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Posts Tagged ‘Alsace history’

My 4x Great-Grandfather, the Mayor

Posted in Alsace history, Family History, France history, Genealogy, tagged , , , , , on October 30, 2023| 32 Comments »

It has been quite some time since I have posted family history on this blog. I am now going to switch (for now) to my paternal family. My dad ended up living most of his adult life in Kalamazoo, but he originally came from Chicago. This history goes back even farther, though, and this is his father’s ancestry in the Alsace region of France.

My 4x great-grandparents, Johannes/Jean Scholler and his wife, Anna Maria Gröll, lived in Alsace in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The French Revolution occurred during this period: May 5, 1789 – November 9, 1799.  The Republican Calendar years were 1793 (adopted by France)-1806 (abolished by Napoleon).

Johannes was born in 1761 in Muespach-le-Haut, Haut-Rhin, France to parents Johannes Scholler and Anna Maria Stubenhoffen. Muespach-le-Haut is also known as Obermuespach. Haut-Rhin means upper Rhine, and is one of two departments that made up Alsace. The other was Bas-Rhin, meaning lower Rhine.

Johannes died 7 March 1814 in the same town. He was 53 years old and was mayor of Muespach-le-Haut and had been for several years. Before that, he was a farmer, and I assume he continued to farm throughout his life. Most of the people living in the region were farmers. Some were sheepherders.

Anna Maria was born 13 January 1759 in Moyen-Muespach, Haut-Rhin, France, to parents Heinrich Groll and Margaretha Hemerlin. She passed away in Muespach-le-Haut in 1806, eight years before her husband. She was 47 years old.

Notice that Johannes and Anna Maria were born in two different villages. However, they are two of the three villages that were adjacent to each other. They shared a church. The villages are Johannes’ Muespach-le-Haut, Anna Maria’s, Moyen Muespach, and Muespach-le-Bas.  My genealogist told me: “All three Muespach villages lie in the Haut Rhin (Upper Rhine) half of Alsace and are very close to the Swiss border. In fact, Muespach-le-Haut is just over 11 miles from Basel, Switzerland. The Haut and Bas terms refer to the upper and lower limits of the Muespach creek in the French language and do not have any correlation to the names of Haut Rhin (Upper Rhine) or Bas Rhin (Lower Rhine) of the two halves of Alsace. Here is a Google map that may help:  Muespach – Google Maps.”

The reason the town and the first name of my 4x great-grandfather vary is because Alsatians spoke Alsatian more than they did French. According to Babbel, “Alsatian is not a linguistic dialect group in and of itself, but rather a collective geographical term for the Upper German vernaculars that are spoken in the Alsace region.” I asked my genealogist about the language. He said, they probably did speak an Alsatian German dialect. It is still spoken in parts of Alsace today and called Alemmanic German. 

I am using the German first names because it’s possible they used those themselves, but the French place names because Alsace was (and is again) part of France. In the official records, sometimes names of people and places are in French, and sometimes they are in German, and Catholic parish records were written in Latin until 1793. At that point, they switched over to civil records, which were in much less detail.

Johannes and Anna Maria were married in Moyen Muespach Catholic parish on 22 January 1781. They probably had at least eleven children. These are the known children:

Johannes 22 October 1781; died 7 November 1781. INFANT DEATH

Blasius or Blaise 8 February 1783; He did live to be an adult, marry, and have children. He also was conscripted into Napoleon’s army with the 61st Line Infantry Regiment. (see document below)

Maria Anna 23 April 1785; She died on 7 January 1787. INFANT DEATH

Catharina 21 October 1786; Probably lived into adulthood.

Antonius 13 June 1789; He died 19 January 1791. INFANT DEATH. Father farmer.

Frantz Xavier 25 October 1791; Lived to adulthood. Father farmer.

Mariana ca. May 1793; She died 6 November 1793. INFANT DEATH

Johannes 5 September 1794, my 3rd great-grandfather; Married Anna Maria Watter on 3 April 1816, after both his parents were gone. After Anna Maria died, he married her sister Maria Anna Agnes Watter. He died on 6 March 1875 in Muespach-le-Haut, having survived two wives.

Gap time was difficult to read in civil records, so it is unknown if children were born in the gap period.

Anna Maria 8 June 1798; she may not have survived—unknown.

Maria Anna 17 January 1800; no information on her past this birth.

Francica 17 July 1804; no other information.

Since Anna Maria passed away in 1806, it is possible that she gave birth that year, as well, but there are no records found at this point to indicate a birth that year.

At the time that Johannes passed away in 1814, he was the mayor of Muespach-le-Haut and had been for several years.

Here is the conscription record for Blaise Scholler:

Records indicate that the parish priest was in exile in Switzerland in 1797. Johannes Scholler and another village resident visited the priest who was trying to keep tabs on his parishioners. Many priests during this period did leave France so that they would not have to swear allegiance to the new French Civil Constitution of the Clergy. I can only imagine that this was a very difficult time to be mayor of the village.

This photo is of beautiful Muespach-le-Haut where Johannes farmed and was mayor.

I think my father would have loved reading this post, and I wish I had had this information for him before he passed.

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Still More Deaths in the Family: Women’s History Edition

Posted in Family History, France history, Genealogy, Germany history, Klein, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 29, 2018| 23 Comments »

In two previous posts I have published the death certificates of my 2 grandmothers, 4 great-grandmothers, and 4 of my 8 great-great-grandmothers. The 4 I did not have included two from Budesheim, Germany, and two from Alsace, which are now French records.

Thanks to Cathy Meder-Dempsey who writes the blog Opening Doors in Brick Walls I now have the death certificates of the two Alsatian great-greats.

When you enter the French archives you apparently have to agree not to publish the results online. I only know that because Cathy pointed it out to me. So I will post links and translations instead.

Madeline Groll was born 24 May 1816 in Muespach, Haut-Rhin, Alsace. But was that France or Germany in 1816?

If you don’t know this, Alsace has been a pawn between France and Germany for a long time. According to Wikipedia here is a more “recent” timeline of who controlled Alsace when. The languages spoken are in the far right column.

1618–1674 Louis XIII annexes portions of Alsace during the Thirty Years’ War Holy Roman Empire German; Alamannic and Franconian dialects (Alsatian)
1674–1871 Louis XIV annexes the rest of Alsace during the Franco-Dutch War, establishing full French sovereignty over the region Kingdom of France French
(Alsatian and German tolerated)[citation needed]
1871–1918 Franco-Prussian War causes French cession of Alsace to German Empire German Empire German; Alsatian, French
1919–1940 Treaty of Versailles causes German cession of Alsace to France France French; Alsatian, French, German
1940–1944 Nazi Germany conquers Alsace, establishing Gau Baden-Elsaß Nazi Germany German; Alsatian, French, German
1945–present French control France French; French and Alsatian German (declining minority language)

According to this table, 1816 found Alsace part of France, but Wikipedia gives more specific information for that time period:

In response to the “hundred day” restoration of Napoleon I of France in 1815, Alsace along with other frontier provinces of France was occupied by foreign forces from 1815 to 1818, including over 280,000 soldiers and 90,000 horses in Bas-Rhin alone. This had grave effects on trade and the economy of the region since former overland trade routes were switched to newly opened Mediterranean and Atlantic seaports.

Madeline passed away on 31 July 1847 in the same town at the age of 31. Although I have not done much research at this point on her life, she had at least one child before she died–my great-grandfather.

This appears to be a gorgeous old primary school in Muespach.

Here is the link to her death record:

MADELINE GROLL DEATH RECORD

According to Cathy, the death record “starts out with the date and mayor, followed by the names of the two persons who are the informants. Lists her parents, father deceased and mother still living, and her husband. Place of death. Followed by fact that the first informant was her husband and the second her brother. It is in French.”

Madeline’s father was Ignac Groll, deceased. Her mother was Margarithe Simon, and she was still alive. What is odd is that the date I show for Ignac’s death (possibly given to me by a genealogist years ago) is 29 July 1815, which is more than nine months before Madeline’s birth in May 1816! Maybe an error on Ignac’s death date. She was married to Antoine Scholler. I show his death date was 1839, so if he was an informant about her death in 1847, again, the male’s death date is wrong. I can see what I am going to be researching when the women are done!

My other 2x great-grandmother from Alsace was Anne Riehr (sometimes Reihr), born about 1816 in Luemschwiller, Haut-Rhin, Alsace. Although born in Luemschwiller, she married a man from Steinbrunn-le-Bas, Haut Rhin, Alsace, and had her children there.  The above photo is from Wikipedia of the town hall at Steinbrunn-le-bas. MAIRIE means TOWN HALL in French. I wish I knew when the building was constructed.

Here is the link to Anne’s death record (it actually begins at the bottom of the page before this):

ANNE RIEHR DEATH RECORD

And here is the translation from Cathy of that record:

Here is the 1866 death record and translation. The record begins on the bottom of the previous page. In the margin of the record is No. 3 Riehr Anne died the 19 January.

In the year 1866, the 19 January at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, in front of us Grienenberger Nicolas, mayor, officer of the (état civil) civil records of the commune (Niedersteinbrunn) Steinbrunn le Bas canton of Landser, arrondissement of Mulhouse in the department of Haut Rhin appeared Schirmer Antoine, farmer, age 53 years, husband of the deceased, and Betterlin Antoine, farmer, age 46 years, neighbor of the deceased, the two are residents in this commune, have declared that today at 10 o’clock in the morning, has died in this commune, Anne Riehr, without a profession, aged 50 years, native of Luemschwiller resident in the present commune, wife of the first registrant and daughter of Jean Thiebaut Riehr, farmer, age 84 years, resident of Luemschwiller et his wife Françoise Sutter, deceased in Luemschwiller. After being transported to the deceased to assure us of her death, we drew up the present record that the registrants signed with us after the reading and interpretation.

Anne was 50 years old when she passed away.

Now that Cathy has given me a tutorial on working with French records I will work my way through the other records in the lives of these women, their husbands, parents, and children. But don’t hold your breath. I find the handwriting coupled with the French very daunting.

What I do love about European records like the French and Dutch is that they are very thorough, and the records are very accessible online. Also, the fact that the women are recorded under their maiden names feels like a miracle in comparison with searching for American women through their married names.

Now for the German 2x greats. Yikes. They might have to be searched through the on site (as opposed to online) church records. Heaven help me. I don’t foresee a trip to Budesheim, Germany, in my near future. Any ideas?

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