♀Agnetha Caspersen

Agnetha Caspersen (died before 9 December 1815) was the wife of Peter Nielsen, an Inste or landless lodger in the village of Hostrup, near Tønder in the Duchy of Schleswig^W. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Catharina Peters (born 1784).

Marriage and family

She appears in several entries of the Hostrup parish register, all written in German. The first is the baptism of her daughter, born at Hostrup on 13 August 1784 and baptized on 20 August, which names the parents as the Inste Peter Nielsen and Agnetha, née Caspersen, and enters the child as Cathrina Caspers Petersen, carrying her mother’s family name as a middle name. One of the three godparents was an Anna Caspersen of the nearby hamlet of Rørkær. The second is the daughter’s marriage to Laust Jensen on 9 December 1815, which calls both of her parents “the late”, so Agnetha had died by then. Her own baptism and burial have not been identified. Her marriage is the Hostrup register entry of 26 January 1782 (no. 3), in which the register writes her name “Agnet”: Peter Nielsen of Rørkær, son of the Inste Niels Lorentzen and Annmary, née Petersen, married Agnet Caspersen of Rørkær, daughter of the Halbbohlsmann (half-bol farmer) Caspar Andersen and Botilla Peters, whose given name is hard to read in this entry but is given as Botilla in her burial record. That burial, at Hostrup in December 1788, names eight surviving children, Agnetha among them, so a second record ties her to these parents; her brothers and sisters were baptized at Hostrup between 1738 and 1756. Her surname Caspersen is a patronymic from her father Caspar, not a fixed family name. The wedding came two and a half years before her daughter’s birth.

Widowhood

Her husband, a cottager and joiner at Rørkær, died on 21 February 1793 and was buried at Hostrup on 27 February. The register entry for his burial names her as his widow and lists three surviving children: Nicolaj, Catharina and An Botilla. The daughter An Botilla carries the name of Agnetha’s own mother, Botilla Peters. On 4 September 1793, six and a half months after her husband’s death, Agnetha bore a fourth child, a son named Peder Nielsen in the baptismal register, who was baptized on 8 September. The first godfather was Peter Caspersen of Rørkær, her brother. Nothing shows when Agnetha died, only that it was before December 1815.

Notes

The 1815 marriage entry names the bride’s mother as Agatha rather than Agnetha, and gives her a maiden name after “geb.” that has not been deciphered; it is not Caspersen. The baptism of 1784, written in her lifetime and with a Caspersen among the godparents, is the clearer record and is followed here. A family chart compiled in 1994 called her Agatha Torgers, with its compiler’s own question mark; no record supports that name.