The brilliant thing about clergymen showing up in the family history is that there are actual short biographies of these people online, eg in the very amazing Monatshefte für Rheinische Kirchengeschichte (cited below as Monatshefte). And the authors of these texts like to report family connections to other clergymen as well. So in my quest to find the ancestry of my vicar of Gebroth, Johann Nicolaus Andreae, I went through a lot of these issues, checked all mentions of the name Andreae, made a shortlist of candidates, and I think I found a plausible connection to an earlier Andreae clergyman. It will become clear from their biographies, so I'll write out Nicolaus's CV first and then that of his prospective grandfather (or possibly father if he had a much younger wife).
Nicolaus Andreae (1580s to 1640s)
He was born in Enkirch on the river Mosel (just downstream from the town of Trarbach, which will become relevant). He studied in Strasbourg and got married while he was there.
In 1607 he came to Kastellaun (Hunsrück) as a schoolmaster and Stipendiat (F. Back, Monatshefte 1911, 301-304). I guess that may have been like a practical year after his studies, before becoming ordained as a priest? The article notes that he couldn't move in with the Kaplan of the parish (the assistant to the vicar I believe) because both men were married, adding that Nicolaus Andreae got married while he was still a student in Strasbourg, but failing to mention the name of his wife. Also, no mention of children.
Note that the older Andreae, below, took up office as the 74-year-old belligerent vicar of Kastellaun at that very moment, but the biographies of both don't reveal whether this is coincidence or family connection. An official assessment visit praised the young teacher's work but noted that he wasn't very musical and that his singing was awful, which is interesting because we have a teacher among his presumed descendants who had the same problem and became a pioneering special needs teacher because of it. Remuneration of the schoolmaster was an issue, at one point there was trouble because there were no funds for him to buy wood to heat his home.
Matthäus Merian, view of Kastellaun 1645. Source: Wikipedia/ Achim Berg - eigene Aufnahme von Thementafel im Hunsrück-Museum Simmern, CC BY-SA 3.0.
In 1609 he took up the position of vicar in Gödenroth (Monatshefte 1912, 65-78), where he became notorious in 1613 for beating up his wife (whose name isn't mentioned). A report is made to authorities with graphic detail, but in the end he is allowed to stay in position based on the promise that it won't happen again. Part of the reasoning was a political complication which I didn't quite understand and which would kick in if the post were to become vacant.
By 1632, he had caused no further trouble, but his health had made it difficult for him to serve the outpost of the parish at Sevenich (Monatshefte 1912, 79-82), which would require regular foot journeys in all weather (a kind of problem older clergymen in those days often faced). For this reason he asked to be moved to a less tiring job.
In 1632, therefore, he became the vicar of Gebroth (Monatshefte 1913, 193-209 covers the parish before his arrival, 1560-1620), where he stayed until he died between 1635 and 1641. The surviving church records of Gebroth only begin in 1739, so all earlier info is glanced indirectly from other documents. Thus, on 20.2.1635 he christened the son of vicar Jacobi at Winterburg, which is the last evidence we have of him being alive. He left a widow called Anna Amalia, who continued to serve as a godmother at christenings eg in Winterburg on 19.8.1641, then in 1643 and 1651.
One Gedbas entry identifies the widow as Anna Amalia Orth, who went on to marry the vicar Johann Valentin Corvinus in 1652, who had been married to two other Orth women before, namely her sister and her cousin. We obviously don't have evidence yet regarding whether she is Nicolas Andreae's only wife, i.e. we don't know whether Anna Amalia is the same person he married at Strasbourg and/or the same wife he beat up in 1613 and who had children from a previous marriage. I would say probably not, because there was the 30-years-war going on with marauding troops and the plague coming through, so life expectancy was short and the lucky survivors often went through several spouses. We also don't know for sure whether she was actually the mother of Franz Nickel Andreae whose descendancy we believe leads to Anna Catharina Andrae.
Note, however, that any children born to Nikolaus and his wife in his early adult life would have been long grown up by the time he moved to Gebroth, so would have had no reason to join him there. And I am fairly confident that he was the one who brought the name to Gebroth and is thus the ancestor of future generations of Andrae people from there (see the names in their churchyard).
Among the many other Andreae priests I listed last week I've now homed in on:
Johannes Andreae (1532-1613).
Johannes Andreae was born in 1532 in Schönbach (Dillkreis) or Dillenburg as the son of Johannes Andreae who later became the parson of that parish which turned protestant in 1536. I guess Johannes senior may have been the first protestant priest at that parish, but my email enquiry on that matter hasn't been answered.
Johannes junior visited the grammar school at Dillenburg and the universities Wittenberg (matriculated 1551) and Marburg. At Wittenberg, he became close friends with Friedrich Wiedebrand, who wrote a poem for him on the occasion of his marriage to Agatha in 1559: Epithalamia in nuptias M. Joannis Andreae Schonbach et pudica virginis Agathae.
A footnote to Sinemus's piece (Monatshefte 1928) informs us that he had a son called Emmerich Andreae, who was a student in 1583 and a vicar in Bechtheim (near Worms) around 1618. These dates are compatible with Emmerich being born in the 1560s from the marriage to Agatha in 1559.
After that he worked for two years as an assistant teacher at the Dillenburg school, before returning to Wittenberg. He stayed there for three years including two years as an assistant (famulus) to Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560). After his ordination he briefly worked as a teacher for the count Adolf of Nassau, spent another two years at Wittenberg, (According to Rotscheidt, he travelled with the junior count Adolf 1554-56 visiting both Wittenberg and Strasbourg) and then became head teacher of the Dillenburg (Herborn according to the more recent source) grammar school. Later he served as a vicar in Haiger (1561-64) and in Diez at St. Peter 1564-73.
In 1573 he was forced to abandon the latter position because the area switched to Calvinism. The Counts of Hessen moved him to the vicarage of Braubach on the river Rhein. When faced with the threat of salary cuts, he applied to become vicar of Rockenberg in 1587.
In 1588 he became vicar and superintendent at Altenkirchen. He and his colleague are presumed to have written the church constitution for the rulers of the area, the counts of Sayn-Wittgenstein.
In 1605, Count Wilhelm of Sayn-Wittgenstein abruptly switched to calvinism, and Johannes Andreae was forced to leave the area at the advanced age of 73. He turned to Inspector Nicolas Jacobi of Trarbach for help. He may have known him personally, and he definitely had connections to the area as his brother-in-law Michael Artopoeus was a vicar at Traben at the time (just across the river Mosel and now united with the other side in the town of Traben-Trarbach - I need to memorise once and for all that Traben is on the left bank and Trarbach on the right, just like they appear in the combined name).
Jacobi wrote a glowing recommendation letter to the authorities, which resulted in Andreae getting the opportunity to give a trial sermon at Birkenfeld. After further examination he was finally installed as the new vicar of Kastellaun (Hunsrück) on 21.6.1607 at the age of 75. We don't have an arrival date for the young school teacher Andreae, above, so don't know who was there first and whether the incoming vicar perhaps installed a family member in the newly created teaching post.
Having been chased out of his jobs and hometowns by Calvinists on two separate occasions, he was understandably hostile to this particular creed. In his new position he established a reputation as a "hyper-Lutheran" who kept sniffing out even the faintest traces of Calvinism. Church inspectors who liked him in general commented on his anti-Calvinist fervour on several occasions. People remarked that he was quite the opposite of the good-natured spirit of his famous mentor Melanchthon.
In the summer of 1613 he died at the age of 80 and is likely buried in the church of Kastellaun.
Sources: The Monatshefte include biographies of him in different places, once as a superintendent in Altenkirchen (M. Sinemus Monatshefte 1928), and later in his life as a refugee from there finding shelter in Kastellaun (F. Back, Monatshefte 1911, 301-304). Just before the Monatshefte died, the editor W. Rotscheidt published a short notice adding crucial details to the earlier articles (Monatshefte 1942, 185-186).
Long story short: two Lutheran clergymen with the surname Andreae meet at Kastellaun in 1607, when the older becomes vicar and the younger the schoolmaster of the parish.
Based on these biographies I can see two possible scenarios that could link Johannes to Nikolaus:
1) Johannes as the grandfather
Johannes * 1532 oo 1559 Agatha (I conclude from the title of the poem that it's her first marriage, so let's say * ca 1540)
Emmerich * ca. 1560
Nikolaus * 1580s
2) Johannes as a father with a much younger wife
Friedrich Back, writing about Johannes Andreae's tenure in Kastellaun, informs us that Michael Artopaeus (1574-1629; also on GedBas), then vicar of Traben, was his brother in law. As the wives of Artopaeus are named in various places in the Monatshefte and are not called Andreae, I conclude that Johannes Andreae was married to a sister of Michael Artopaeus. (Also, Artopaeus is 40 years younger than Andreae, that's easier to fit together this way.)
Which means any descendants of this marriage would have maternal family in the Mosel valley around Traben and Enkirch, which makes it entirely plausible that our Nikolaus Andreae born in Enkirch in the 1580s could be a son of that marriage. Michael Artopoeus's parents (Franz, another vicar, and Gute Arnold married in 1574, so any daughter from that marriage would have been too young to be Nikolaus's mother, but a daughter from a previous marriage of either would still qualify to make Michael Artopoeus the brother-in-law of our Nikolaus.
Johannes was also married to Margaretha NN at one point. It would be really useful to know more about his wives to sort this out! Either way, we could add three clergymen to the family tree.
I think for the time being and until further evidence materialises, I favour version 1) as all connections are between people who we actually know existed.
Regarding the descendants, note that, in addition to our Nikolaus, all other Andrae people I found in the Hunsrück and Mosel area could in principle descend from Johannes Andreae from Schönbach, including everybody listed under 3) and 4) in the previous entry, namely:
Johann Andrae, the earliest ancestor of the Andrae population in the Mosel valley, whose only listed child Matthias Andrae was born in 1640, so he would be a bit younger than our Nikolaus. Confusingly, there is also a catholic Andrae clan in the Mosel valley, starting from a younger Johann born around 1645 who married Elisabeth Maria Scheuren and had seven children born in Ediger in the district of Cochem. As I believe the name Andreae / Andrae is a typical protestant invention, I suspect this Johann, if his confession is correct in GedBas, may have converted back.
Johann Nikolaus Andrae * 1685 in Krummenau is a priest whose family connections are completely obscure. He was vicar of Dörrenbach 1708-1728 and married Anna Eva Simon, daughter of the vicar of Kirn, Johann Daniel Simon, in 1710 - that's all the info we get from O. Penningroth who was writing about the Simon lineage in Monatshefte 1933.
Conrad Andreä was vicar of Winningen (Mosel) 1596-1599 according to an article about this parish (Monatshefte 1909, 225-286) According to Friedrich Back (Monatshefte 1933, 275) he died of the plague which hit the town in 1597, with 206 casualties.
,
NB he could be the same person as the husband of Agnes Orth, (V 4 in the massive Orth clan) * …, + …, ∞ … Konrad Andreas, who died after 1586, and was a vicar at Koblenz, very close to Winningen.
Who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.
PS A comprehensive listing of the Artopoeus family, which has produced 10 clergymen, is given by Oskar Penningroth in Monatshefte 1933, page 252, and also in English here. Depending on how the balance between scenarios 1) and 2) develops, I may or may not be coming back to them later.
