Week 16 "Out of Place" #52Ancestors

This week’s prompt is “Out of Place.” Amy Johnson Crow (the leader of this project) asks: “Have you found an ancestor in an unexpected place or in an unexpected set of records? Maybe an ancestor who seemed out of place with the rest of the family?”

 Both my husband and I have a traditional “Melting Pot” of European ancestors: Irish, German, and English. Mine all came to the U.S. in the mid-1800’s; most of his came about the same time, with the exception of a line that goes back to the late 1600’s in Maryland and Virginia. 

 All and all, a fairly common-place immigrant story. 

Yet, I do find one ancestor who may have felt “out of place” at some point in her life.

 My great-grandmother, Carolina Neidhart, was born on 18 December 1869 in what was then the Grand Duchy of Baden, a state within the German Empire (now the modern Federal State of Baden-Württemberg).[1] I think she arrived in New York on 26 September 1885, when she was almost 16.[2] She appears to have traveled alone, but I haven’t ruled out that a fellow passenger might have been a friend or relative. 

When she married my great-grandfather, Charles Maier, she identified her mother as “Crescentia Neidhart.”[3] However, a line is drawn on the Marriage Return where her father’s name should have been written. It’s a little odd that she wouldn’t have list her father on the marriage record. As a genealogist, I am happy to have her mother’s name, but assume that it is not a mistake or an oversight that caused her father’s name not to be disclosed. 

As I continued to research Carolina, I found her baptismal record and discovered the possible reason that her father’s name was not given: she was illegitimate. Her baptismal record specifically (and in Latin) identifies Carolina as the illegitimate daughter of “Creszenzia Neidhart.” Cresznenzia was noted as the “legitimate” daughter of Ignaz Neidhart and Maria Anna Gölz [a little “yay” for the names of two more ancestors!]. Her father was not named. Does that explain the absence of her father’s name on the marriage record? Did she not know him? 

It turns out that Carolina was the youngest of four children born to Creszenzia from 1859 to 1869 and ALL of them were illegitimate.[4]

Wait.

What?

What was Creszenzia’ profession anyway?

While I am still working on this family, this particular circumstance can be partially explained by the power structures that existed in Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries. The poor in Germany did not have the freedom to marry whomever they wished. The nobility, community councils, and the church all had say over whether or not you could marry the love of your life. Generally speaking, in order to get permission to marry, the groom had to produce evidence that he had wealth, property, or stable employment. These laws were put in place to ensure that you and your family wouldn’t become a burden on the state. Baden had some of the most restrictive marriage laws in Germany. However, most of these laws were repealed by 1870, partially due to the high rate of illegitimacy caused by these restrictive laws.[5]

Well, no kidding. Did they really think that not letting people get married would stop them from having sex?

 Here’s what I think: It is likely that my great-great-grandparents couldn’t get permission to marry, but they lived together as husband and wife and had at least four children. The vicar of the church where the children were baptized did his “duty” by noting the illegitimacy of the children and by NOT naming the father.

Not so “out of place” for Germany at that time, but probably by the time my great-grandparents married in a Catholic church in New Jersey in 1890, she might have wanted to hide her illegitimacy. 

[1]Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.com), “Baden,” rev. 18:37, 19 April 2019.

[2]There is a “Carol Neidhard” listed on the manifest for a ship that left Bremen, Germany, for New York in 1885. She was a 16-year-old female servant, born in Germany in 1869. I am pretty sure this was my great-grandmother because 1885 was noted as her immigration year in the 1920 US census and I have found no other female with the same/similar name and age on any other manifest. However, without more evidence, this is not to be taken as a confirmed “fact.” Manifest, SS Neckar, arriving 26 September 1885, p. 10, line 19, Carol Neidhard; imaged as “New York, Passenger and Crew Lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957,” Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 22 April 2019), image 271 of 1,068; citing National Archives microfilm publication M237, roll 490. 1920 U.S. Census, Essex County, New Jersey, population schedule, Newark, Ward 9, enumeration district 188, sheet 11B (penned), dwelling 101, family 280, Caroline Maier; Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com: accessed 22 April 2019); citing National Archives microfilm publicationT625, roll 1033. 

[3]State of New Jersey, Marriage Return, no. M-114, Maier-Neidhart (1890); New Jersey Department of Health, Office of Vital Statistics and Registry, Trenton.

[4]All of the baptismal records for children born to Crezenzia Neidhart, the daughter of Ignaz and Maria Anna (Gölz) Neidhart, were noted to be illegitimate and the father was never named.

[5]John Knodel, Law, “Marriage and Illegitimacy in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Population Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3 (March 1967), pp. 279-294; image, JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2172673: accessed 22 April 2019).

Great-grandmother, Carolina (Neidhart) Maier Raether with Mary Regina Maier (my mom) and Charles P. Maier, Jr. (my grandfather)