Elisabetha Messer (1813-1883) and Mathias Schmidt (1806-1894)
I amused myself just now when I jotted down the surnames I’d be writing about this week: Messer and Schmidt. Combined, they are similar to the surname “Messerschmitt”, which is also the name of a well-known aircraft manufacturer. However, instead of airplanes, the topic of discussion is my Gx4 Grandparents, Elisabetha Messer and Mathias Schmidt.
Now that we’ve established that I can be easily distracted or amused or both, let’s turn to Elisabetha and Mathias.
Elisabetha was born in Alsace in 1813. Other than that her father was Bernard Messer, also of Alsace, I don’t know who Elisabetha’s mother was or whether she had any siblings. Sometime in her childhood or teens she moved with her family to one of the German colonies in the Beresan district of Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire. I came to that conclusion because Mathias was already in the Beresan when he married Elisabetha sometime around 1831. Elisabetha was about 18 years old when she married.
Mathias was also born in Alsace, in the village of Röschwoog, which now sits inside France about five kilometers from the German border. Mathias’s father was Paul Schmidt; I don’t know who his mother was. Mathias was a middle child, with an older brother, Jakob, and a younger brother, Martin. It may be that there were other children, but I have not seen any indication either way. The family moved from Alsace to Karlsruhe colony in the Beresan in 1819, when Mathias was 13 years old.
Elisabetha and Mathias married sometime before 1831, possibly in Landau colony, where the first of their 13 children were born. All their subsequent children were born in Karlsruhe. The youngest was born 25 years later, in 1857. My Gx3 Grandfather, Valentine, was born right in the middle, with six older and six younger siblings.
Elisabetha died in Karlsruhe on October 8, 1883. Mathias died in Karlsruhe almost exactly eleven years later, on October 3, 1894.
While it might seem abrupt after only four weeks, this brings us to the end of my Great x4 Grandparents on my mother’s maternal line. Next week I switch to my Great x4 Grandparents on my mother’s paternal line, which is the Mormon branch of my family.
Marianna Schmidt (1820-1893) and Johannes Anton (1818-1885)
Until recently, I had thought that my Great x4 Grandparents, Marianna Schmidt and Johannes Anton, were most likely from Mörlheim, Landau, Rhinepalatinate before settling in a German colony at Karlsruhe, Beresan District, Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire. I have since learned otherwise, at least for Johannes.
Marianna was born about 1820. I actually do not know where Marianna was born, or who her parents might have been. The only real information I have about Marianna’s birth is her registration of death, which states that she was 73 years old when she died. I suspect Marianna was born in the Beresan and it was her parents who emigrated from the German states.
Likewise, while I know that Johannes was born in 1818, I cannot say for certain where he was born. However, I do suspect that he was born in the Beresan. Johannes was born to Peter Anton (1797-before 1858) and Maria Anna Hatzenbühler (1786-after 1858) and had three younger sisters. Peter and Maria Anna were both born in the Rhinepalatinate – Peter in Mörlheim, Maria Anna in Ottersheim. It also appears that they had relocated to the Beresan, as the 1858 census for Karlsruhe shows that Maria Anna was living there at the time. Presumably, Peter had died before the census was taken.
Marianna and Johannes married sometime around 1840. Together they had ten children, five girls and five boys, all of whom were born in Karlsruhe. The first was born in 1842 and the youngest was born in 1861. I can’t imagine how hard that was on Marianna.
Sometime after all their children were born, Marianna and Johannes may have moved to the Christina colony, as Johannes died there in 1885. He is also buried there. I acknowledge the possibility that only Johannes moved there, perhaps to be with a family member who cared for him in his final days. However, the simplest answer is often the correct one, so it’s more likely the former rather than the latter.
Nevertheless, Marianna was later back in Karlsruhe, or had never left, because she died there on June 4, 1893. Marianna was survived by all her children, who at the time ranged in age from 32 to 51. The cause of death was registered as “old age”.
The unexpected benefit of the way I’ve chosen to do the 52 Ancestors Challenge this year is that I come out knowing more about each of my ancestors than when I started to write the posts. When I came up with the idea, I thought it would simply be a matter of writing up my research.
Instead, the gaps in my research and lack of knowledge for most individuals became readily apparent when I started to write about them. I’ve ended up doing much more research than anticipated, and that’s been a great thing. It has helped me hone and practice my genealogy skills while fulfilling the primary reason I do the challenge, which is to write more. As I said back in March, it’s turned into participating in a second challenge – Yvette Hoitink‘s Level-Up Challenge!
The primary downside is that I spent several months many weeks behind in the Challenge this year. I finally caught up a few weeks ago, but largely only because I know so little about the final suit of my deck and there are so few readily available resources. Many of those individuals were barely above a “one” before writing them up over the last few weeks.
Case in point is my Great x3 Grandfather Valentine Schmidt. A few weeks ago, I had little more than a birthdate, a vague idea that he was born in the Beresan colonies of the Germans from Russia and the name of his spouse. However, I did have some additional information that I hadn’t incorporated into my database – some of which I’ve had for decades.
Valentine was born in 1839 in the Karlsruhe Colony of the Beresan district in Ukraine, which at the time was part of the Russian Empire. He was the seventh of 13 children born to Mathias Schmidt and Elisabetha Messer.
Matthias and Elisabetha were born in Alsace, which has a long history of moving between French and German control. Matthias was born in Röschwoog, which practically sits on the current French-German border, in 1806. At the time Matthias and Elisabetha were born, Alsace was firmly in the control of Napoleon. Matthias and Elisabetha most likely settled in the Beresan as teens, moving with their families. By 1819, they were both in Karlsruhe and by 1831 they were married, when they had their first child.
As far as I know, Valentine lived his whole life in Karlsruhe. He married Margaretha “Regina” Boechler on October 21, 1863. They had at least two children that I have researched and who have some sort of documented sources – my Great x 2 Grandmother Barbara and a younger sister named Elisabeth. While FamilySearch tells me that there were four more children after Elisabeth, not a single source has been cited for any of them.
Valentine was still alive in 1894, when his father passed away. He was also most likely still in Karlsruhe, which means he was still there when his daughter Barbara and son-in-law Michael Lerner emigrated to America.
Since Valentine was still alive well into his 50s and at the time his daughter emigrated, I considered whether he had also emigrated to America, particularly given the lack of evidence he died in Karlsruhe. However, I have never found anything indicating that occurred.
My Great Great Grandmother, Barbara Schmidt, was born to Valentine Schmidt and Margaretha Boechler on October 25, 1865 in Karlsruhe, Beresan, Ukraine, Russian Empire. Karlsruhe was one of the colonies established by German settlers who responded to the manifestos issued by Catherine the Great and, later, her grandson Czar Alexander I. Since Karlsruhe was founded in 1809, it is most likely that its founders were responding to a manifesto issued by Alexander I in 1804.
I know almost nothing about Barbara before she married Michael Lerner, said to have been in February 1883. There’s only one clue about her childhood, which is from a photo I first saw in a book in 1997. I’ve since seen it other places. I can’t even recall when or how I came across it. I think I was probably still using Windows 95 and Netscape. One of the later iterations I have of it came with additional information, which is in the bottom left of this graphic:
The one alteration I made to each image was to add “ФОТОГРАФЪ ХАДАКЪ Photographer Khadak” (or “Hadak”). It is what you can see in the bottom of the photo. I googled the phrase using the Cyrillic, without the translation/transliteration. The results included a photograph that was listed for sale on a Russian website that sells collectibles, which had the same caption at the bottom.
The photos of the item included this:
My Google results also included a Russian-language Wikipedia article, Хадак, Павел Иосифович (Khadak, Pavel Iosifovich). If the person in the article is the person who took the photograph, I have a real timeline problem.
The article says that Pavel Khadak was born in 1863 – two years before Barbara. So if the photo was taken when Barbara was 10, in 1875, Pavel would have been 12 years old. The Wiki article also says that Pavel took up photography sometime after 1881, and only later attended photography school. This means that Pavel likely couldn’t have taken the photo until the early to mid-1880s.
I also considered whether Barbara could have been born much later than 1865. If so, if she was 10 in a photo taken around 1885, she’d have been born in 1875. The problem is she’d have been eight years old when she married and had her first child.
Update: So often I find what I’m looking for after I click “publish”. Sigh. Better late than never! I’ve since come across transcriptions/translations of church records, which include baptismal registrations for Karlsruhe. Amongst these is an entry showing that Barbara was born on October 17, 1864, not October 25 as I found in many other secondary sources. Barbara was baptized on October 18, 1864. Interestingly, her godparents were Franz Böhm and…Barbara Schmidt! My guess is that Godmother Barbara might be an aunt.Of course, this supports the original estimate that the family photo was taken in 1875 – which weighs against it having been taken by Pavel Khadak of the Wikipedia article.
I have no idea how Barbara and Michael came to be together, as Michael was from Rastadt, Beresan, which was about 50 kilometers from Karlsruhe. After the marriage, the couple lived in Rastadt, where Michael was a farmer. The couple had six children in Rastadt.
In 1893, Michael and Barbara moved the family family from the Beresan and relocated to the United States. Their youngest child was only five months old at the time, with three three others being aged 5 and under. Poor Barbara – I’m pretty sure the childcare would have all fallen upon her.
The Lerners landed at Ellis Island on May 12, 1893 and quickly settled in Clay County, Texas, where Michael started a farm outside of Henrietta, the county seat. Meanwhile, Barbara gave birth to eight more children. The first of their child born in the United States was my Great Grandfather, Heronimus (“Jerome” or “Jerry”) Lerner. According to the 1910 US Census, Barbara only spoke German. However, according to Canadian census records, Barbara was able to speak English by 1921.
The family remained in Texas for 25 years, until 1918. By that time, several of Barbara’s older children, including Jerry, had relocated to Saskatchewan, near Fox Valley. Michael moved Barbara and most of their other children to Rastadt, Saskatchewan, not far from Fox Valley. Only one of their daughters remained in Texas. Once in Rastadt, Michael again took up farming. Barbara became a nationalized Canadian (although technically a British subject – Canadian citizenship separate from British nationality did not occur until 1947).
In 2000 or 2001, I was doing a series of job interviews. I included genealogy as one of my interests in my resume. One of my interviews was at a firm where I didn’t have much of an expectation of succeeding (there were good reasons), but I went to it anyway. Can’t score if you don’t take the shot!
One of the interviewers took great interest in my hobby, and I ended up talking about a trip to a small town in Saskatchewan that I had done a few years ago, meaning my trip to Fox Valley and Rastadt in 1997. The panelist asked me to name the towns anyway, and he said that he had heard of them. It instantly clicked as to why – his last name was Schmidt! After comparing notes, we figured out that we were third or fourth cousins of some degree.
As expected, I didn’t get the job – although I was successful elsewhere. But I found a cousin!
Barbara died on October 21, 1936, four days shy of her 71st birthday. Her death occurred in Liebenthal, Saskatchewan, a village about 25 kilometers north of Fox Valley and Rastadt. Other than the proximity, I haven’t found Barbara’s connection to Liebenthal. Her husband, who survived her, was still farming in Rastadt. Barbara might have had family in Liebenthal, but her children had largely moved to larger places like Regina, Saskatchewan and Medicine Hat, Alberta.
The larger mystery for some time was where Barbara was buried. When I first started investigating this in the late 1990s, the sources available to me had her interred at either the Fox Valley Cemetery or the Rastadt Cemetery. After further investigation, and a trip to Fox Valley and Rastadt in 1997, I determined that she must be buried at the Fox Valley Cemetery.
While there is no marker for her at Fox Valley, the cemetery records show that she is buried in plot as W23-2, which is right beside where her husband, Michael, is buried (plot W23-3). As well, other close Lerner family members are buried in Fox Valley Cemetery, including their son Jerome Lerner (plot W13-1).
On the contrary, there are no other Lerners buried in the Rastadt cemetery. As well, there appears to be inconsistency in the plot in which she is supposedly interred in Rastadt. An older listing from 1997 indicated plot 61; in 2004, it was said to be plot 70. This inconsistency casts doubt on the possibility Barbara is interred at Rastadt. In any event, the Fox Valley Cemetery records far outweigh the secondary sources for Rastadt Cemetery.
A Deck of Ancestors 