a village called Weiler

The German word "Weiler" means small village (or hamlet) and is often included in the names of villages such as Adamsweiler, Annweiler, Belgweiler, Birkweiler, Eckweiler, Nickweiler, Ohlweiler, Rießweiler, Sensweiler, etc. - all these place names actually occur in my family tree.

There are also quite a few villages just called Weiler. One of those is on the river Nahe, downstream from Kirn, between Martinstein and Monzingen, and on the opposite bank to Merxheim. It used to be one of the places that I knew nothing about even though they pop up several times in my family history. A helpful reader of my blog who has an ancestor from Weiler pointed out to me that it is missing in my list of places. Here I am compiling all references to Weiler, so I have something to link to when I add it to the list.

So far, I have no known direct ancestors with biographical dates located at Weiler, but I have found three instances concerning siblings of my direct ancestors, one more remote link, and one relating to the Fuchs family tree which I researched for somebody else.

The historic Sponheim vineyard at Weiler.
Source: Wikimedia, photo by giggel.

In 1749, Anna Maria Ebner, daughter of the vicar of Alterkülz Philipp Nikolaus Ebner, married Carl Morlang from Weiler and had four children with him. The family settled at Pfalzdorf in the Lower Rhine area, together with a whole group of would-be migrants who had wanted to go to America via Rotterdam but only got that far as the Netherlands refused to let them pass. Carl Morlang's father came from Dhronecken (Hunsrück), but his mother, Anna Sophie Cullmann was a Weiler native.

In 1758, Marianne (Maria Anna Dorothea) Weiß, daughter of the vicar of Eckweiler, married Johann Georg Orth from Weiler near Martinstein, on the river Nahe. He is number IX-59 in the Orth genealogy. This means that he is a 3xgreat-grandson of Baltahasar Orth, the second protestant vicar of Kirn, and the nameline goes via Jakob junior, born at Kirn, then Hans born at Merxheim, and another three generations born at Weiler. There are dozens of Orth people listed in the residents book. Note that Marianne Weiss and Johann Georg Orth, although both related to me, were not related to each other as far as we know. (Their lineages in my family tree only meet in the next generation, when the mayor of Pferdsfeld Johann Gottlieb Weiss marries Anna Katharina Andrae from Gebroth, who has Orth ancestry.) They have six children and 17 grandchildren according to the Orth page. Note also that our Weiss Chronicles state that Marianne's husband was called Philipp Orth, but I tend to trust the modern research over our cherished old document in this case. Johann Georg in the Orth genealogy did have a younger brother called Philipp, so it isn't completely ruled out that she could have married one after the other.

One generation further down in the Weiß chronicles we have Johann Philipp Weiß,the firstborn son of the mayor of Pferdsfeld Johann Gottlieb Weiß and Anna Katharina Andrae from Gebroth. He became a teacher at Weiler and married Anna Margaretha Kaiser from Merxheim (on the opposite side of the river Nahe). I still need to find out whether she was related to our Caesar / Kaiser ancestors.

These three siblings of ancestors moving to Weiler are all linked to the lineage described in the Weiß Chronicles. More surprisingly, they are all closely connected to one person, Katharina Elisabeth Ebner (1712-1750), who married the vicar Johannes Weiß, in a kind of matrilinear way (Katharina Elisabeth is also at the centre of my matriline of Lutheran vicar's families!). They are, respectively, Katharina Elisabeth's sister, daughter, and grandson. When this penny dropped late at night, I had visions of Katharina Elisabeth conspiring with her sister to arrange the marriages of her daughter and her grandson, but sadly she didn't live long enough to do this. And Anna Maria migrated to the Lower Rhine anyways, so the accumulation of Weiler links may in fact be a coincidence. Also, it's not that far from Eckweiler and Pferdsfeld to Weiler and Merxheim, maybe around 10 km for the shortest link (Pferdsfeld to Weiler) and no more than 15 km for the longest (Eckweiler to Merxheim).

Separately, one of the vicars of Eckweiler (1674-1690), an ancestor in the Fuchs family tree, Johann Justus Leyendecker. Born ca. 1642 in Trarbach, he was the vicar of Eckweiler 1674-1690, was then moved to the parish of Weiler, where he died 28.11.1699, aged 57. (The regionally common name Leyendecker describes a roofer specialising in slate roofs.)

 

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There is a book of residents of Weiler (1667-1900) available online here. I'm struggling to get much info out of it because by the time I've located the page I want the site starts blocking me for making too many requests. It also contains a short history of the village, which appears to have been the source for the slightly shorter history here.

The village which today has around 450 residents is a prime location for wine growers in the Nahe region, which explains that all three feudal authorities that ruled the Sponheim territories over the years have set up a vineyard here. There is the Badische Weingut, the Sponheimer, and the Schmidtburger one. The brief history of the village here (and in the residents book) notes that the wine growing tradition may go back to Roman times as some Roman artifacts were found in the ground. This lovely video from the regional TV channel SWR presents the current family businesses residing in the three feudal vineyards.

Note also that it is close to the upper end of the Nahe wine region, travel further up to Kirn you'll find hops and the brewery.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

the Metzlers of Trarbach

I am reaching the point where practically everybody in the ancestry of our teacher Johann Gottlieb Weiß is a clergyman or a close relative of one - see the list of entries at the bottom. Multiple lineages are leading back to the beginnings of the Reformation being introduced (in the Upper County of Sponheim that happened in 1557). Just a couple of the people born substantially later still haven't got their Lutheran credentials confirmed. The most recent of these orphans is Maria Magdalena Metzler in Gebroth. (Metzler is a name referring to the profession of the butcher, related to the current word Metzger and terms like Gemetzel.)

Unfortunately, the church records of Gebroth covering the time of her birth are lost, so we don't know anything about her parents. The names we have are guesswork of a professional genealogist who looked at the network of godparents mentioned in other parishes. However there is a vicar of Alterkülz called Johann Peter Metzler who could be her grandfather, just judging by his age. So let's have a potted biography:

A sign of the butchers' guild, from an old chest, displayed at the "Schlaghaus" museum in Büdingen.
Source: Sven Teschke - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1356868

 

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Johann Peter Metzler

He was born in Trarbach (He could plausibly be identical with this Johannes Petrus Metzler born in Trarbach 31.1.1641 whose entries comes with several generations of ancestors but no further info about JP himself or any descendants.)

He was a student at Gießen in 1663.

He served as a Kaplan in Winningen 1670-1701 (Monatsberichte 1909 page 240, 263).

On 21.5.1678, his son Georg David Metzler was baptised in Winningen (familysearch, no further details).

On 18.10. 1695 he married Anna Lucia (elsewhere the more likely reading: Luisa) Siegbert in Winningen according to familysearch, no children listed there.

From 1702 until his death vicar of Alterkülz

Died before 12.11.1709, when his son Georg Ludwig Metzler, merchant in Ems, married Maria Charlotta Josepha Dörbeck at Ems (the spa town on the river Lahn now known as Bad Ems).

 

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Going further back, it is intriguing to see that the vicar of Alterkülz Johann Peter Metzler was born in Trarbach, as the Metzler family there is often mentioned in Schütz' book Trarbach in Alter Zeit. Specifically:

When Trarbach became Lutheran in 1557, the only known example of a citizen who opted to leave rather than change his faith was Caspar Metzler, who moved to Koblenz. Schütz notes at this point that the rest of the Metzler family stayed and their name line descendants became rather prominent members of the town community over the next few centuries.

In 1580-1583, Johann Metzler was the mayor of the town.

As the divide between protestant confessions deepened, Hans Peter Metzler was mentioned in 1614 as a citizen suspected of Calvinist tendencies.

In August 1635, the Gerichtsschreiber (court secretary) Hans Stephan Metzler died of the plague. The same year, Johann Daniel Metzler served as Mompar, an honorary role in the administration that changes annually.

Philipp Daniel Metzler serves as Kellner 1649 until around 1660. He could be this Gedbas entry (with children and no parents) see also here (just one child and less info).

Alternatively, it could be this Philip Daniel Metzler from familysearch (1610-1688) who married Catharina Hautt and had a brother called Johann Peter Metzler born 1612. Their son Johannes Petrus Metzler born Trarbach 1641 would be the right age to be our priest above, but no further info is given about him. The name line of these Metzlers in family search goes back to a Dietrich Metzler born 1420. Irritatingly, the website always gives Traben-Trarbach as the birth location, but based on their frequent appearances in Schuetz's book I'm guessing they were all born in Trarbach.

 

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Summing up this unexpected outbreak of Lutheran clergy, I have now published CVs of 10 clergymen who were proven or probable ancestors of our teacher Christian Gottlieb Weiß and one whose connection is a bit more speculative but plausible. Note that they are all tagged "Eckweiler" because this whole journey of discovery started from the vicar of that village (now extinct) and the Weiss chronicles written there by his great-grandson in 1891.

I'll list the 11 clergymen here alphabetically, but will round them up more systematically in a separate blog post.

Johannes Andreae (1532-1613), vicar of Altenkirchen and Kastellaun, fierce anti-Calvinist. (He's the one with a more speculative connection to Nicolaus Andreae, below.)

Nicolaus Andreae (died before 1643), vicar of Gebroth since 1632, likely ancestor of all Andrae people in Gebroth. He came to Kastellaun as a young schoolmaster in the same year as Johannes Andreae, above, became the vicar, but were they related?

Johann Conrad Arnoldi I, vicar of Traben from 1670 until his death in 1711. Not to be confused with his eponymous, more famous nephew.

Johannes Keyser / Caesar (died 1543), theologian at the time of the Reformation, served first as a Catholic then as a Lutheran priest in Harburg and Nördlingen.

Sixtus Caesar, clergyman in Thuringia, father of Konstantin Caesar.

Valentin Konstantin Caesar, vicar of Sien, Enkirch and Dill.

Johann Conon, Diakon at Trarbach, court preacher and church inspector at Birkenfeld.

Philipp Nicolaus Ebner, teacher at the Lateinschule in Trarbach and vicar of Alterkülz.

Georg Christian Nesselius, Diakon at Birkenfeld 1603-1616, later vicar of Winterburg.

Johann Balthasar Orth, second Lutheran vicar of Kirn, successor to Peter Siegel.

Johannes Weiß (1704-1772) - the vicar of Eckweiler (see generation 9 in the Weiss chronicles).

Another two Andreae vicars, Johannes Andreae's father and his son Emmerich Andreae, might be ancestors but we know nothing more about them, so no material for a biography. Johannes's father (also called Johannes) is interesting because he was active at the time of the Reformation and likely implemented the Lutheran creed in his parish of Schönbach, which became protestant in 1536. More speculatively still, Johannes junior had a son who was also a priest. If he turns out to be the missing link from Johannes junior to Nicolaus, we end up with a total of four Andreae vicars in a line.

Elsewhere in the family tree, we have (back on firmer ground with some evidence):

Peter Siegel (1485-1560), first Lutheran vicar of Kirn (Wikipedia.de).

Adam Getrost, vicar of Rimbach in the Odenwald and ancestor of a long line of teachers in the neighbouring village of Zotzenheim.

which brings the total to 15. If we find a reasonable excuse to adopt Johann Peter Metzler, above, he will be the 16th.

Note that three of them (Peter Siegel, Johannes Andreae and Johannes Keyser / Caesar) were the first protestant priests in their respective parishes.

Protestants priests who were brothers of direct ancestors include:

Caesar - lots of them, as five of the six brothers of Sixtus Caesar became clergymen. The odd one out was a school teacher. And all three sisters married clergymen too.

Jacob Orth, son of Johann Balthasar Orth, above, and also a vicar of Kirn.

Hans Konrad Roos, the vicar of Gebroth from 1693 until his death in 1711, was the brother of Maria Ottilia von der Rosen. Technically half-brother, but their mothers were sisters, so they still share the same set of grandparents. The maternal grandfather was the vicar Georg Christian Nesselius.

cousins:

Martin Caesar, vicar of Traben. Cousin of Konstantin Caesar.

Further clergymen in the Hunsrück area are listed in this wiki.

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

the valiant vicar's deputy and successor

I was born in the small town of Kirn because my grandparents lived in a village nearby (after inheriting the house that Johanna built for her retirement) and for the first 40 years of my life I believed I was the first in the family to be born there - and even the first to have any life event there. Only after the arrival of online family history did we discover the cluster of craftsmen active in Kirn before 1700, and from these we built a slightly wobbly connection to the first Lutheran priest of the town Peter Siegel, who studied with Martin Luther and was a significant enough person in history for me to get him into Wikipedia.

The church at Kirn, where Peter Siegel was the first Lutheran priest, and Balthasar Orth his deputy and then his successor. Also, where Peter Siegel was buried in 1560, and where I was baptised four centuries later.
Source: Wikipedia / Von H. Helmlechner - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0

Now, as I've been digging around the Weiß Chronicles, I have discovered a new lineage also leading to Kirn (number 68 in the ancestry of Anna Katharina Andrae). Hilariously, it leads us to the second Lutheran vicar of the town, Balthasar Orth, who was Peter Siegel's deputy (Diakon) for a few years and then succeeded him after his death in 1560. One of Balthasar's sons took on the same job a few years after his father's death in 1569. So that's two holders of same job in the family tree and a third in the extended family. Oh and two direct ancestors working together, whose lineages only meet more than 300 years later (Imig and Kauer, so the children of the station master of Adamsweiler are the first people we know of who are descendants of both Siegel and Orth).

Reasons enough to draw up short biographies of Balthasar and son (also,I do love the name Balthasar, not sure why!).

 

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Johann Balthasar Orth

Johann Balthasar Orth was born in Bingen (where the river Nahe meets the Rhine) around 1526.

He is number IV-43 in this very amazing Orth family tree, which I suspect is so exceptionally well-researched in part because it feeds into the ancestry of Goethe in three different lineages. Apparently there are three different versions of just how exactly Johann Balthasar is related to the founding couple, so I won't commit to any of them.

Around 1555 he married a woman called Maria about whom we know absolutely nothing else.

He had nine children who survived into adulthood, listed here under V-24 to V-32. Confusingly, two of them are called Jakob (the elder and the younger). Jakob the elder, born at Kirn in 1550, studied in Strasbourg and Marburg and became the vicar of Kirn in 1577 (see his CV below).

Balthasar Orth became Kaplan (deputy to the vicar Peter Siegel) in 1555, and Siegel's successor in 1560. In the history of the church and parish of Kirn, Ulrich Hauth doesn't mention any noteworthy details of Orth's time as a vicar.

After only eight years as a vicar, he died at Kirn 5.1.1569, aged only around 43. I'm not sure how his widow managed with nine children, but they seem to have done quite well. The eight sons all rose to some sort of officialdom, but we don't know what became of the only daughter, Anna, who was mentioned at Kastellaun in 1590

The son who carried on the lineage relevant to my ancestry was V-30 Heinrich Orth, a court official (Amtmann) who married Katharina Caesar, also from a clergy family (see her ancestry here).

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Jakob Orth the elder

He was born in Kirn in 1550, studied in Strasbourg and Marburg, became the priest of the rulers of Kyrburg and Dhaun in 1577, then the superintendent of the Rheingrafen and their court preacher, and finally vicar of Kirn in 1577.

He was a co-author of the first Lutheran "Kirchenordnung" for the area, together with Albrecht von Hellbach. This rulebook specifying the details of a Christian lifestyle (with sanctions if you didn't go to church every Sunday or indulged in wicked pastimes like playing cards) had a troubled history and only got officially sanctioned, printed and distributed in 1690. There is an entire book about its history, by Hugo Fröhlich, see below.

He married Clara Horstmann at the Kyrburg (near Kirn) on 25.9.1578 then Katharina Engelhardt, born 1554 at Gießen.

The latter is believed to be the mother of his nine children VI-34 through to VI-42.

His daughter Anna Maria is one of three Orth women who got to marry the vicar and superintendent Johann Valentin Corvinus (see under VI-59). The other two were her cousin Amalia, widow of Nikolaus Andreae, and Amalia's sister Dorothea.

He stayed in office rather longer than his father, until his death in 1602.

Printed sources:

• Hauth, Ulrich: Nahe bei Gott und den Menschen: Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirchengemeinde Kirn an der Nahe.
• Fröhlich, Hugo, Die Geschichte der Kirchenordnung in der Wild- und Rheingrafschaft bis 1690.

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There is another cross-link with the Orth descendants further down the line: Marianne Weiß, daughter of the vicar of Eckweiler, married Philipp Orth from Weiler near Martinstein, on the river Nahe. He is number IX-59 in the Orth genealogy (he descends from Jakob junior). They have six children and 17 grandchildren according to that page.

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my name index for all things family history.

the Arnoldi clan

While I was working out some of the matrilinear connections in the network of the Upper Sponheim Lutheran clergy families, I discovered a new n-times great grandmother called Anna Dorothea Arnoldi who comes from a clan based at Traben that has produced at least ten protestant theologians in the County alone according to the list drawn up by Oskar Penningroth in Monatshefte 1933, p315. I think there are more especially among the more successful descendants who naturally moved away from the area in the pursuit of academic careers. And I haven't even looked at the daughters yet, I think there are a few matrilines to be drawn as well (Penningroth only listed the male line descendants, so only carriers of the family name Arnoldi).

According to Penningroth, the name originates with a weaver called Arnold who died before 1559, so we'll call him generation 1. Penningroth then skips three generations down, only revealing the names of his great-grandsons who wisely sent their sons to study theology at university.

Familysearch fills the gap to an extent, so we have in generation 2 another weaver called Arnold, who died after 1586.

In generation 3 we have Hans Mathies Arnoldi, who was a church master and church censor, so already involved with the church but not educated at University, hence not on Penningroth's radar. Hans Mathies married Magdalena of unknown origin and became the ancestor of lots of theologians through two of his sons:

4.1 Peter Arnoldi (by this time the father's name Arnolds has stabilised as a family name obviously used in the Latin version Arnoldi in church records). He married Margaretha Walrabs.

4.2 Theis Arnoldi born 1612 There's a suspicious gap in the birth years of the six children listed in familysearch, so he may be eg from a different mother. Penningroth says that he was a merchant and also a grandson of the weaver Arnold.

In generation 5 we have

5.1. Johann Justus Arnoldi, Rektor of the Lateinschule at Trarbach;

5.2. Johann Conrad Arnoldi, son of 4.1. Peter. Ancestor of our Weiss people, see his CV below;

5.3. Johannes Arnoldi, son of 4.2 Theis.

In generation 6 things start to escalate, as two sons of Johann Justus and three of Johann Conrad follow the call. In the same order as in Penningroth's list (4-8) we have

6.1. Johann Conrad Arnoldi II (1658-1735), son of 5.1. Johann Justus, was Rektor of the Lateinschule at Trarbach for 20 years and went on to have a spectacular academic career at Gießen after that, see his Wikipedia entry in German, from which I pinched the portrait below:

See also the much abbreviated CV I prepared below, based on this Wikipedia entry.

6.2. Johann Peter Arnoldi, son of 5.1. Johann Justus.

6.3. Johann Philipp Arnoldi, son of 5.2. Johann Conrad I.

6.4. Georg Daniel Arnoldi, son of 5.2. Johann Conrad I.

6.5. Johann Friedrich Arnoldi, son of 5.2. Johann Conrad I. These three are brothers to our ancestor Anna Dorothea Arnoldi and thus uncles to Dorothea Elisabetha Hammes who went on to marry Philipp Nicolaus Ebner (the younger of our two teachers at the Lateinschule Trarbach).

In Generation 7 - as 6.1 Johann Conrad II is now a famous professor at Gießen, his children are leaving the little towns of Traben and Trarbach behind and are moving outside the remit of Penningroth's research. Although he does mention

7.1. Theodor Elias Arnoldi, vicar of Odernheim. Wikipedia is more interested in his brother

7.2. Ernst Christoph Arnoldi (1696-1744), a law professor at Gießen.

His son 8.1. Johann Ludwig Ferdinand Arnoldi (1737-1783) studied theology but ended up becoming a pioneering special needs teacher (compare and contrast with Friedrich Kauer born a century later - both are related to my great-grandmother Helene Kauer).

Meanwhile the lineage of local clergymen staying within the confines of the Upper County of Sponheim continues thanks to 6.5. Johann Friedrich Arnoldi, whose eponymous son

7.3. Johann Friedrich Arnoldi II became the vicar of Goedenroth and was helped there by his son and Adjunctus

8.2. Johann Karl Arnoldi who became the vicar of Nohfelden and later in Brombach, where he retired in 1825.

 

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Biographies:

 

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Johann Conrad Arnoldi I

He was born in Traben and baptised there 24.8.1628. He is the son of Peter Arnoldi and Margaretha Walrabs. His older brother is Johann Justus Arnoldi, the Rektor of the Lateinschule Trarbach and father of the more famous Johann Conrad Arnoldi II.

Matriculated at the University of Strasbourg 25.2.1645.

From 1651 to 1654 he was the vicar of Bergen near Kirn.

From 1654 to 1670 he was Diakon at Enkirch.

From 1670 until his death (1711) he was the vicar of Traben

He married Anna Maria Kemmenah on 12.8.1651. They had ten children, including three sons who went on to become clergymen, see 6.3. - 6.5. above.

Their daughter Anna Dorothea, whose daughter Anna Dorothea Hammes went on to marry Johann Jacob Ebner, was born in 1656

Anna Maria Kemmenah died in September 1690 at age 58.

On 14.8.1691 Johann Conrad married Anna Margaretha Liernur, daughter of the vicar Johann Tilemann Liernur. She died December 1695 aged 58.

On 14.8.1696 he married Maria Margaretha Nees, widow of his colleague Johann Jeremias Honsdorf from Meckenbach.

Johann Conrad Arnoldi died in 1711 and was buried in Traben on the 13.6. of that year.

 

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Johann Conrad Arnoldi II

He was born 1.11.1658 at Trarbach as the son of the Rektor of the Lateinschule Trarbach, Johann Justus Arnoldi (1626-1692) and his wife Anna Dorothea Liernur (1636-1709).

After attending that school, he studied philosophy at the University of Gießen in 1577 and obtained the degree of magister in 1679. Then he studied theology and moved to the university of Strasbourg in 1680.

From 1683 onwards, he travelled widely to further his education and spent some time studying at the universities of Tübingen and Altdorf.

In February 1685 he followed in his father's footsteps and became the Rektor of the Lateinschule Trarbach. His tenure there is praised in Schütz's history of Trarbach. On 26.4.1693, he married Maria Magdalena Rodaug (born 1669), daughter of Johann Peter Rodaug who was the vicar and inspector of Trarbach (from 1678 until his death in 1699) and in this role also the supervisor of his school. They had six sons (including the two listed above) and five daughters.

In February 1708 he was made the Rektor of the Gymnasium at Darmstadt (a bigger town and thus a promotion). There he revised the Schulordnung (the rulebook for the school). From this point onwards he published numerous books on philosophy and theology.

In October 1716 he became a full professor (Ordinarius) for logic and metaphysics at Gießen, where he also completed his theology studies with a doctorate in 1719.

In 1725 he became librarian of the university library and also served as Rektor of the university.

In 1729 he became the fourth full professor of theology at this university and in 1733 a member of the Konsistorium.

He died on May 22nd at Gießen.

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

the women of the Reformation

We used to think it was a curious thing that the vicar of Eckweiler, Johannes Weiß, married the daughter of a colleague, but after looking around in the wider network of Lutheran clergymen in the Upper County of Sponheim (Hintere Grafschaft Sponheim, see the map here), I realised that it was definitely a pattern followed systematically. The County was a very small and fragmented Lutheran territory surrounded by Catholics and Calvinists, so it makes sense that the Lutheran priests formed a very tight network. In fact, one of Johannes's daughters married his successor in Eckweiler.

Katharina von Bora, who married reformator Martin Luther in 1525 and thus started the tradition of clergymen's families. Painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Source: Wikipedia.

So here I will look systematically at the matrilines, the mothers and daughters who lived in the Pfarrhaus (vicarage) over several generations. First, let's look at the lineage from the Weiß Chronicles again:

Dorothea Elisabetha Hammers married the Konrektor of the Lateinschule Trarbach, Philipp Nikolaus Ebner who in 1720 became the vicar of Alterkülz. Note that we knew nothing about her parents at the time I finished the first draft of this entry. Then I gave it another attempt to google a version of her name we don't normally use, Hammes, and actually found her parents in familysearch. More about them below.

Their daughter

Katharina Elisabeth Ebner married Johannes Weiß who later became the vicar of Eckweiler. Their daughter

Maria Elisabetha Weiß married Philipp Jakob Bauer, a parson at Enkirch, who later took over the parsonage of his father-in-law at Eckweiler. Unfortunately the lineage ends here. Two children died in infancy, no surviving children are known. Maria died in 1819.

But maybe we can extend the matriline upwards. We don't know the profession of her father but the mother of Dorothea Elisabeth Hammes turns out to be:

Anna Dorothea Arnoldi, born 1656 in Traben.

Now that is an exciting development because there's a whole load of priests and schoolteachers by the name of Arnoldi on the Upper Sponheim circuit around that time (There are ten listed with family connections in Monatshefte für Rheinische Kirchengeschichte 1933, p. 315). Strangely, familysearch doesn't give parents for Anna Dorothea Arnoldi, but Gedbas does name them as

Johann Conrad Arnoldi and Anna Maria Kimmnach, without revealing the father's profession.

The Wiki site with Hunsrueck parsons has this couple and reveals that Johann Conrad Arnoldi "was a parson in Bergen, Kirn, from 1651 to 1654. He then was a diacon and parson in Enkirch/Moselle from 1654 to 1670. From 1670 to 1711 he was a parson in Traben." The website references the Monatshefte 1933, where the wife is called Anna Maria Kemmenah (1632-1690). Her father was a merchant, so no luck carrying on in that direction.

Incidentally, Johann Justus Arnoldi, Rektor at the Trarbach Lateinschule in the 1650s, was his brother (and also a clergyman at times). His son, another Johann Conrad Arnoldi (1658-1735), was Rektor at the Lateinschule 1685-1708 and later became a professor of theology at the university of Gießen.

So we have a slight gap in the matriline (or a baton handed down from a vicar's daughter to a vicar's wife), but at least Dorothea Elisabeth Hammes's grandfather was a vicar (bringing the total to 15). She wouldn't have known her grandmother who died in 1690 after giving birth to ten children, but her grandfather's second wife, Anna Margaretha Liernur, also came from a family of protestant priests, and his third wife was the widow of a colleague. Oh, and one of the maternal uncles of Dorothea Elisabeth was also a priest. Even if her father wasn't one, we can accept that she knew what this whole Lutheran church thing was about before she married Philipp Nikolaus Ebner.

 

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A bit deeper down in the history of Trarbach, we also have

Anna Gräf (Croef) from the Trarbach area. Her brother Just was vicar of Sensweiler in 1578 (according to geneanet). This village was (just) outside Upper Sponheim, in the Wild- und Rheingrafschaft. It had introduced the Reformation in 1550, so there would be time for Anna and Just's father to be a clergyman as well, if only I can find him.

Around 1573 Anna married Johann Conon. Their children include:

Ursula Conon, who in 1602 married Georg Christmann Nesselius, who from 1600 to 1602 was the schoolmaster and Diakon at Birkenfeld serving under Conon, see his CV here. Their daughter

Elisabeth Nesselius married Johann Conrad von der Rosen, the son of the Strasbourg goldsmith. After Elisabeth died, he married her sister Ursula .

Elisabeth's daughter Maria Ottilia von der Rosen went on to marry Franz Nickel Andreae in Winterburg in 1654. He was not a clergyman himself but the son of the vicar of Gebroth, Nikolaus Andreae. Nikolaus may or may not descend from the line of three Lutheran priests I've described here. Franz Nickel's mother also had clergymen in her family, including both her grandfathers.

So I'm afraid we have a slight hiccup in the matriline here, but Ursula's son

Hans Conrad was the vicar of Gebroth from 1693 until his death in 1711. His nephew

Johann Friedrich Roos, born 1675, who became the vicar of Gebroth (perhaps as the direct successor of his uncle?) and stayed in the post until his death in 1737.

 

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Finally, some orphaned ancestors who may still turn out to be the daughters or granddaughters of clergymen.

Maria Magdalena Metzler, born 1711 (calculated), married Franz Nikolaus Andrae at Gebroth between 1733 and 1738. Seeing that he may well have ten or more clergymen among his direct ancestors, I think it would be plausible to think she may have some too, so I am looking for a connection to the Lutheran priest:

Johann Peter Metzler
born in Trarbach
student at Gießen 1663
Kaplan in Winningen 1670-1701 (Monatsberichte 1909 page 240, 263)
1702 until his death vicar of Alterkuelz
Died before 12.11.1709, when his son Georg Ludwig Metzler, merchant in Ems, married Maria Charlotta Josepha Dörbeck at Ems (the spa town on the river Lahn now known as Bad Ems).

A bit further back, the mother of our original clergyman Johannes Weiß at Eckweiler. His mother was Maria Elisabeth Straus * 14. 5.1681 Königsberg (Hessen) Incidentally there was a Lutheran theologian called Johann Michael Strauss at the time of the Reformation. Just saying.

Looking around for possible images to illustrate the Pfarrhaus families, I found out that there is a lot of literature on this sujet, actually. The Protestant clergy families are described and analysed as the seed of the Bildungsbürgertum (educated middle class), which arose in the 18th century to take up the growing number of opportunities in administration, education etc. Back in the century of the Reformation, there wasn't this diversity of education opportunities, so the families that found their way into the Pfarrhaus circuit tended to stay there.

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

a plucky little Lutheran town

Some things I learned from

Trarbach in alter Zeit
by Ernst Schütz
Traben-Trarbach 1909

In my recent investigations about the Ebner ancestors, and separately, the church inspector Johann Conon, I found valuable information in this history of the town of Trarbach, which is available online. As it doesn't have an index and I only discovered the search function belatedly, I read most of it to make sure I didn't miss any further clues to the lives of the people I was after. Although I moaned about the author's harsh treatment of Conon, the rest of the book turned out to be the fascinating story of a plucky little town full of Lutheran people surviving in extremely hard times, including the Thirty-Years' War as well as additional periods of occupation by hostile troups. The time frame is wisely chosen from the arrival of the Reformation in 1557 (which fuelled some of the subsequent wars) to the destruction of the Grevenburg in 1734, whose strategic importance had brought the town more grief than anything else in the previous centuries.

Trarbach - engraving by Bodenehr from 1704.
Source: Wikipedia

Funnily enough, the German Wikipedia entry of the town (now merged with Traben to form Traben-Trarbach) practically skips this part of its history, so I'll outline a chronology here with a special attention to the school where the Ebners taught for 45 years:

 

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Trarbach 1557 - 1734

1557 the Reformation started in the Upper County of Sponheim (German: Hintere Grafschaft Sponheim; see map below) by virtue of a letter from the Duke of Simmern-Palatinate-Sponheim to his Oberamtmann (chief of the administration) at Trarbach, demanding the introduction of protestant practices in the parishes of the county. This happened in accordance with the Augsburg Settlement of 1555 which decreed that the the rulers determine the religion of their subjects (Cuius regio eius religio). However, the Upper County of Sponheim happened to have two rulers of different faiths. Friedrich der Fromme had just inherited the dukedom on the 18th of May 1557. Not wasting any time, on the 16th of July he signed that letter to his administrator in Trarbach. It seems that the other (the Markgraf von Baden) wasn't given much time to protest before the letter went off, but didn't block the introduction of Lutheran practice when it happened.

The five green patches constitute the Upper County of Sponheim - how this splatter survived as a political unit jointly ruled by two different overlords for three centuries is completely beyond me.
Source: Wikipedia / By Lencer - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

The very Catholic holiday of Fronleichnam was celebrated at Trarbach for the last time in 1557, and Christmas of the same year saw the first Lutheran Abendmahl. In 1560, an official delegation visited all the parishes of the district to see whether the priests in place were able and willing to follow the new rules, and to replace them if they failed the test. The visitation protocols are extremely useful resources giving insights into the lives of people at the time of the Reformation.

In 1571, Heinrich Henning, the first Lutheran vicar of the town, suggested setting up a high school for the district. As it happens, the regional asylum for the paupers had just been moved to nearby Enkirch because unruly residents there might disturb services at the church next door. The building was adapted for use as the school (see photos here and here).

In 1574 The Lateinschule was founded with two classes then expanded to three with a total of 78 pupils: The Infima was an elementary school for boys and girls, the Secunda a highschool for boys only teaching Latin and a bit of Greek, and the Prima prepared pupils for university with more Latin and Greek along with philosophy. The school was financed in part from the income of nearby Wolf monastery and was free of charge for the pupils, although donations were encouraged. Three quarters of the pupils came from the town itself, which then had between 1,000 and 1,200 residents, the others from Traben, Enkirch, or further afield.

Meanwhile, there was trouble brewing at the church next door. In 1572 Johann Conon came to the town as the Diakon (assistant priest). By 1574, he has written a lengthy letter of complaint to the authorities about the Calvinist tendencies of vicar Henning, in joint enterprise with the Diakon of Enkirch who had similar concerns about the vicar there. Both vicars were summoned to court and found lacking in Lutheran purity, and thus dismissed. During the next Visitation, the people of Trarbach, who were fond of Henning, took their revenge on Conon and made multiple accusations against him. He was moved to become the vicar of the more remote town of Dill, but soon after moved on to the court at Birkenfeld where he became court priest and Inspector of the entire Oberamt, officially charged with sniffing out Calvinists everywhere. The widening rift between Lutherans and Calvinists was a big issue at that point. As Lower Sponheim was Calvinist, clergymen of that inclination could find jobs there, while places like Trarbach offered refuge to those evicted for being Lutheran.

From September 1576 and well into 1577 the plague hit the town.

In 1583 the plague returned.

In 1584, the Palatinate share of the rule over Upper County of Sponheim fell to the Duke Charles of Birkenfeld, as he came of age. This is significant for our Lutheran little town, as much of the rest of the Palatinate drifted towards the Calvinist creed and the divisions between both camps were deepening. He still had to contend with the Catholic co-rulers in Baden.

1589 Funding disputes led to the school being scaled down to an ordinary one-class town school, and the Rektor (head of school and teacher of the final class) being dismissed.

By 1591 the authorities agreed to reinstate the school in its old form and reinstall the old Rektor.

In 1597/98 the plague hit the town for the third time.

1618-1648 During the Thirty Years' War, the town changed hands several times. The Swedes finally arriving were seen as liberators as they were protestants like the townspeople.

On 1.1.1649 the Lateinschule relaunched with Nikolaus Klingler as Rektor, Markus Lehmann as Konrektor and Daniel Rima as the schoolmaster for the Infima.

In 1654, Johann Hofmann arrived at the school as the new Rektor. His memoir Trorbachische Ehre-Säul published in 1669 (after retiring in 1667) describes the lives of the people in the town in great detail, including for instance, how the local wine was produced, and what other professions were present. Coming from another wine-growing region (Baden), Hofmann was intrigued by the cultural differences he discovered when he arrived in the Mosel valley. In 1968 a facsimile edition of the book was published ahead of its 300th anniversary. You can read it online here. The glorious title of the book in full: "Trorbachische Ehren-Säul: oder geschichtliche Beschreibung förderst der Fürstl. Spanheymischen Ober-Amts-Statt Trorbach an der Mosel, theils auch anderer Ohrt in derselben Gegend, sonderlich des dahin verbürgerten Haupt-fleckens Traben".

In 1675, Johann Jacob Ebner arrived at the Lateinschule where he taught the younger pupils at first in his dual role as Kantor and Präzeptor. He became Konrektor in 1686.

In 1682, only a century after the Catholic parts of the world, the Upper County of Sponheim switched to the Gregorian calendar.

1683-1697 French occupation under the Reunions policy of Louis XIV. He instructed Vauban to build a massive fortress, Montroyal, on the other side of the river, overlooking Traben. It wasn't completely finished yet when the peace treaty of Rijswijk of 1697 required its destruction.

1685-1703 The tenure of Johann Conrad Arnoldi as Rektor gave the school some much-needed stability in turbulent times. Born at Trarbach, Arnoldi was the son of a previous Rektor and an alumnus of the school himself. He went on to become quite famous as a professor at Giessen and has a detailed Wikipedia entry.

In the war of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the French took the Grevenburg again, but were displaced in 1704 by Protestant troups from Hessen, who handed it over to a Dutch unit.

In 1708, Philipp Nikolaus Ebner took over the position of Konrektor at the Lateinschule as his father retired.

The peace treaty of 1714 had an unfortunate side effect for the people of Trarbach, as it gave the Archbishop Elector of Trier the right to station troops at Grevenburg. As the castle was damaged to the degree to make it practically uninhabitable, he forced the town to accommodate his soldiers. Again, the Lutheran town was under Catholic occupation and had to feed its enemies.

This state of affairs lasted beyond the departure of Philipp Nikolaus Ebner to the Hunsrück village of Alterkülz in 1720. I imagine that the situation did make the town a less attractive place to live, so the move to the vicarage of Alterkülz was likely welcome, and the retired Konrektor Johann Jakob Ebner came along too.

In 1734, during the war of the Polish Succession, the Grevenburg was besieged again and practically destroyed. It was never rebuilt and the town had a much happier and more peaceful life without any strategically important fortification in its vicinity.

 

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PS So my ancestors who left the town in 1720 would have had to wait just 14 years longer for the pain to end. Oh well. I am wondering whether to add Trarbach to the lostcities series. Maybe once I've visited it and identified a few more candidates for a third season.

the clan of the Roses

When I raved about the goldsmith at Strasbourg, Franz Bolion von der Rosen, I only briefly stopped for his son who moved to Winterburg in the Hunsrück for reasons unknown and left lots of descendants there. I won't go as far as listing them, but as I'm obsessing about Lutheran clergymen in my family tree at the moment, I will be exploring those lineages where I discovered some of them.

So starting from our immigrant from Strasbourg:

Johann Konrad von der Rosen, born Strasbourg 1599, came to Winterburg before 1627. Note that this was the time of the Thirty Years' War, so this may have been a life-saving rather than a career move. Winterburg was then the administrative centre (Amt) ruling over nearby villages such as Eckweiler and Gebroth, one of five or so districts in the tiny and fragmented microstate Hintere Grafschaft Sponheim (Upper County of Sponheim). It is situated by the Ellerbach creek, which also flows through Gebroth and joins the river Nahe at Kreuznach. He kept an inn at Winterburg and seems to have been successful in his business (as well as successfully surviving in dangerous times). He married four times (the most complete list of wives and children I found online is here).

Winterburg: The former town hall built on top of the ruins of the former castle. Now a hostel for school groups (Schullandheim Winterburg). Source: Wikipedia.

First time in 1627, the wife's name is unknown, and she appears to have died in giving birth to their son Hans Samson von der Rosen in December 1627. Conceivably, she could have been the daughter of the previous inn keepers?

Second time in August 1628, with Elisabeth Nesselius, importantly the daughter of the local vicar Georg Christian Nesselius (vicar of Winterburg until at least 1622 but not sure if he was still alive in 1628), and granddaughter of vicar and inspector Johann Conon (see their CVs here). Note also the amusing botanical combination of Nessel (nettle) and Rose in this marriage (and the next one). They had four children together, including my ancestor Maria Ottilia von der Rosen, who went on to marry Franz Nickel Andreae in Winterburg in 1654. He was not a clergyman himself but the son of the vicar of Gebroth Nikolaus Andreae. I'm assuming that all Andrae people in Gebroth descend from this couple, including the lineage leading to my ancestor Catharina Elisabeth Andrae, as listed here. So far I don't know what became of the other three children of this marriage, two girls and a boy.

Elisabeth Nesselius died in 1635.

By December of the same year, Johann Conrad had married Elisabeth's sister Ursula Nesselius, so we're looking at another wife from a Lutheran clergy family, and funnily enough, lots of priests pop up among their descendants - mostly under the name of Roos rather than von der Rosen. And two of them presided over the parish of Gebroth for decades, looking after the family events of their Andrae cousins. Sadly the church books documenting these proceedings are lost. I'm also not sure where their previous placements were.

It is already an achievement that Johann Conrad survived, found wives and raised all these kids with the Thirty Years' War raging and death and devastation all around them. The Amt (district) Winterburg was particularly hard hit, with several villages (Rehbach, Allenfeld, Daubach) remaining uninhabited for more than a decade after they were destroyed.

Hans Conrad Roos, the first one of the four sons we know from this third marriage, was born at Winterburg in 1641. He married Anna Christina Maul in 1664. Their daughter Philippine Roos married Johann Caspar Hargart in Winterburgh in 1700 and had at least six children.

Hans Conrad was the vicar of Gebroth from 1693 until his death in 1711.

The second son of the innkeeper's third marriage was Johann Paul Roos born 1644. He was a Gerichtsschöffe (juryman). He married Gertrud Schmidt in 1666 and they had 11 children including

Johann Friedrich Roos, born 1675, who became the vicar of Gebroth (perhaps as the direct successor of his uncle?) and stayed in the post until his death in 1737. I believe that previously he had held a position of Diakon in Winterburg since 1698, but that is from a mention of the surname only, so it may have been a different member of the Roos clan whose church career I haven't discovered yet.

Noteworthy is also Friedrich's younger brother Johann Burghard Roos, born 1686, who was a tax collector and the father of the court official Philipp Caspar Roos (1717-1805), who has a lengthy Wikipedia entry and an equally prominent son.

Friedrich's older brother, Johann Conrad Roos, born 1667, is the maternal grandfather of the poet Johann Nikolaus Götz (1721-1781) who, again, has lots of lutheran priests in his published family tree.

Friedrich married Maria Elisabeth Hargart (note there was another Roos-Hargart marriage above!) at Winterburg in 1700. They had eight children.

Their son Johann Adolph Roos, born in 1712 wanted to succeed his father in the position in Gebroth, but was rejected and had to take a position as Diakon in Traben instead. He married Justina Maria Kröber at Traben in 1740. She was the daughter of Johann Georg Kröber, the vicar of Bell from 1712 to 1743.

In the 19th century, Christian Roos, a descendant of the Winterburg Roos clan became the mayor of Krefeld, but I don't know where he should be attached.

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

sicut pater sic filius

(like father, like son)

Philipp Nicolaus Ebner (1682-1734), vicar of Alterkülz is one of the two clergymen in the family tree we knew about from the Weiß Chronicles. He was the father in law of the other one, namely Johannes Weiß, the vicar of Eckweiler. Earlier in his life, he was a teacher at the Lateinschule Trarbach (a secondary school teaching mostly Latin, preparing pupils for university), following in the footsteps of his father, Johann Jacob Ebner. The school had confirmed this, but we didn't know much more about the Trarbach times.

Recently, when I was looking for details concerning the difficulties that Johann Conon had in Trarbach (from the other side of the Weiß family tree, so not linked to the Ebners in his lifetime), I found the book Trarbach in alter Zeit by Ernst Schütz online, which dates from 1909. It contains a lot of information about the Lateinschule and provides enough material for biographies of Ebner father and son:

A German version is available on request - deutsche Fassung auf Anfrage.

 

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Johann Jacob Ebner

Johann Jacob Ebner came from Hungary - as the book states in agreement with the Weiß Chronicles. We don't know any specifics. Intriguingly, there is another Ebner family from the Black Forest, whose members emigrated to Hungary and came back a few generations later, but the timings don't match. (See eg this Joseph Ebner from Zechenwihl who emigrated to Hungary in 1767, long after our Ebners arrived from there.)

He arrived at the Lateinschule in 1675, where he taught the younger pupils (Infima, admitting boys and girls) at first in his dual role as Kantor and Präzeptor. At that time, Johann Thomas Hase was the Konrektor, which meant that he taught the middle section (Secunda) students, boys only from here onwards, who learned Latin and the basics of Greek, and Johann Tobias Germann was the Rektor teaching the Prima, preparing them for university. The whole school was under the supervision of the vicar of Trarbach in his role as the inspector of the Oberamt. From 1671-78 that role was held by Johann Heinrich Horb. He was replaced with Johann Peter Rodaug who served until his death in 1699.

Johann Jacob Ebner married a woman from Trarbach in December 1674 (the same year he started teaching at the Lateinschule), but we aren't told her name. In Gedbas she appears as Maria Brigitta, without a family name, calculated birth year 1646. Schütz notes, however, that among the ten godparents of his first child there are four members of the local nobility, adding that he appears to have been well connected. I might add that it could be a hint that she was from a well-connected local family?

Stop Press - familysearch names the wife as Brigitta Maria Christophor, baptised 21.12.1650, surprisingly in a Catholic church in Cologne (St. Paul which no longer exists). This entry reveals six children, three more than in Gedbas, namely:

Hetwig Magdalena Sophia Ebner 2.10. 1676– apparently the first child with the big baptism.
Christianus Ebner 1679–1679
Johann Andreas baptism 30. January 1680 Trarbach,
Philipp Nicolaus baptism 25. May 1682 Trarbach, see his CV below
Anna Elisabetha Ebner 1685–1749 She married Philipp Georg Hornmann in 1711.
Carl Ludwig baptism 18. January 1688 Trarbach, died 1692

Familysearch also provides names for her parents but not for his. The site suggests that Johann Jacob Ebner was born in Wurttemberg, which is rather vague and in conflict with the statements elsewhere that he was from Hungary. Maybe his parents were, and he was born en route to Trarbach. The site pins his birth to 30. July 1660 which can't be right as it would mean he started teaching and got married at age 14. A plausible interpretation would be a reading error with the real birth year being 1650, which would match the birth year of his wife too. However, the age noted with the record of his death would give us 1646 or late 1645.

Johann Jacob was promoted to Konrektor at the Lateinschule in 1686. Johann Conrad Arnoldi, the son of an earlier Rektor and himself an alumnus of the school had replaced Rektor Germann the year before and stayed on until 1708 (more about him below and in Wikipedia). Johann Friedrich Fritzsche became the new teacher for the Infima.

In 1693 his wife died. In 1695 he married the widow of the mayor Mülberger. Earlier in the book, the mayor is further identified as Johann Ruprecht Mülberger from Cronweißenburg (Wissembourg, Alsace), who came to the town after the war and became its first apothecary. In 1665, he married the daughter of the Kirchenzensor Meurer. From this incomplete info I could pin down Johann Jacob's second wife as:

Ursula Elisabeth Meurer, born 11.12.1646 Trarbach, died 9.10.1705 Trarbach. Her parents were both born in Trarbach, the origin of her grandparents aren't specified in the Gedbas entries. Note that her mother was born Haussmann. The Lateinschule had a schoolmaster by that name for many years until 1618. Her husband the apothecary Mülberger had been the mayor from 1673 until his death in 1692 at the age of 56.

After Ursula Elisabeth died in 1705, Johann Jacob felt his forces dwindle (although he was only 60) and relied on the help of his son Philipp Nicolaus (see below) who served as an adjunctus.

In 1708, Johann Jacob retired and Philipp Nicolaus took over his role, although some church records after that still call the father the Konrektor and the son the adjunctus.

When his son moved to Alterkülz, Johann Jacob may have gone along with him, as it was there that he died in October 1726 at the age of 80.

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Trarbach - The Lateinschule is the building to the left of the church. Source: Wikipedia. Von Rolf Kranz - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0

 

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Philipp Nicolaus Ebner,

He was born in 1682 in Trarbach.

In 1708, he officially took over his father's role as Konrektor at the Lateinschule. The same year, he married Dorothea Elisabetha Hammers in Traben, just across the river. As I only found out in the process of preparing this blog entry, Dorothea was the daughter of Christoph Hammes and Anna Dorothea Arnoldi. Her maternal grandfather, Johann Conrad Arnoldi was the vicar of Traben until his death in 1711, so he may have well held her wedding service. Oh, and his brother Johann Justus Arnoldi was the Rektor at the Lateinschule back in the 1650s. Johann Conrad Arnoldi II, the Rektor of the Lateinschule from 1685 until 1708, was Johann Justus Arnoldi's son and thus Anna Dorothea's first cousin. He became quite famous later as a professor at Giessen, see his Wikipedia entry.

Philipp Nicolaus and Dorothea Elisabetha had at least ten children, as I conclude from combining incomplete lists from Gedbas and from a Pfalzdorf researcher.

Gedbas lists six children born in Trarbach:
11. June 1709 Johann Conrad - died in October that year
16. September 1710 Johann Christoph - died February 1712
6. November 1712 Catharina Elisabetha
30. April 1715 Maria Margaretha
27. August 1717 Anna Maria
17. March 1720 Susanna Margaretha

In 1720, he became the vicar of Alterkülz, where he remained for the rest of his life. Times were particularly hard for the people of Trarbach around this time, as the latest peace settlement had assigned the strategically important castle Grevenburg just next door to the Archbishop Elector of Trier, who refused to pay for the repair of its unusable living quarters and instead ordered his garrison to be housed in the town. Thus the fiercely protestant little town was, for the third time in a century, under a hostile occupation lasting many years. This situation may have made the move to remote village of Alterkülz look attractive.

In Alterkülz, four more children were born. Two died in infancy, and of the other two we have no further information.

In 1732, the firstborn, Catharina Elisabeth married Johannes Weiß, who became the vicar of Eckweiler.

Philipp Nicolaus died in August 1734 in Alterkülz aged 53. In 1741, his widow married Johann Hasselbach (Familienbuch Kastellaun, he also appears in Gedbas with his previous wife)

In 1742, Maria Margaretha married Johann Matthias Krämer in Traben. The couple had six children according to GedBas.

In 1749, Anna Maria married Carl Morlang from Weiler and had four children with him. The family settled at Pfalzdorf in the Lower Rhine area, together with a whole group of would-be migrants who had wanted to go to America via Rotterdam but only got that far as the Netherlands refused to let them pass.

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Long story short, between them, Ebner father and/or son taught at the Lateinschule for a continuous period of 45 years.

 

And I just found out that the building of the Lateinschule now serves as a hostel for pilgrims, I think I will have to make a pilgrimage too! They do mention cyclists too, so I'll bring a bike.

A brief history of Trarbach and its Lateinschule will follow in two weeks time.

PS A glimpse of my own experience of learning and teaching Latin is in the first paragraph of this book review.

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

meet Conon the contrarian

Among the inlaws of Conrad von der Rosen, who came from Strasbourg to settle in Winterburg in the Hunsrück area, we find the vicar and church inspector Johann Conon who gets a lot of praise in texts relating to the von der Rosen family history and also in the Monatshefte, but is vilified in a history of the town of Trarbach. So let's get to the bottom of that:

 

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Johann Conon

He was born around 1542 in Reichenbach (Vogtland). He studied theology in Rostock and Strasbourg, spent two years as an assistant priest in Mundolsheim, Alsace, then became the court priest of the Counts of Winneburg in Beilstein (Mosel).

From 1572 to 1575 he was the Diakon (assistant priest) of Trarbach, serving under the very popular priest Heinrich Henning who was the first protestant vicar of that town, which at the time had between 1000 and 1200 residents and was the adminstrative capital of the Hintere Grafschaft Sponheim (Upper County of Sponheim). The town was in principle Lutheran but it appears that some people including Henning had Calvinist inclinations. (Note that Calvinism wasn't recognised in the Augsburg settlement of 1555.) Diakon Conon together with an unnamed Diakon of neighbouring Enkirch wrote a letter of complaint about those Calvinist tendencies to the authorities in Zweibrücken, resulting in the removal of both Henning and the vicar of Enkirch, Heinrich Gallus in 1574.

Reporting the events in the book Trarbach in alter Zeit, dating from 1909, author Ernst Schütz creates the impression that Conon acted maliciously against a universally popular parish priest, which at the next "Visitation" from the authorities led to the good people of Trarbach denouncing Conon for all sorts of misdemeanors, such as playing cards and running up debts in the local inns. Apparently he was also fond of hunting and fishing, and a good businessman.

As a result of the "troubles in Trarbach" as other sources put it, Conon was moved to a smaller town, Dill, where he became vicar, so it isn't exactly a punishment as he moved to a higher rank in the clergy albeit in a smaller parish. He stayed there for a year, 1575-76.

As if to prove that the authorities were really on his side in the troubles he faced, he was then made the court preacher of Birkenfeld and inspector of the districts of Allenbach, Birkenfeld and Herrstein, a role which he fulfilled until 1602. Mentions of his name in the Monatshefte mostly refer to his official actions as an inspector, such as installing or removing clergymen in various positions around the area, or commenting on their merits, so he appears to have been carrying out his duties as he should. (Although I also recall seeing a statement from someone who was disappointed after following Conon's recruitment recommendation.)

Birkenfeld in an engraving after Merian. Source: Wikipedia

On 18.12.1600 he held the Leichenpredigt (funeral sermon, a tradition going back to Martin Luther) for Charles I, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld in Meisenheim, which has also been published in print. (The count's main claim to fame, I just learned, is that he is the ancestor of the future kings of Bavaria.)

Around 1573 he married Anna Gräf (Croef). Their children include:
Ursula, who in 1602 married Georg Christmann Nesselius, who from 1600 to 1602 was the schoolmaster and Diakon at Birkenfeld serving under Conon, see his CV below. Their daughter Elisabeth married Johann Conrad von der Rosen, the son of the Strasbourg goldsmith. After Elisabeth died, he married her sister Ursula (blog entry on their descendants coming soon).
Hans Konrad 1577, died the same year
Margaretha 1578 died 1579
Petrus 1579
Sara 1581
Johannes 1583 died 10.9.1602
Christina 1585
Karl 1587 died 12.8.1602
Dorothea 1588
Friedrich 1590

Update 10.4.2026: According to familysearch he died 12.8.1602 at Birkenfeld. The same dataset says his daughter Ursula married Georg Chr. Nesselius on the 15.8.1602, just three days later. Sounds very implausible to me. Gedbas says 12.7. (and still 15.8. for the wedding), that's a bit better. Note that among Conon's children, found on Geneanet, two teenage sons also died in the summer of 1602, Karl on the 12.8. (and his father the same day) and Johannes on 10.9. Three funerals and a wedding then.

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And while we're here, I'll add a short bio of his son-in-law, the priest Christian Nesselius, about whom we don't know quite as much. In fact, I have come across an amazing number of such cases where the clergyman's daughter marries another clergyman, often carried on across several generations, like we have in the Weiß Chronicles as well. One could describe this as matrilinear, as the daughter of the Pfarrersfrau (vicar's wife) becomes a Pfarrersfrau again. So in the Weiss Chronicles we have Elisabeth Hammers - Catharina Elisabeth Ebner - Maria Elisabetha Weiß. Which makes sense as this role came with a whole host of social obligations as well and the daughters could be trained for it from an early age. Church historians like Friedrich Back and O. Penningroth are good at pointing out these connections. Watch out for a separate entry on this phenomenon coming soon.

Anyhow, here comes Conon's daughter and her husband:

 

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Georg Christmann Nesselius

Born in Speyer

From 1600 to 1602 was the schoolmaster and Diakon at Birkenfeld serving under Conon.

in 1602 married Ursula Conon, daughter of Johann Conon, his boss.

Their daughter Elisabeth Nesselius was born 1606 Winningen

1603-1616 he was Diakon (assistant priest) in Winningen. In these years he had to temporarily take on the tasks of the vicar on two occasions when the position was vacant, but each time he failed to get promoted to get the job permanently.

From 1606 to 1607 he had was the acting vicar after Johannes Porta was dismissed. Petrus Merkator, the vicar of Gödenroth was then moved into the position. Merkator died of the plague (which had also killed four of his children within a fortnight) on 28.10.1611. Although the members of the parish supported Nesselius as the permanent replacement, Konrad Greulach was installed in the post in 1613.

Protests only subsided when Nesselius became vicar of Winterburg in 1614. Greulach also died of the plague, in 1623.

In 1628 Elisabeth Nesselius married Johann Conrad von der Rosen, the son of the Strasbourg goldsmith.

On 10.6.1633 he is no longer alive as his daughter Ursula marries Andreas Quinckh from Kreuznach.

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Long story short: Conon the contrarian becomes a respectable inspector and his daughter marries his deputy.

PS More treasures from the Trarbach book to follow next week. Oh, and a potted history of the town is also in the pipeline.

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

lives of the Caesars

updated 6.6.2026

Among all the Renaissance humanists and Reformation clerics who followed the fashion of translating their family names into Latin or Greek, some were luckier than others. I think the too blatantly obvious cases like Mercator or Piscator fell out of fashion pretty swiftly. Then there are the too difficult Greek names like Arthopoeus. I guess Caesar is a good middle way as it is memorable and not too trivial. There's also a justification in that the German word and name Kaiser is derived from Caesar, so rather than translating to a posh language, you could say they just reverted their name to its original version.

Anyhow, among the multiple clergymen that have popped up in the ancestry of Anna Katharina Andrae, there are also a few called Caesar, and I just can't resist the temptation to write their biographies under the title you see above.

Merian view of Nördlingen.
Source: Wikipedia Von Martin Zeiller - Scan eines Original Buchs, Gemeinfrei,

 

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Valentin Konstantin Caesar (No. 70 in Anna Katharina Andrae's family tree)

Born in Suhl, County Henneberg (today Thuringia)

1585 vicar of Sien (Kr. Birkenfeld)

1593-98 vicar of Enkirch (Monatshefte 1914, 321-355)

In 1597 he was reported to be not strong enough for this tiring position, so he moved to become:

1598-1600 vicar of Dill

Married Sara, no further details of her are known. Their only known child was Catharina Caesar, who married Heinrich Orth (* ca. 1561 at Kirn, + … 1612/15, Braunsberg, see V-30 in the Orth genealogy). He was Amtmann in Merxheim and the son of the second Lutheran vicar of Kirn, Johann Balthasar Orth (IV-43).

 

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Martin Caesar, the vicar of Traben (1585-98), was Konstantin's cousin, and came to Upper Sponheim because of this family relation. In the initial version of this blog entry I had a short bio based on Friedrich Back's piece about the parish of Traben 1560-1620 (Monatshefte 1917, 3-32), which sweeps most of Martin Caesar's trials and tribulations under the rug. After publication, Carl-Jürgen Caesar pointed me to the piece of H. Rodewald (Monatshefte 1921, 49ff) about Irmenach, where the whole sad story is spilt out in expansive detail. Which is somehow ironic, because virtually all of the trouble happened before Martin Caesar came to Irmenach. So here's now a somewhat longer biography based on Rodewald:

Martin Caesar junior

He was a son of Martin Caesar senior, vicar of Wasungen and brother of Sixtus, and thus a cousin of Konstantin. Note that the first name Martin could be read as a strong statement in support of the Lutheran creed.

Martin junior was immatriculated as a student in Wittenberg 14.5.1566. His first appointment was as a Diakon at Wasungen, working under his eponymous father from 1570 to 1572. In Wasungen he married a Margaretha from an unidentified family in early 1571 after his father, in his role as the church inspector, had agreed with her parents to dissolve her secret engagement to another man. It appears that Margaretha never forgave the Caesars and the couple lived unhappily for many years, moving to new places as and when the state of their marriage became too much of a scandal locally.

In 1572, Martin was promoted to become Archidiaconus at Suhl (County Henneberg, today’s Thuringia). Note that although his father had died in 1571, he was not promoted to inherit his position at Wasungen. Trying to run away from marital trouble, he moved to the Palatinate to become the vicar of Kriegsfeld in 1576. When that area switched to Calvinism, he moved to Finkenbach Bisterschied. When marital trouble became notorious again, he had to leave and found refuge with his cousin Konstantin Caesar who was then the vicar at Sien.

In 1586, he became the vicar of Traben, where he made the mistake of complaining to his superiors about the hardship of living without the support of his wife, who had by then gone her own ways. The superiors insisted he should try to take her back, which failed gloriously, while Martin tried to find solace with the wine of the Mosel region. After a few years and several attempts at making peace organised by officials including the inspector Johannes Conon whom we met here, the matter escalated again and Martin was evicted in October 1593, finding refuge in the village of Franken in the Eifel mountains, where he held a small parish that was an unpopular post for being an isolated Lutheran enclave in a mostly Catholic area.

It appears that Margaretha must have died during that stay, as nothing more is heard from her and Caesar was called back to Upper Sponheim to become vicar of Irmenach in 1597. Clearly, the authorities that suffered years of trying to rein in his marital troubles wouldn’t have given him this position if Margaretha had still been alive.

In Irmenach, removed from the temptations of the Mosel wine and without his former nemesis Margaretha, he became a very popular vicar, as a visitation happening just days after his death testifies. The only trouble that still awaited him there was that his successor in Traben Wenzeslaus Fend, vicar from 1595-1598, spread rumours suggesting that Martin had an intimate relationship with his former maid (this is the only part of Martin's multiple and long-running troubles that is mentioned in Back's piece about Traben). Truth was that the maid did visit his household in Irmenach, where his daughter looked after him, repeatedly.

We don’t know for sure, but Rodewald speculates that he solved the problem by marrying the maid. The only evidence for this is that the attacks on his relations with her stopped, and that on his death on October 25, 1608, he left a widow whose name we don’t know.

 

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Sixtus Caesar (140.)
Sixtus Caesar, vicar of Demmingen and Salzungen, was Konstantin's father and Martin junior's uncle. (I originally referred to a text by O. Penningroth in Monatshefte which said "probably", but CJ Caesar has now confirmed this connection.) I found a Caesar family history where this Sixtus appears as many times great grand uncle, so I'll just translate their biography:

He was born ca. 1522
In 1537 he enrolled as student at Wittenberg.
In 1542 he graduated as a magister, then became parson at Wersternach. After the death of his father in 1543 he looks after his mother and younger siblings.

Further positions:
1543 parson at Finningen
1545/46 Planverweser (sounds like a planning admin role) in Löpsingen
Diakon in Nördlingen (that is the town that was famously built into the crater a meteorite left 15 million years ago, which kind of provided a degree of natural fortification)
1548 After the Augsburg Interim he moves to Thuringia
1549-1552 vicar at Salzungen
Also enrolles at the University of Jena since 1549.
1553/54 Lauffen (Neckar)
1554/55 Kürnbach then Finningen
1558 good report from a visitation at Finningen.
1561 Demmingen
1566 appointed to a positin at the palace of Count Wolfgang of Zweibrücken/Pfalz, possibly in parallel to the position at Demmingen.
1578 celebrates 18 years as vicar of Demmingen, aged 56
1584 presumed to have died as the position is filled anew.

 

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Johannes Keyser (280.)
(listed as father of Sixtus and earliest ancestor in this Caesar family tree). Also listed on Gedbas.

born around 1480 in Nördlingen.

He served first as a Catholic then as a Protestant priest in Harburg / Ries. Married Barbara NN. They had at least ten children.

From 1518 until 1525, he was a Frühmesser in Harburg (this is a very Catholic thing, with a foundation set up to fund a priest reading the mass before everybody else goes to work)

9.8.1524 Son David Caesar born at Harburg. For the other 9 children there are only estimated birth years (interestingly, one site claims that eight of them were born in 1524).

Of the seven sons, six became clergymen, and the odd one out was a school teacher. All three daughters married clergymen too.

1525-43 vicar in Harburg and Großsorheim, court preacher for the count Carl Wolfgang of Oettingen at Harburg.

In 1535 he was also listed as an assistant preacher (Diakon) in the town of in Nördlingen. This is the time when the somewhat controversial vicar Theobald Billicanus left Nördlingen - he had been the vicar there since 1522. Although initially regarded as a pioneer of protestantism in southern Germany, he became ambivalent about the Reformation, implementing some of its aspects but not others. In 1529, Billicanus even declared himself a Catholic in an attempt to gain a doctorate in theology from the University of Heidelberg. Swinging back to protestantism, he got married and asked Melanchthon for a doctorate from Wittenberg, which failed as well. Despite the understandable commotion about all this, the town of Nördlingen renewed his contract in 1532, but in 1535 he asked for his leave and went to Marburg. Thus, it will have been an interesting time for Johannes Caesar to get involved with the parish of Nördlingen.

From 1538 Johannes was Kapellan in the Frühmesshaus Großsorsheim.

He died in 1543.

 

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Long story short: A whole dynasty of Caesarean clergymen.

 

Unfortunately, not very much is known about the wives of those Caesars! However, in other parts of this network of clergymen I am currentlly unravelling the connections are very much matrilinear, will blog about those separately.

What I find absolutely mindboggling is the fact that this is the third lineage that leads us to a protestant priest of the first hour, taking office with the Reformation. Johannes Keyser joins Peter Siegel, the first vicar of Kirn, and Johannes Andreae of Schönbach (the elder). (Oh, and coming up, one Diakon who made himself very unpopular by triggering the removal of a first-hour Lutheran vicar for Calvinist tendencies.)

Overall, including the Andreae lineage and the Caesars as possible/plausible ancestors, I now have 14 clergymen in the family tree. Of those, 13 are (possible) ancestors of the five Kauer sisters. One (Peter Siegel) is from their mother's side, the remaining dozen connects via the people mentioned in the Weiß Chronicles, so they are all ancestors of the teacher Christoph Gottlieb Weiß, the father of their paternal grandmother. There may be a couple more hiding in the bushes. Plus quite a few more among the many-times-great uncles (such as David and Martin Caesar, above).

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.