Online registers of 19th-C in south-western Baden

I've found that registers of 19th-Century births, marriages, and deaths are online for the southern parts of Baden. These are from Standesämter that are in the Freiburg adminstrative district. The Freiburg distict includes the purple Kriese in the map provided.

Use these steps to find online records for your ancestors:

1. Use one of these links:

• Magenta (red) area on the map Staatsarchiv Karlsruhe for a list of - 28 Amtsgerichte (Area Registrars)
• Violet area on the map Staatsarchiv Freiburg - 35 Amtsgerichte
• Aqua (green) area Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg - undefined
• Blue area Staatsarchiv Sigmarinen - undefined

1. Select an Amtsgericht from the list in the left column, A listing of its first 20 books of registry then appears in the right column.
2. Select ALLE (above the slide bar on the right) to list the books that are online from the Amtsgericht.
3. Find your town of interest. Several different register books may be available.

Great-grandmother Leopoldina Salinger (1839-1919)

My great-grandmother Leopoldina Salinger was born in Breisach am Rhein in 1839. Her birth on 29 May 1839 is documented in the civil registers of the city. The record is available through this online source,as well as those of her siblings Carl Julius (1833-1833), Anton Herrmann (1836-), Maria Anna Josepha (1838-), and Maria Anna (1843-).

The records of Breisach am Rhein are available in several volumes with the following groupings of years:

• 1810-1818
• 1819-1826
• 1827-1834
• 1835-1840
• 1841-1847
• 1848-1854
• 1855-1858
• 1859-1864
• 1865-1870

I have reviewed only the first and second volumes in any great detail. It is likely that records of marriages and deaths for family members after 1842 will not be in this town. Both her father Georg Salinger and mother Katherina Vogel-Salinger were born in the first decade of the 19th C, and I expect they might have deaths reported at age 65 or younger. If the siblings survived and remained in Breisach, any of their marriages would be reported at age 40 or younger.

I am pursuing further research in similar online sources for Rastatt, Ettlingen, Karlsruhe/Durlach, and Kònigheim, cities in Baden where other ancestors came from.

The Salinger Family

Revisions on 3 April 2019 update this section with more recent research.

My great-grandmother Leopoldina Salinger-Ohnsat (1839-1919) emigrated from Baden-Württemberg in 1871. Her family lived in Breisach from about 1832 to about 1842, while her father worked as an Amtsdiener. Another family headed by Georg Selinger lived in the outlying and smaller settlement of Hochstetten at least from 1835. Leopoldine's family name was spelled "Salinger" and occasionally "Selinger" in Germany, and its spelling "Sallinger" occurred sometime during immigration, naturalization, or resettlement.

Her parents were Georg Salinger (1803-1856) and Katherina Vogel (about 1810-1862). Georg was identified as an Amtsdiener in several birth documents for his children. This occupation is an honorific today or a ceremonial duty that is given as a political award. In the 19th Century, an Amtsdiener could have performed a wide variety of clerical tasks in a registrar's office or could have been little more than a manager of visitors to the office (asking citizens to wait in the lobby and escorting them to the registrar's desk when the clerk was ready to take their information). In older German usage, there may have been distinctions in the function of an Amtsdiener, a Büttel, a Fronbote, a Gerichtsdiener, and a Saaldiener; however, modern German usage does not imply great differences, except that a Gerichtsdiener is associated with civil and criminal courts. Simple translations could be among these: an "usher," a "beadle," or a "messenger" of a municipal court. The Zedler Universal-Lexikon (1731-1754) has this definition:

Amts-Knecht, Amts-Diener, ist ein geschworner Bote, welcher das, was vor Gerichte geschen soll,  durch des Amtmanns Befehl denen Partheben überbringen und ankundigen muß. Wie er denn auch die Amts-Delinquenten einbringen, und dem Nachrichter überlieffern muß. [Band I (A-AM), p. 898, bottom of column 1817]

That is,

Official servant is a sworn messenger who must, at the bailiff's command, deliver to those taking part in the proceedings those charged persons who must be tried before a court of law. In the court proceedings, the Amtsdiener announces the availability of those charged. He must also bring in the charged parties and leave them with the reporter.

Rastatt (left), Ettlingen, and Durlach (right, top) in the
Karlsruhe region along the Rhein River

Leopoldine's father came from Rastatt, and her mother from Durlach or Ettlingen, about 80 and 90 miles north of Breisach. Both Durlach and Ettlingen are within Karlsruhe Kreis, and Rastatt is a historically important city along the middle Rhein. Georg Salinger married Katharina Vogel on 3 December 1829 in St. Peter and Paul Catholic church in Durlach, and two children were born there: Carolina Christina in 1830 and Barbara Luise in 1831.

Although movement from one town to another within a few miles was fairly common, the distance to Breisach seems unusual. I suspected that Georg Salinger had performed the work of Amtsdiener in Rastatt and was recommended for the post in Breisach. However, the marriage record for the couple states that he was "sergeant/junior officer with the Guards Cavalry Regiment at Gottsau." It's possible that he left military service and worked in a governmental bureau before the family moved to Breisach.

I have only preliminary research for the generation of these 2nd-great-grandparents. I have found documentation of their marriage in the registers of Durlach and Rastatt. The Rastatt register entry is a certified copy of the Durlach register:

Marriage registry of Georg Sallinger and Katharina Vogel,
Rastatt, Germany (two consecutive pages in the image)

Abschrift: Auszug aus dem Trauungsbuche der katholischen Stadtpfarrei Durlach, S. 38, §5

Im Jahre tausend acht hundert neun und zwanzig den dritten Dezember nachmnittags halb zwei Uhr nach vorhergegangenen zweimaligen Aufgebothen, welche am vier und zwanzigsten Sonntag nach Pfingsten und ersten Sonntag im Advent zu Durlach und Karlsruhe geschehen sind, nach erhaltener Entlassung des Bräutigams von großherzoglich katholischen Stadtpfarramte zu Karlsruhe und nicht erhobenen Einspruche; sind von Unterzeichneten getraut und eingeseegnet worden: Georg Sallinger von Rastatt /: neuangehender Bürger von Rastatt:/, Unteroffizier vom Garde Cavallerie Regiment zu Gottsau, ehelicher Sohn des verstorbenen Sallinger Leopold von Rastatt, mit der ledigen Katharina Vogel von Ettlingen, Tochter der Katharina Vogel von hier, Ehegattin des Marand Würzburger, Schutzbürger und Leistschneider [= Leistenschneider] dahier.

Zeugen waren: die beiden Unteroffiziere: Carl Oehlwang von Karlsruhe und Stephan Bischof von Kisselbronn [= Kieselbronn] bei Pforzheim.
Durlach d. 3. Decemb. 1829. V Baumann, Pfarrer.

gegeben Durlach d. 7t. Dezember 1829 In fidem extractus: V. Baumann, Pfarrer
Zur Beglaubigung der treuen Abschrift
Rastatt d. 20t Dezember 1829
Schung, Dekan und Stadtpfarrer

Translation:

Copy: Extract from the marriage book of the Durlach Catholic town parish. Page 38, paragraph 5.

Marriage registry of Georg Sallinger and Katharina Vogel,
Durlach, Germany

In the year 1829 on December 3 at 1:30 in the afternoon, after the announcement of two marriage banns that occurred on the 24th Sunday after Pentecost and the 1st Sunday of Advent in Durlach and in Karlsruhe; after receiving the release of the groom from the grand ducal Catholic town parish office in Karlsruhe, with no objections raised; were married and blessed by the undersigned: Georg Sallinger from Rastatt (prospective citizen from Rastatt.), sergeant/junior officer with the Guards Cavalry Regiment at Gottsau, legitimate son of the deceased Sallinger, Leopold from Rastatt; with the unmarried Katharina Vogel from Ettlingen, daughter of Katharina Vogel from here[ [Durlach], wife of the Würzburger Marand, legal/protected citizen and last maker here.

Witnesses were: both sergeants/junior officers Carl Oehlwang from Karlsruhe and Stephan Bischof from Kisselbronn [= Kieselbronn] near Pforzheim.Durlach,
December 3, 1829. V. Baumann, Clergyman.

Written in Durlach on December 7, 1829 Faithfully extracted: V. Baumann, Clergyman
In certification of a true/accurate copy.
Rastatt, December 20, 1829
Schung, Deacon and Town Clergyman.

Typically ages of the bride and groom are given in a marriage record, especially if they are young adults. Since the ages are not given, I presume that neither is of younger age. I guess that Georg was then about 30 years old, and that Katharina was perhaps younger than 25. So I estimated their births to be 1799 and 1807 (plus or minus 5 years), respectively. These dates establish a search range for their birth or baptism records. Recently I found Georg's birth-baptism record in Rastatt: 21 February 1803.

Officers' dress uniforms of the Rastatt regimental cavalry.

Georg Salinger's home of origin in the marriage entry is of some interest. He is given a "prospective" citizenship in Durlach; he was "release" from the "grand ducal Catholic town parish office in Karlsruhe," and his father Leopold is from Rastatt. Likely, then, Georg was born in Rastatt at the end of the 18th Century, then a city of 3000 residents. Until 1771, Rastatt was the residence of the margrave of Baden-Baden, with a large palace at the center of the city. The residence of the margrave moved in the late 18th Century to another city, but a military garrison remained in Rastatt. Perhaps the young Georg began his military service in Rastatt and was moved then to Karlsruhe to serve the grand duke. (The city was the location for peace negotiations between France, Prussia, and Austria in the last years of the 18th Century, known as the Congrès de Rastatt. However, the negotiations had only one catastrophic result: the murder of two French diplomats and the serious wounding of a third.) I presume Georg was intending to live in Durlach, as evidenced by the parenthetical description of neuangehender Bürger von Rastatt, "prospective citizen from Rastatt."

Katharina Vogel's home of origin in the marriage entry is also of interest. Her mother's residence is given as Durlach, but the bride's residence is given as Ettlingen. Of additional interest for research is the identity of her mother's husband as "the Würzburger Marand, legal/protected citizen and last maker here [in Durlach]."

The Georg Salinger family returned to Durlach in time for the birth of their seventh child, Maria Anna, on 29 August 1843. Because Katharina would have reached 40 soon after then, it's unlikely that more children came to the family. Georg Salinger died on 4 January 1856 in Tauberbischofsheim. 

I continue research for the birth, reason for living in Ettlingen, and death of Katharina Vogel—and for information about her parents.

Leopoldine's paternal grandfather was named in her parents' marriage record: Leopold Sallinger from Rastatt. I have found the marriage of Leopold Salinger to Margaretha Mayer on 11 January 1802 in Rastatt and his death on 12 July 1821. I estimate his birth to be around 1767; similarly, I estimate Margaretha Mayer's birth to be about 1775 and her death to have been about 1850. Her paternal great-grandparents may be Joseph Salinger (about 1745-1800) and Franziska Idamann (about 1740-1800) and Georg Mayer (about 1740-1800) married 8 August 1768 to Maria Anna Maisch (about 1760-1800).


Leopoldine's maternal grandmother was identified as Katharina Vogel from Karlsruhe-Durlach, who was married to "the Würzburger Marand, legal/protected citizen and last maker [in Durlach]." I believe this indicates that Marand is a step-parent who came originally from Würzburg. The mother Katharina married Morand Würzburger on 30 May 1814 in Durlach. I estimate the elder Katharina married an unknown Vogel before 1807 in Durlach, and that she was born before 1780, probably in Durlach. However, it is possible that the younger Katharina Vogel was a birth outside of marriage (once called illegitimate). Leopoldine's maternal great grandparents may be Martin Vogel and Margaretha Wagner.

Germany Trip Diary #1

The following is a diary entry from August 8, 2017 that I have lightly edited and added material in brackets.

Trip preparation post.

Flight from Los Angeles to Düsseldorf

2017.08.06, Sunday evening in Los Angeles

I closed up all my work files and transferred them to a thumb drive and my phone, finished some yard work under the gaze of Phil Rrig, and showered after Chuck returned home from volleyball. We were out the door before noon! That fact took Mitch by surprise, and he was just tying his shoes when we arrived to pick him up.

The auto trip into Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) was a typical Sunday traffic situation—two delays getting from I-10 to I-210, then little problem until heavy traffic again on the 605 and 110 freeways, but no stalls.

With arrival at LAX by 14:45, I had plenty of time for security check and finding the gate: arriving there a solid hour in advance. The flights were atypical, but uneventful. On the 12-hour flight from LAX to DUS (Düsseldorf), my seat-mate watched films the flight long, dozing occasionally. I put stoppers in my ears, a sleep mask over my eyes, and I slept from 15 minutes after takeoff until midnight or so, more than 6 hours, After a pee break, I slept for another 2 hours or so, and I was awake from the flight over Europe, from the Atlantic shore until touchdown.

Düsseldorf to Stuttgart to Tauberbischofsheim

2018.08.07, Monday

Germany

The flight from DUS to STR (Stuttgart) was by a much smaller turbo prop. We were bussed from the gate around the terminals to our plane, which we boarded outside by rollaway stairs. The flight lasted only an hour.

My rental car, a VW Beetle Cabriole, is very nice, although the rear hatch area is too small for my luggage to fit through its opening. I'll try to remove some articles from the bag to see if it can squeeze through then.) [I later found levers to open the hatch access wide enough to allow the suitcase.]

Route from Stuttgart Flughaven to a bike shop

My first errand (to find a Fahrradgeschäft [bike shop] and buy a helmet and SPD cleats) was frustrating.

• The nearest on-the-way shop found by Google Maps was closed, or never was at the location. [The Google Maps information placed me in a suburb of Stuttgart, in the middle of a residential neighborhood. I knocked at the door, and nobody answered. I asked a deliveryman on the street if a bike shop was in the area, and he said there had never been one nearby.]
• The second shop did not take a visa card and had almost no selection of SPD cleats. [I had used Google Maps again to find a bike shop along the way to the library, and I chose one that was on one of my planned streets. It turned out the shop was pretty small, not oriented toward road bikes, but e-bikes and neighborhood biking.]

So I gave up on that for [later] following up in Tauberbischofsheim.

Route to the Württembergische Landesbibliothek

My arrival at the Württembergische Landesbibliothek [state library of Württemberg] was hampered by the building renovation, street closures, and a very hard to maneuver street layout. [Though I arrived in downtown Stuttgart quickly from the airport, taking wrong turns and finally finding a parking place took at least an additional hour.] I arrived too late to order and view books by the end of the afternoon hours. (It takes a minimum of two hours to receive books from the stacks for use in the Lesesalle [reading room].)

So I headed off to Tauberbischofsheim by 19:00 Uhr (7 p.m.), stopped unterwegs for a sandwich and juice, and arrived at my hotel —Landhotel am Mühlenwörth in Hochhausen, about 2.5 miles north of Tauberbischofsheim— as dusk turned to night.

Route from Stuttgart Flughaven to Hochheim

[Google Maps "told" me that the drive from Stuttgart to the Tauberbischofsheim area was to take about two hours, including the side trips without the visiting time at the library. I'm not sure I took exactly the route that Google devised, since I used the GPS system installed in the Cabriole.

[The route took Autobahn A27 north from Stuttgart, with a short connection via A10 to A81 that took me to the turn-off to Tauberbischofsheim. Larger towns that I bypassed included Ludwigsburg (population 93,000) and Heilbronn (pop. 124,000), and the route stops 15 miles short of reaching Würzburg (pop. 126,000). None of these towns were visible from the freeway, and I saw only a few much smaller towns along the way. For the most part, the route was through alternating field crops and thick forests that covered rolling hills.

VW Cabrio (think Mini Cooper)

[It took more than a few turns underway before I became adjusted to the German instructions from the GPS and to the amount of distance between an announcement of an upcoming turn and the actual corner. I found the German GPS system much more suitable to auto driving than the GPS in Chuck's Toyota Prius and the iPhone GPS I use in my Mazda MPV.

[Certainly, though, the Cabriole GPS system took me to the east around central Tauberbischofsheim and connected me more efficiently to the street from Tauberbischofsheim to Hochhausen. (Google Maps names this street "Pestalozziallee," though I never saw that name the many times I took the street.)]

2017.08.08, Monday, Hochhausen
Heute I am to meet Stefan Lindtner at 9 a.m. here at the hotel. Then I plan to go to the Königheim Standesamt and perhaps meet Otto Spengler afterwards.

Next day's post.