52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #4: She's a Mystery to Me

Well, I was positive that I wouldn't find anyone closer to my birthday (Sept. 9) than my mother (Sept. 12), but I dutifully went through the list anyway.  And guess what?  I found someone a day closer than my mother, Anne Margrete Otten, born September 7, 1777.  That was a surprise.  But guess what?  I know next to nothing about this woman, other than that she was my great-great-great-great aunt.

What do I know?

1.  She was born on September 7, 1777, and lived to November 23, 1858.  That's a good long life -- 81 years.

2.  We can assume she was a strong and healthy woman, to live that long!

3.  Her parents were Peter Otten (1737-1792) and Anna Jachens (1737-1786).  Not so long-lived, either one of them.

4.  She must have been close to her brother, Johann Harm Otten, because he and his wife named their daughter -- Anna Margrete Otten -- after her.

Where did this information come from?  From a treasure trove of info I found in an Ortsfamilienbuch (OFB) for the Lesum area of Bremen, Germany.  I found many, many ancestors of my great-grandmother, Christiane Bellmer.




What else can I figure out?  Peter Otten is listed as 1) a farmer, 2) a laborer (1780) and 3) a day laborer (1781).  Since I assume these are listed in order, he went from a farmer to a laborer (three years after Anne's birth) to a day laborer, suggesting a downward slope of his position in the world.  Did he have a farm and lose it?  Why? Did he drink, gamble, become disabled and therefore not able to run his farm?  Since the OFB offers no information on Peter's father, Dierk Otten, I don't know whether the farm had been in his family.

Anne seems to have married fairly well -- her husband, Johann Friedrich Fastenau, was the owner of a house and a small piece of land, and was a "wood sawyer."  She was mother to 10 children, only five of whom survived into adulthood. 

So, that's the best I can do for my near birthdate-mate.  I'd like to find out more!

Comments

  1. I've found an Ortsfamilienbuch for one of my German families, too, and the records took me back over 200 years! Incredible!

    And, I like your detective work!

    ReplyDelete

  2. Thanks, Dana -- I've found the OFBs, when I can get my virtual hands on one, to be a treasure trove. By discovering my great-grandmother's true birthname, it opened me up to 39 new ancestors, all at once! And I truly love the detective work part of it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lost in the Homeland Part 1: Researching Genealogy in Germany

Image
While I'm not an expert on genealogy by any means, I have been researching for a number of years and have learned a few things along the way.  Since 100% of my non-US research is in Germany,  many of the things I've learned are about doing research in that difficult venue.  Joining Ancestry and hoping for the best won't get you much of anywhere, I'm afraid.  I'd like to share some of the resources I've tapped into in doing my German research, in the hope that it might help some who are just getting into it.

Why is researching in Germany so hard?  For one thing, the nation called "Germany" didn't exist before 1871 -- what we now think of as Germany was a group of loosely related kingdoms that shifted borders, had different systems for keeping records, and so on.  Few civil records were kept; most records were in the hands of the various churches, Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed.  Many records were damaged or lost in the two great wars of the 20th …
Read more

Looking for a German Surname? Try Geogen.

Image
This morning I was contributing to a thread in the German Genealogy facebook group; a researcher had asked for help in figuring out the German equivalent of the surname Workman. One of the most useful sites I've found for investigating German surnames is Christoph Stoepel's "Geogen" sites. "Geogen" stands for "genealogical geography," and his site will help you locate possible points of origin for your German ancestors. When you put in a name, a map will show you where your family name is found today; the information is current rather than historical but still very useful, since German families tend to be a lot less mobile over the years than are families in the United States. A caveat, though:  if your ancestor's name is Schmidt or Meyer, you'll have a much harder time getting a lead because those names are so common. The less common the name is, the more luck you're likely to have.  Also, the site is most helpful if your family came…
Read more

How Many?

Image
Julie Tarr of Julie's Genealogy and History Hub asked an interesting question today, one that sent me to my tree to start counting:  "What's Your Number?" -- as in, how many ancestors of each generation have you identified?

So I did it.  A table is helpful to show me 1)  how much I've accomplished so far, and 2) how much farther I have to go in particular areas of my tree.  Here's what I came up with:


Even though I obviously have a long way to go from the 4th generation on down, I'm delighted to see how far I've come in the years I've been practicing genealogy. The table also leads me to remember how frustrated I felt at some points, in going beyond one great-grandfather on my father's paternal side, one great-grandfather on my mother's paternal side, and in identifying the mother of my mother's great-grandmother on her mother's side.  
When I think about the reasons for each brick wall, I find that in two cases, lack of a birthpl…
Read more