been born in Tann and emigrated to the USA with her first husband Gottfried Brandau and their three children in 1857. Dare I muddy the waters further by stating that Elisabeth Bube was also the first cousin once removed of Jacob Lotz, who has a place in a previous post. He it was who married Johann Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger (sister of George and Johann Tobias Rödiger), in Bochum.

Anyway, back to Justus Schaub and Mary Elisabeth Schmidt. They had 6 children: Gertrude, who married Walter Dugan in 1915; Vera, who never married; Henry Martin, who married Pauline Hess; Danzer Justus, who died in Berkley, CA in 1951; Justus C, Jr, and William S.

So, bottom line is that the Schaubs of Luzerne Co, PA are definite cousins of the Aufderhaar-Roediger clan of Auglaize Co, OH.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
Justus Schaub's mother-in-law, Elisabeth Bube, had a brother, Johann George Bube, who arrived from Germany in 1867 with his wife and four sons (who were all born in Tann) and also settled in Hazleton, Luzerne Co, PA. They have no direct relationship to our family, but I am throwing in this additional information at no extra charge. Two of the sons, Simon and Karl Heinrich, presumably lived their entire lives in Hazleton. Adam Heirich married and moved to the vicinity of Weatherly, Carbon Co, just 9 miles distant. The fourth son, George Heinrich Bube moved to Alabama, married Anna Maria Kullmann in Pullman Co, AL in 1881 and they lived the rest of their lives in or near Birmingham, Alabama. They had at least 6 children, Annie G, Magdalena, Jacob, Martha A, Julia and George Henry Jr.

As always, if you are an ancestry.com subscriber, you can access my tree "The Rödiger Family Tree"--see link on my Blog Home Page or follow this link directly to Anna Martha Scheuch's profile page.

*Since writing this Blog Post, I have determined the relationships mentioned above. You can read about that in my next Post LINK

Stephen Roediger

Anna Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger (1858-1932), Sister of George and Conrad Tobias Roediger

I begin this post with two photos that have, until recently, defeated my powers of investigation:

These two photos were in a family photo album, along with my mother's handwritten note, "Aunt Bertha Roediger Smith used to write to a cousin Dora during WWII. Paul and Dora Gabler, Eichermann St. 37, Kassel, Grohessen 3500, Germany."

This note has been very puzzling. "Aunt Bertha Roediger Smith" was my grandfather, Alfred Roediger's sister. But I had never been able to identify how Dora was their cousin until just this summer. About two years ago, I discovered that my great grandfather, Conrad Tobias had two full sisters in addition to a half sister, Anna Katharina Rödiger, who married Friedrich Eichenauer. One of his full sisters was Katharina Elisabeth who was the subject of my last Blog post, "The Rödigers of Bochum Revisited and Expanded". As the title implies, there had been previous blogs (in 2017) on this subject when I first discovered the two sisters existence.

The other sister, and subject of this post, was born nearly ten years after the first on 4 March 1858 in Tann, and was baptized with the same name as her older sister, Katharina Elisabeth. Yet her baptismal sponsor was her half sister, Anna Katharina (Rödiger) Eichenauer. Usually a child was given the name of the baptismal sponsor, but not in this case. My reason for mentioning this should become apparent shortly.
Her marriage and death records give her name as Katharina Elisabeth. And, she was baptismal sponsor for a niece, Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger. So, two sisters, who lived concurrently had the same name, Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger.
But, interestingly (at least to me), most of the records following her marriage, including the baptismal and death records of her children have her name as Anna Katharina. And she was listed as a baptismal sponsor of another niece under the name Anna Katharina.

I am not sure of the reason for the waffling on her given name, other than the fact that her parents may have discovered that having two daughters with the same name in the same household became confusing. It doesn't help my family tree either. I have had their names in my tree as Katharina Elisabeth (1) and Katharina Elisabeth (2), and since finding so many records with her name as Anna Katharina, I was preparing to just change her name in my records to Anna Katharina, then realized I would have the same problem because her half sister was also Anna Katharina Rödiger. So, I have melded the two names together and re-baptized her as Anna Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger. I hope nobody minds 😊

And what does this have to do with Dora Gabler? Well, because of my lack of progress in discovering her Cousin status, I contacted my third cousin, Jürgen, who was born in Tann and asked if he had ever heard of Dora Gabler. It was a long shot, but to my amazement, he did know of her. This is his response:
"Yes, I know Dora Gabler, her maid name was Rodel. Her mother was Liese or Elisabeth Strippel, she was married to a man called with family name “ Rode” in Kassel . Elisabeth Strippel was born in Tann, she moved to Kassel, when she was round about 18 years. 

It was usual in that time! Kassel was a very busy city with a lot of heavy industries, they needed a lot of employees and so, children from farms, mostly the second son for example, moved to Kassel, Frankfurt or Ohio, There was not enough to earn on the small farms in Tann area.Dora Gabler visited Tann very often in the years between 1945 and 1980. Dora or Dorette passed away last year with an age of 98.Dora came often on vacation to their relatives in Tann, because her home were destroyed during the war by bombs. In the burning nights of Kassel also two cousins of mine, twins 5 years old, died by the bombing.Next week, I will meet my cousin, Friedrich Brand, he is 90 years now. He will tell me anything about Dora’s roots.I believe, the grandmother of Dora Gabler in Tann  was a Lady from Rödiger family, she must have been married to a man named Strippel."

Armed with this new information, I was able to find the marriage record of Dora's parents:

Her father was Burghard Heinrich Rode, son of Georg Rode and Elise Schmidt. Burghard was born on 3 September and baptized on 6 October 1895 in Großalmerode, and was, at the time of his marriage, living in Bettenhausen, a "suburb" of Kassel.
Her mother was Anna Elise Strippel, daughter of Adam Strippel, deceased, and Anna Katharina Rödiger. Anna Elise was born on 21 April and baptized on 10 May 1896 in Tann.
Burghard Heinrich Rode and Anna Elise Strippel were married on 6 April 1919 in the Lutheran Church in Tann.
According to a subsequent email from Jürgen, after his visit with his cousin, Friedrich Brand, Friedrich was told Jürgen that Dora was born on 10 August 1920 in Kassel, that she married Paul Gabler in Kassel during the war (between 1940 and 1945). After the war, Paul worked as a tram operator in Kassel. They had no children. Dora died in 2018 at the age of 97. [this may be a correction to the preceding email which said she died at age 98. I have not gotten a date certain for her death, yet].

Because Kassel is so large and has so many churches, I have yet to find either Dora's baptismal record or her marriage record based on Friedrich Brand's information. And it is likely that their marriage record has not been released due to privacy laws in Germany.

However, from the marriage record of her parents, I learned the identities of her grandparents--Adam Strippel and Anna Katharina Rödiger. And because I had found a remark in "Anna Katharina Elisabeth" Rödiger's baptismal record, I knew that Dora's grandmother was Katharina Elisabeth AKA Anna Katharina Rödiger, the sister of my great-grandfather, Conrad Tobias Rödiger. The remark states "Am 26.12.79 mit Adam Strippel verheiratet. Sie starb am 19. Sept. 1932" (on 26 December [18]79 she was joined in marriage to Adam Strippel. She died on 19 September 1932). Note: according to the actual marriage record, they were married on Christmas Day in 1879, but nonetheless the remark in her baptismal record helped me determine that Dora's grandmother was indeed the person known both as Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger and as Anna Katharina Rödiger.

Hopefully the diagram below will now show the relationship between Bertha (Roediger) Smith and Dora Gabler:

Scrutiny of this diagram reveals that Dora and Bertha were actually 1st cousins once removed. Their common ancestors (who do not show up on the diagram but were the parents of Anna Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger and her brother Conrad Tobias Roediger at the top of the diagram) were Johann Tobias Rödiger and Anna Margaretha Eichenauer. Dora was their great granddaughter and Bertha was their granddaughter. BTW, Dora was thirty years younger than Bertha.

Now that I have established all of that, I want to briefly summarize the family of Adam Strippel and Anna Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger. As I mentioned earlier, they were married in Tann on Christmas Day, 1879. I believe that I have identified all of their children. The first four died before reaching adulthood:

1) Anna Martha, born 24 February 1880 in Tann, died 13 March 1880 in Tann

2) George, born 10 May 1881 in Tann, died 12 April 1882 in Tann

3) George Engelhard, born 7 January 1883 in Tann, died 6 April 1900 in Frankfurt am Main. (Note: In his baptismal record he is called Heinrich, but his baptismal sponsor is Engelhardt Strippel. Then, in 1900, the death of a George Engelhardt Strippel is recorded in Frankfurt and he is said to be 17, born in Tann and living in Tann, son of Adam Strippel and Catharina, geboren Rödiger. Furthermore, there is a civil birth record for George Engelhardt Strippel, who was born on the same date as the church record indicates, with the same parents and in the same house. So, I believe that “Heinrich” and “George Engelhardt” Strippel are one and the same, and that somehow the church record recorded the wrong name). He was working as a Müller (Miller) at the time of his death. He was only 17 years old.

4) Justus, born 18 October 1885 in Tann, died 13 November 1886 in Tann

5) Anna Katharina Ernestine, b. 14 May 1887 in Tann, d. unknown. She married Heinrich Ludwig Brand on 7 January 1906 in Tann.

6) Georg Konrad, b. 24 September 1889 in Tann, d. unknown, however there is a record of his confirmation on 4 March 1903 in Tann. He was baptized on 13 October 1889. His baptismal sponsors were "Georg Rödiger and Konrad Rödiger of Moulton Ohio":

See second column from the right

George Rödiger, named here, emigrated less than a month after this baptism with his four children to join his brother Konrad (my great grandfather) who had emigrated eight years earlier in 1881 and now lived near Moulton, Ohio.

7) Friedrich Wilhelm, b. 10 June 1892 in Tann, d. unknown. He married Amanda Augusta Plath in Harburg-Hambach in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) on 4 December 1915. His wife was born in Harburg. Since Harburg is over 220 miles north of Tann, I am making an educated guess that Kaiser Wilhelm II had something to do with Friedrich Wilhelm Strippel's presence there. Apparently he stayed in the Harburg area, based on the fact that his wife died there in 1932.

8) Anna Elise (Dora's mother), b. 21 April 1896 in Tann. As was already mentioned, she married Burghard Heinrich Rode. So, enough said.

9) Anna Margretha, b. 7 August 1898 in Tann. She married Johann Willi Lorchheim from Kassel on 30 November 1919 in the Lutheran Church in Tann.

That about sums up what is known about Anna Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger and her family of Strippels, and lays to rest the question of the identity of the mysterious cousin, Dora Gabler. I wish I had known all this back in 2014 when mom and I visited Germany. I would have loved to have met Dora Gabler.

Your Family Historian,

Stephen Roediger

The Rödigers of Bochum Revisited and Expanded

In 2017, I wrote 4 Blog Posts about my great-grandfather, Conrad Tobias Roediger's sister, Katharina Elisabeth, who moved to Bochum, in the present German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. For more background see my Blogs:
Reunited With Conrad Tobias Roediger's Sister
Death Record of Catharina Elisabeth (Rödiger) Lotz
Gibb's Rule 39
Gibb's Rule 39 Revisited

In this Post, I intend to expand on those Posts with information which I have been able to glean from the Bochum Church Record. My primary purpose is to consider whether descendants of the Tanner Rödigers who moved to Bochum might still inhabit the Bochum environs today.

Since 2017, I have learned that in addition to Katharina Elisabeth, at least two of her first cousins also  moved there. They were Nicolaus and Jacob Rödiger, sons of Justus Rödiger and Anna Katharina Goßmann. I have endeavored to create a chart that illustrates their relationship without the clutter of all their other relatives. The three who moved to Bochum are highlighted with a yellow star:

I realize that it is difficult to read due to the small print. If you want a more legible copy, send me a comment to that effect and I will email it as a PDF file.

Since I have already spent four posts on Katharina Elisabeth, I will just mention a couple of additional facts. Since 2017 I have learned that her husband, Jacob Lotz was born in 1844, in Allmershausen, as were three of his siblings. Then, around 1850, his parents, Conrad Lotz and Catharina Elisabeth neé Krauss moved to Tann, where 4 more of his siblings were born between 1852 and 1857. Then sometime between 1857 and 1862, his parents moved to Bochum, where his youngest sibling was born in September of 1862.

With this information in hand it is apparent that Jacob Lotz and Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger would have lived in the same village (Tann) for at least 7 years and perhaps as long as 10. If Jacob's family moved from Tann to Bochum about 1860, he would have been about 15 and Katharina E. would have been about 11. Bochum was a large industrial city. Jacob's father had taken his family there because jobs in factories and coal mines were available. But living conditions were squalid. Many children died from diseases and even many of the adults, whether working in the coal mines or elsewhere contracted TB, lung fever, and cholera. In addition, the inhabitants of Bochum spoke Low German, a different dialect than what the Tanners (people from Tann) were familiar with. In spite of these negatives, Katharine was willing to move 150 miles to a big city to marry. One might surmise from that that they had had a special affection for one another while they were living in Tann, and kept up some kind of communication from about 1860 until 1873 when they wed.

Tann to Bochum via roads today

As was stated in a previous post, Katharina Elisabeth died in 1873 from TB, one day after her first and only child died from Cholera Infantum. Thus she has no descendants to research. Jacob remarried and had a number of children, but as they are not kinfolk, I will not begin down that road. Suffice it to say, that between Jacob and his brothers, there were Lots of Lotzes and some still reside in Bochum today.

This brings us to Nicolaus and Jacob Rödiger. I discovered Nicolaus in 2017, simply because he was married on the same day and in the same church in Bochum as Katharina Elisabeth, so their marriage records were back-to-back. At the time, I presumed that they were related but had no idea how. Since then, I have traveled to Kassel to sift through the church archives of Tann, and more recently, I have been able to examine the Tann Lutheran Church records from my office chair, via archiv.de. As the diagram above shows to those with magnifying glasses, Nicolaus and Jacob were Katharina's first cousins through her father's brother, Justus Rödiger.

It is probable that Nicolaus and Jacob Rödiger and their wives came to Bochum at the same time. After they moved to Bochum, Nicolaus and Jacob became coalminers (German: Bergmann). In every birth and death record of their children, their occupation never varied. And, though I have learned little of the occupations of Nicolaus' sons, I do know that Jacob's sons also became coalminers.

Nicolaus Rödiger married his first wife, Anna Margaretha Grunewald in Tann in 1867. Together, they had five children. The oldest outlived his four younger siblings and yet he died at the age of 4 years and 10 months. (For those of you that are paying attention--yes, two of his siblings were twins, so it is possible). Four of the five were born in Tann, but the fifth was a stillborn daughter who was born in 1872 in Bochum. Her mother died 4 days later from birthing complications.

The family of Nicolaus and Anna Margaretha (Grunewald) Rödiger

Obviously there were no succeeding generations from this marriage. But Nicolaus married again. His second marriage was to another native of Tann, Anna Margaretha Falls. They were married in Bochum on the same day that his cousin, Katharina Elisabeth Rödiger married Jacob Lotz. They had four children. The two youngest died in early childhood, but it appears that the two oldest lived into adulthood. I say "appears" because I have found no death record nor marriage for them.

You should be aware that my research has been stymied in this regard because there are no church records available on archion.de for Bochum after about 1905, and no civil records on either ancestry.com or familysearch.org for Bochum at all. So, at about 1900 I hit a brick wall and can learn almost nothing more about the last 100 years.

Did the two older children marry and have children? Until more records are made available online I may not be able to break down this wall. But this is how Nicolaus' second family appears in my tree at this time:

The family of Nicolaus and Anna Margarethe (Falls) Rödiger

Nicolaus' second wife, Anna Margarethe Falls died on 7 April 1882 and Nicolaus married again on 3 September of the same year. His third wife was Anna Elisabeth Schneider, 16 years his junior, from Heddersdorf, about 14 miles southwest of his hometown of Tann. They had four children, three of whom "appear" to have survived into adulthood (see red lettered paragraph above).

The family of Nicolaus and Anna Elisabeth (Schneider) Rödiger

There is some doubt about the gender of their third child. The birth and death records from this time period do not bother to state the gender of the child. In most cases the name provided makes the gender obvious, but in this case, I am not sure. The death record gives the name as August and the birth record, as Auguste. The first is a boy's name and the second, a girl's. As this child died at age two, there will be nothing to determine the gender unless civil records are found. In either case, he or she died without issue, so I need not make it one (an issue, that is). But that is why the child has a green background rather than blue or pink. Just so, you know. [RH pointed me to a baptismal record I hadn't seen which indicates the name of one of the baptismal sponsors to be Auguste Wallis. Therefore, their third child was a daughter. Danke!]

Another thing to notice, is that all of Nicolaus Rödiger's children who were born after leaving Tann, were born in Altenbochum, not Bochum proper. This lies southeast of the larger city of Bochum and was later incorporated into the city of Bochum in 1926. Because of the industrial makeup of Bochum, it became a target of Allied bombing during WWII and may explain why records after 1905 do not seem to exist. The fact that any exist at all is something of a miracle as all but one of Bochum's churches were destroyed during the war.

Thank you, Google Maps

Altogether, Nicolaus Rödiger had 13 children, only 5 of whom "appear" to have lived to adulthood. Three of the five were boys who could carry on the Rödiger name. Whether they did or not remains to be discovered.

Nicolaus' younger brother, Jacob Rödiger also emigrated to Bochum in the 1870s soon after he married Anna Katharina Böttner in 1873. She was born in the village of Rohrbach, which lies less than 1 mile southeast of Tann. They moved to the Bochum area where Jacob worked as a coalminer.

It appears that Jacob and Anna Katharina may have moved around a bit. The birth records of their children indicate that their first two were born in Bochum, their third in Altenbochum, their fourth, fifth and sixth in Grumme (see the map above--Grumme is a city north of Bochum), and their seventh and eighth back in Bochum. The exact address where their last child, Maria died in 1893 is "I Parallelstraße 22, Bochum". You can find its exact location using Google Maps. The "I" is like a Roman numeral for 1. There is also a II Parallelstraße in Bochum.

Of their eight children, five appear to have reached adulthood. I have marriage records for the first two, and birth records for two children of Jacob's oldest son, George Valentin Rödiger. Jacob and Anna Katharina' third child, August Heinrich was one of 16 miners who lost their lives in a firedamp explosion on 25 July 1895. He was just eighteen years old.

Family of Jacob and Anna Katharina (Böttner) Rödiger

After his uncle Walter passed away 2017, my third cousin made the comment to me in an email that there were no more Rödigers in Tann. What was left of them were now all in the USA. And certainly it is true that there are no longer any Rödigers in Tann. And if my great grandfather, Conrad Tobias Roediger, his brother, George and their nephew, John Henry Roediger had not emigrated to Ohio, there would be none in the USA either.

However, the question of whether the male line of Johann Henrich Rödiger and Anna Sidonia Schneider has been extinguished in Germany may still be open for debate. In 1900, there were 4 male descendants of Jacob Rödiger and 3 male descendants of Nicolaus Rödiger living in Bochum and Altenbochum. It is extremely possible that their male lines have continued to the present day.

A look at the city directory of Bochum in 1940 shows listings for 15 different male Rödigers, even one living on I Parallelstraße, though at House 13, not 22 where Maria Rödiger died:

excerpt from 1940 Bochum city directory

And the current phone directory of Bochum shows 4 male and 1 female Rödigers residing there.

Now before anybody gets too excited, there is a caveat or two.

First, other than contacting each of these people personally and hoping that 1) they know who their great grandparents were and 2) that they are willing to share that information with a complete American stranger, there is no way for me to know if these current residents of Bochum are indeed descendants of the Rödigers who lived in Bochum in 1900. For all I know, they may have moved to Bochum from Berlin in 1996 and have no discernible relationship to "our" Rödiger ancestors.

Second, and more frustrating to me, is that there were other Rödigers living in Bochum in the 1870s and 1880s that I have not been able to connect with the Tanner Rödigers. Indeed, there was a Friedrich Hermann Ludwig Woldemar Rödiger who married in Bochum in 1872. His parents were from Naumburg, which is about 120 miles east of Tann in the present day state of Saxony-Anhalt. [My mistake--which was pointed out by RH, a very trustworthy researcher in Germany. The correction is that Naumburg is about 18 miles west of Kassel, in the district of Kassel in the state of Hessen. Still no known relationship to the Tanner Rödigers but RH says that Friedrich Hermann Ludwig Woldemar Rödiger's wife's father is her great-great-great granduncle. That is a pretty amazing coincidence.]

Others were:

1) Nicolaus Rödiger and Anna Margaretha Baltz had a child in 1880. This could not be the Nicolaus Rödiger I have discussed in this blog post even though the wife's name looks very similar to his second wife Anna Margaretha Falls. I almost fell for this, but soon realized that Baltz was not a misspelling of Falls but that they were two very distinct persons with different birthdates and parents.

2) Adam Rödiger and Anna Catharina Eisenbrand had a child in 1882  and in 1885.

3) George Rödiger and Maria Theis (who was a Catholic) had children in 1885, 1887, 1888, 1890, 1892, 1894 and 1897.

Any of these Rödigers could be the progenitors of the Rödigers found in the 1940 City Directory and the present day phone directory and may not be relatives at all. On the other hand, they may be relatives that I have somehow missed in my searches.

Then there is this guy. While I was double checking records on FamilySearch.org, I discovered a Hermann Georg Roediger who was born in Bochum on 24 February 1907, son of Louis Roediger and Emilie Pfaff. This is his travel document allowing him to travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, dated 17 October 1949. I haven't found a Louis Rodiger in the Tann records. And neither did I find one who married or had children in Bochum prior to 1900. However, there was an Anna Katharina Pfaff who married a Karl Hildebrand in Tann in 1894, so the Pfaff name is not entirely foreign to the Tann area. Furthermore his residence when applying for this travel document was Eisenach which is only about 35 miles east of Tann. Is it possible that one of our Rödiger cousins has continued the Tanner Rödiger line in Brazil. Hmmm...

OK. It appears that to try resolve this question, I am forced to write letters to the five Rödigers who currently reside in Bochum, and hope that one of them will take pity on a poor potential American cousin who is worrying this like a dog with a bone.

If I discover anything of interest, I promise to report.

The Diegels Hometown in Germany Has Been Found!

BACKGROUND: George and Anna Martha (Schubert) Diegel are my 3G Grandparents. They were both born in Germany.

Their daughter, Christena, married Conrad Weifenbach in 1866 in Auglaize County, Ohio. And one of their daughters, Anna Christina Weifenbach married my great-grandfather, Conrad Tobias Roediger in 1889, eight years after he arrived in America. All of this is very clear and well documented from documents here in the US.

What has been a mystery to me up until recently is where the Diegel's were from in Germany. The first clue I found was in a 7 page typewritten family history, written primarily by Linna Diegel Klinefelter Ratcliff about 1968 and edited by Donna (Diegel) Roberts in 1981 which I will refer to as the Diegel Family History or DFH to save my fingers.

I will begin with the first paragraph from the Family History document:

According to this account, George Diegel (my 3G Grandfather) and his brother, Jacob were from Hassel Greis, Rothenberg, Hurhessen, Germany. I can find no evidence that such a place exists, but what struck me about this was how similar it looks to Kreis Rotenburg, Kassel, Kurhessen, which not only exists, but is in fact the very same area from which the Eichenauers came from. Rotenburg is a town, known more specifically as Rotenburg an der Fulda, which means that it is the Rotenburg situated on the Fulda River. Kreis refers to a local district within a larger government district known as a Regierungsbezirk. Rotenburg is a small district within the larger district of Kassel which is one of the administrative districts of the state of Hesse(n). During the time that the Prussians held sway over this region, it was known as Kurhessen.

So, I am theorizing that this family history was orally communicated to someone unfamiliar with the place names in Germany who either wrote it down by hand or typed it and who simply misread the capital letters or misheard the actual names while typing them. If this is true, then George and Jacob were from one of the villages within the district of Rotenburg. I have not been able to find a full list of the towns and villages in this administrative district. But, not only does the government break down the villages and towns into districts, so does the Lutheran Church. The Lutheran Church's break down does not exactly mirror the government's, but it does give me a list of 65 village churches within the ecclesiastical district of Rotenburg whose records have been partially or completely digitized. 

So I spent hours and hours over several days looking for Diegels in the villages of the Rotenburg District looking for the two brothers--which I discovered much later had been largely unnecessary.

According to the DFH, George Diegel was born 7 March 1811 in "Hassel Greis, Rothenburg, Herhessen, Germany". Unfortunately, his brother, Jacob's birthdate is not provided in this document, however, it does state that he was married and had three daughters when he emigrated. According to the DFH, Jacob married Mary Christena Schwarzen. The three daughters born in Germany were Anna, who married Christopher Clay in Loraine Co., Mary, who married Henry Berlet Sr. in Loraine Co., and Eliza, who married a "Mr. Reynolds" before she was 18, and subsequently divorced, also in Loraine Co.

From census records, I learned that George and his wife moved to Washington Twp, Auglaize Co, OH before 1840, and that his brother Jacob's family (which had grown with the addition of two sons born in Loraine Co, Jacob and Adam, plus the husbands of two of his daughters and their children) also moved to Washington Twp, Auglaize Co. before 1870.

Armed with this information, I searched obituaries for clues as to where they had come from in Germany.

This paid off when I found the obituary of Eliza Diegel, Jacob's daughter. There is a lot of useful information in this obituary, but for now just notice that she was born in Schwartzen Hassel Greis, Rothenberg on 30 April 1834. Of course, you can read the rest, just meet me at the end of the obit for a continuation of this discussion:

As soon as I found this, I knew that what I had hypothesized from my study of the 65 churches in Rotenburg District was right on target. Schwartzen Hassel had to be a corruption of Schwarzenhasel, which is one of the 65 churches I had been trolling.

 I had already learned the birth date of Eliza's uncle George Diegel (my 3G Grandfather), from both the DFH and from FindAGrave.com, to be 7 March 1811, and when I looked in the Schwarzenhasel Church records I found his baptismal record:

1811--März 12, George der Sohn des Bauers Henrich Diegel et ux. Elisab geb. Pfiel, nat. 7ten Abends 5 Uhr.
Gevatter. George Diegel Geschirrmeister? in Kaßel

Translated, baptized 12 March 1811, George, the son of the farmer Henrich Diegel and his wife Elisabeth née Pfiel, born on the 7th at 5 pm. Baptismal sponsor was George Diegel, Master craftsman of Tableware? in Kassel.

This led me to his Confirmation record. His is Number 3:

This confirms what was previously known about George Diegel: He is the son of the farmer, Henrich Diegel and Elisabeth Pfiel and was born on 7 May 1811, and adds the info that he was 14 years, 2 months and 14 days old when he was confirmed in the Lutheran Church of Schwarzenhasel on 22 May 1825.

Another test to ensure that I hadn't fallen down another rabbit hole involved George's older brother, Jacob and his wife and three daughters who were born in Germany, Eliza being the one whose obit confirmed that they were from this particular village.

So, I will continue with Eliza, who according to the obit (and agreed with in the DFH), was born 30 April 1834. So, opening the Schwarzenhasel Baptismal Book 1830-1937, I searched for a corresponding record. I did not find a baptismal record for her on that date, but I did find one for an Anna Elisabeth Diegel, daughter of Jacob Diegel almost exactly one year earlier. Because the entry covers two pages width, I will present the two pages as two separate images so it is more legible. Fortunately, it is the first record on the page, so I can retain the header:

In this first half, I learned from the second column that Anna Elisabeth Diegel was born in Schwarzenhasel in House #54

From the second column I learned that there were 31 days in April in 1833. At least that is what this record gives as her birth date. Obviously that is an error because we all know that "30 days has September, April, June and November". Be that as it may, she was born between 11-12 at night.

According to the third column she was baptized in Schwarzenhasel on May 5th.

Fourth column: her given name was Anna Elisabeth, a legitimate daughter. Jump to the bottom of the next image for an explanation of columns 5-6.

Column five lists her parents as Jacob Diegel, Schneider [tailor], and Christina Maria Kirchner.

Column six provides the name of her baptismal sponsor as Anna Elisabeth Sauer, Jungfrau [unmarried young woman].

This record made me wonder if I had not indeed fallen down a rabbit hole, as there is a year's difference between the American records and this German record concerning her birth. Then add this bit of information about Eliza Diegel's parents gleaned from the DFH:

According to this, her mother's name was Schwarzen, rather than Kirchner, as the German record states.

However, I again was saved from disbanding the Schwarzenhasel records when I found the death certificate of Eliza's younger brother Jacob who had been born in Loraine Co, OH about 5 years after their arrival in the US:

The VERY IMPORTANT thing to note about this death certificate is that Edward Diegel, Jacob's son, states that Jacob's father was also Jacob Diegel and his mother was Mary Christina Kirchner. This lines up with the German record, with the minor flip-flopping of the first and middle name and the anglicizing of Maria to Mary.

I will skip over the other two daughter's baptismal records in Germany, and the birth records of Jacob Diegel and his wife, Christina Maria Kirchner. But I assure you that they are all there and they all correspond neatly with the records of the Jacob Diegel family found on FindAGrave, leaving no doubt that my Diegel ancestors were indeed from Schwarzenhasel.

I have pondered on how the DFH mistakenly assigned the maiden name of "Schwarzen" to Jacob's wife. Her birth record in Schwarzenhasel confirms that her father was Nicolaus Kirchner, and there is no marriage record in Schwarzenhasel to suggest she was married to someone named Schwarz before she married Jacob Diegel. So, my guess is that someone who didn't know much German, trying to make sense of information written in German, thought that the place name, "Schwarzen hassel", referred to her maiden name. Just my theory.

Finally, since the Diegel, Weifenbach, Eichenauer and Rödiger families are so intertwined, I was curious to know where each of their hometowns were to each other in Germany.

Rödigers were from Tann

Eichenauers were also from Tann, but prior to that, they were from Niederthalhausen

Weifenbachs were from Niederaula

and the Diegel's from Schwarzenhasel

Thank you Google Earth for helping me illustrate the proximity of these four villages:

Something to ponder--the distance between the Schwarzenhasel and Niederaula is 22 miles, with Niederthalhausen and Tann lying roughly halfway between them.

Congratulations if you have managed to read this entire Blog. There will be more on the Diegels later to be sure. Not only do I have information of the rest of Jacob and Maria Christina (Kirchner) Diegel's children, but George and Jacob also had 7 siblings, one of whom died in Schwarzenhasel, but her husband and three of their children also emigrated to Auglaize Co. So, stay tuned for more Diegel adventures!

--Stephen Rödiger

Anna Eva Heÿer's Father, Nicolaus Heÿer

From the Back Burner:
This post probably should have preceded my last post about Anna Eva Heÿer's mother. In that post I alluded to the fact that the records of the village of Kalkobes, where the Heÿer family resided were hidden in the much larger Bad Hersfeld Church records. In this post I am concentrating on Anna Eva's father, Nicolaus Heÿer.

This an example from the KB of Bad Hersfeld (1765-1779). It shows that the birth (symbolized by the "*"), death (†), marriage (∞) and Confirmation records of Bad Hersfeld, Allmershausen, Heenes and Kalkobes are found in this book.

At first the task was daunting, because the records from each village are not separated into different sections but are all just listed chronologically. And Bad Hersfeld is a city with many entries to wade through to find one from Kalkobes. I had to search through 46 pages of baptismal records in the aforementioned Church book before I found the first reference to Kalkobes. It took me a while (like 8 hours, but I finally realized that some kind soul had thoughtfully and consistently written the village names of Allmershausen, Heenes and Kalkobes into the margins when appropriate. Below, in an example,  you can see Kalkobes and Allmershausen underlined in red (by me):

Once I had figured that out, I saved a lot of time searching records. I had learned that, at the time of their son, Dietrich's birth in 1786, Nicolaus Heÿer was a Gerichtschöpf (still trying to nail down the exact meaning, but appears to be an unpaid lawyer or judge in a village). The point is, with several Nicolaus Heÿers living at the same time in Kalkobes, only one appears to have held this position. This eventually helped me determine which Nicolaus Heÿer who died in Kalkobes was the correct one:

Kalkobes: am 24ten Novbr. Ist der Gerichts schöpfe, Nicolaus Heÿer von Kalkobes † am 22ten Nach. um 12 Uhr alt 50 Jahr weniger 2 Wochen"

Translated, "on the 24th of November [1791], the Gerichtsschöpfe, Nicolaus Heÿer from Kalkobes [was buried]. He died on the 22nd at (I am not sure of the time--but doesn't really matter. Usually Nach. would be the abbreviation for Nachmittag which means afternoon. And I believe 12 Uhr would be twelve hours after noon. However, I need a German, familiar with these terms to help me out here); age: 2 weeks short of 50 years old". Doing a little calculating, Nicolaus would have been born about December 6, 1741.
Thus, I turned my attention to the Church Book in Bad Hersfeld, covering the years 1726-1748 to see if I could find Nicolaus Heÿer's birth record. There was no record of him in December of 1741, but on September 3rd of that same year, the baptism of Johann Nicolaus, son of Johann Geörg Haÿer of Kalkobes was recorded. And his baptismal sponsor was his father's brother--Nicolaus:

I realize that the birth date indicated in the death record is not an exact match with the baptismal record, but I have searched for a year on either side of the December 6, 1741 date and did not find any other Heÿer baptisms. So, I have accepted this baptism as the correct one and adjusted his date of birth to "about" September 3, 1741 in Kalkobes, and his father, then, would be Johann Geörg Heÿer.

And, it appears that this same Nicolaus Heÿer was confirmed in the church in 1755:

Not much new information, but since children were usually confirmed between 12-14 years of age, this is just a confirmation (no pun intended) of what has already been ascertained.

Once I had established the above facts, I continued back in the records and learned that:
1) Nicolaus' parents were Johann Georg Heÿer and Anna Gehela Deiseroth, married 28 October 1738 in Kalkobes.
2) Nicolaus had at least two siblings, Anna Margretha, baptized 7 June 1739; and Johann Simon, baptized 26 May 1744, both in Kalkobes.
3) Nicolaus' father, Johann Georg Heÿer was baptized in Kalkobes on 5 January 1721.
4) Nicolaus' mother, Anna Gehela Deiseroth was from Hilmes, in the same district, and her father was Johannes Deiseroth.
5) Nicolaus' paternal grandparents were Johannes Heÿer and Anna Elisabeth Kehlen (daughter of Nicolaus Kehlen), married 4 February 1712 in Kalkobes.

The records from which I have captured this information go back to 1611 and encompass another 3 church books. That is another 100 years from the time that Nicolaus's grandparents were married. So there is definitely more ground that can be covered here, but information tends to get sketchier and sketchier the further back one goes. And it is entirely possible that I will loose traction soon. But for now, this is what I've found.

In summary, I will leave you with a diagram that incorporates the info shared today--enjoy meeting your newly discovered ancestors!:

Anna Eva Heyer's Mother--Anna Catharina Lehn

My back burner is getting a little crowded as I work to tie up loose ends. So, from the back burner, I think I have discovered enough information to present some information about Anna Catharina Lehn.

In two previous post, I shared my research on Anna Eva Heÿer and her siblings, children of Nicolaus Heÿer and Anna Catharina Lehn. See The Siblings of Anna Eva Heÿer and Found at Last. These two posts will get you caught up with where Anna Eva Heÿer fits in the family tree and why she is important to both the Roediger and Eichenauer clans.
Today, I am climbing higher up the family tree to share what I have learned about Anna Eva's mother, Anna Catharina Lehn:
Armed with the fact that the last child that I knew her to bear was born in 1789 in Kalkobes, I started with that date in mind and began working forward through the church records, looking for a death record. Found:

"#73/Kalkobes, 13. [Juni 1822], Anna Catharina, Witwe des verst. Landbauer Nicolaus Heÿer zu Kalkobes, geb. Lehn, starb 11. [Juni 1822] Abends 8 Uhr, alt 78 Jahr"

Translated: Anna Catharina, maiden name Lehn, widow of the deceased farmer, Nicolaus Heÿer from Kalkobes died on 11. June 1822 at 10 pm, age 78 years, and was buried in Kalkobes on June 13. This would put her date of birth about 1744.

I had learned from her son, Johann Conrad Heÿer's baptismal record that she was from Reilos. On the Google Map below, you can get an idea of the locations of Tann, Reilos and Kalkobes:

Reilos is about 2 1/2 miles down the Rohrbach stream from Tann. Reilos is about 6 miles by road from Kalkobes.

So, I searched for her baptismal record in Reilos. I found it in the Friedlos-Reilos Church Book. Fortunately, this church book kept the two village's records in separate sections and they are both fairly small villages This saved me from wading through hundreds of records (as I had to do when looking for Kalkobes records). As you can see from the map above, these two villages are very close together and it may be that one church served both villages. Indeed, this is what Wikipedia suggests. Here is a link to a photo of the church in Reilos.

I have been able to get the gist of this record, though the actual wording is difficult so I won't attempt a transliteration here, but just give you the rough translation. Anna Catharina, daughter of David Lehn was born on the 28th of December 1743 [in Reilos] and was baptized on the 29th. (the first part of the date is hidden in the binding but I am guessing that it is a 2). The baptismal witness was the child's mother's sister, Anna Catharina, Niclas Jacob's daughter.

This is good stuff. Not only do I learn her birth and baptismal date, but also her father's name (David Lehn) and her mother's father's name (Nicolaus Jacob and the name of her mother's sister (Anna Catharina Jacob). It is the fodder for possible future research.

At this point I could and should point out the apparent disrespect for the one who labored to bring this child into the world. As so often happens in the older records, the name of her mother is absent. This is frustrating to me as a genealogist who is trying to connect all the dots, and mysterious to me as a husband and father. It seems that a basic principle of keeping birth records would be that the parent's names would BOTH be provided. And I am totally stunned that even in a male dominate culture, this fact would be omitted.

So, instead of the mother's name, I am left with clues as to her identity, but for now she will have to remain known as ? Jacob, daughter of Nicolaus Jacob and sister of Anna Catharina Jacob.

To summarize, the subject of this post is Anna Catharina Lehn, mother of Anna Eva Heÿer.
She was:
*born 11 March 1745 in Reilos
*baptized 15 March 1745 in Reilos
*[married to Nicolaus Heÿer on 20 June 1766, Lutheran Church in Kalkobes]
*[gave birth to 10 children, 4 boys and 6 girls]
*died 11 June 1822 in Kalkobes
*buried 13 June 1822 in Kalkobes.
*Her father was Johann Conrad Lehn
*Her mother's maiden name was Jacob, but her mother's given name was not revealed
*Her mother's father was Niclas Jacob
*Her mother had a sister, Anna Catharina Jacob, who served as Anna Catharina Lehn's baptismal sponsor

To see the new info in context with the rest of my tree go to Rödiger Family Tree at ancestry.com

(Stephan Rödiger)

Found, At Last--The Birth Record of Anna Eva Heÿer

In case you don't recognize the name, Anna Eva Heÿer, and haven't read the preceding blog about my search for her birth/baptismal record see my Blog Post from 4/14/2019, "The Siblings of Anna Eva Heÿer (or How to Create Chaos in Your Family Tree)".
Briefly, Anna Eva Heÿer was my great-great-grandfather, Johann Tobias Rödiger's first wife, and mother of Anna Katharina Rödiger, who married Johann Friedrich Eichenauer, and who, together had 10 children, 5 of whom emigrated to Ohio. So. hopefully, this Blog Post would be of interest to all Eichenauer as well as Rödiger descendants in Ohio.

First, a big round of applause👏 for my German Research Geru, Regina Hiller, who told me that the church records for the tiny village of Kalkobes were hidden in the Bad Hersfeld Church Records. Regina, you have my undying gratitude. It could have taken years to learn that on my own.

As a result, I have found Anna Eva's birth/baptism record as well as that of 3 more of Anna Eva's siblings that were previously unknown to me.

Here is the digital image of Anna Eva's birth/baptism. The header on the page makes it clear that this record pertains to May of 1789:

Kalkobes No. -- Anna Eva, des Nicolaus Heÿer, Gerichtshof, und Anna Catharina eine geborene Lehn, gebürtig aus Reilos, ? Töchterlein ist geboren 28ten Morgens zwischen 8 und 9 Uhr; Getauft 31ten
die Gottel ist gewesen des Schneidermeister Justus Seelig, deßen Ehefrau Namens Anna Eva
(Kalkobes -- Anna Eva, daughter of the "judge", Nicolaus Heÿer and his wife, Anna Catharina Lehn (born in Reilos), was born on the 28th between 8 and 9 am and baptized on the 31st.
The baptismal sponsor was Anna Eva, wife of the master tailor, Justus Seelig

The information provided in this record confirms much of what was already known. But from this record we also learn the time of her birth, the date of her baptism and whom she was named after. Plus, it confirms, that her husband, Johann Tobias Rödiger, had the correct date when he provided the information for her death record.

As I stated earlier, in the process of looking for Anna Eva's birth/baptism record, I discovered 3 more of her older siblings. These were Johannes, born in 1767; Anna Gela, born in 1769 and Simon, born in 1771. Of the ten children, I have now found all of the baptismal records except for that of Anna Katharina. I only know of her existence because she was named as the Gottel (baptismal sponsor) of Anna Eva's daughter, Anna Katharina (mentioned in the opening paragraph of this blog as the wife of Johann Friedrich Eichenauer). So, my family tree, showing the children of Nicolaus Heÿer and Anna Catharina Lehn, including Anna Eva and the three newly discovered children looks like this:

For those who are updating their own family trees based on info in my Blog, I will provide the baptism dates because they do not show up on this illustration:
Johannes, 7/15/1767
Anna Gela, 4/2/1769
Simon, 5/20/1771
Anna Martha Elisabeth, 3/31/1776
Johann Conrad, 8/30/1778
Catharina Elisabeth (1), 12/31/1780
Catharina Elisabeth (2), 7/7/1783
Dietrich, 1/1/1786
Anna Eva, 5/31/1789

All were born in Kalkobes and either baptized there or in Bad Hersfeld.
For a description of the location of Kalkobes, see my Blog Post from 4/14/2019, "The Siblings of Anna Eva Heÿer (or How to Create Chaos in Your Family Tree)".

The hunt continues for Anna Katharina's baptismal record, and for all of her sibling's marriage and death records.

Stephen Roediger