♂Andreas Degling

Andreas Degling (born about 1740) was a man of Neukirch parish in Kreis Niederung, East Prussia, known from the Evangelical church registers of the parish between 1740 and the 1790s. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his daughter Florentina Degling (about 1778–1820).

Birth and parents

The Neukirch baptismal register records, on Septuagesima^W Sunday, 14 February 1740, the baptism of a son, Johann Andreas, written Johann Andreas Dögling, to Johann Dögling and Anna. His parents had married at Neukirch on 13 September 1736; the register writes the bride’s surname Br..assin, which read with the baptisms of 1740 and 1741 gives Brotassin or Brotazin, the vowels uncertain. The records suggest that this child is probably the Andreas Degling of the later records: he is the only Andreas Degling of those years in the index, and the age of 56 given at the marriage of 1797 fits a birth in 1740 to within a year. On 17 September 1741 the same parents, Johann Degling and Anna, had a son Johann Michael baptized at Neukirch, who was probably Andreas’s brother. An elder brother, Christian, had been baptized on 18 January 1739.

Marriage and family

On 12 July 1778 a daughter, Florentina, was baptized at Neukirch; the index of the parish register names her parents as Andreas Doegling and Anna Maria. The identification of this Florentina with the Florentina Degling who died at Tilsit in 1820, aged 42, is probable rather than proven: the year of the baptism is the one her age at death gives, and no marriage entry naming her father has been found. The Neukirch marriage register lists, as entry 48 of 1765 and above the heading for 1766, the marriage of Andreas Degling, of a village that cannot be read, and Maria Ruhin of Jedwilkaiten; no day is given, and the index had placed the marriage in 1766. Her full name, Anna Maria, appears at the later baptisms. Identifying the bride with that mother rests on the same husband and parish and on the first baptism following in January 1766. The index also records a David Daegling whose wife was a Ruhin, in 1787, a reminder that more than one Degling married a Ruhin. In 1766 a Johann Michael Degling married a Lowisa Ruhin, the bride also of Jedwilkaiten and the groom apparently of the same village as Andreas; the groom was probably Andreas’s brother Johann Michael, baptized in 1741, and the bride a sister of Maria. Between 1766 and 1778 the index places five children with Andreas and an Anna Maria, Florentina the last of them; another, Erdmuth, was baptized on 21 January 1776 and buried on 21 November 1776. The earliest of these baptisms, in January 1766, gives the father as Johann Andreas, which may have been his full name. A Johanna Dorothea Degling, aged 20, who married Johann Gottfried Schack on 17 October 1800 and named Andreas Degling as her father, may have been another daughter.

Later records

On 14 January 1790 the index records the burial of Andreas, a son of Andreas Degling, which suggests that he was still living then. On 10 November 1797 an Andreas Daegling, aged 56, married Anna Sophia Riechertin, aged 50, at Neukirch. The register calls the groom a widower and a Kölmer, a free farmer, at Skoepen, and the bride a widow. He was probably the same man, since his age points to a birth about 1741, within a year of the baptism of 1740, and the family’s other Andreas, his son, had been buried in 1790. The bride’s surname, Riechert with the German feminine ending -in, is the spelling the same index uses for the family of Carl Rickert, whom Florentina later married, and since she was a widow it was most likely her late husband’s name. The tree carries Carl’s parents as Johann George Riechert and Anna Sophia Koppin, probably but not provably; on that reading the bride was Carl’s mother, and Carl married his stepsister. No record names Carl’s parents, so the connection between the two families is an inference. The date and place of his death are not known.