♀Anna Christina Nissen

Anna Christina Nissen (about 1794 – 28 July 1865) was a farmer’s wife from Brodersby in Angeln who came with her husband, Thomas Hinrich Thomsen, to Lundsgaard in Højst parish, North Schleswig, where two of her sons married two Hansen sisters. She was the third great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Peter Nicolai Thomsen.

Life

The census of 1845, in a published transcription, lists her at Lundsgaard as the wife of the farmer Thomas Hinrich Thomsen, aged 51, born at Brodersby in the district of Schleswig. That places her birth about 1794. The couple’s eldest son, Claus Peter, was also born at Brodersby, about 1814, so the marriage was probably held there; it is not in the Højst register for 1810 to 1814. The later children are recorded as born at Norderfahrenstedt, a village in Fahrenstedt parish in Angeln (now part of Böklund). The family had moved north to Højst parish by 1840.

Her husband died on 13 November 1850 and was buried on 21 November, and she was widowed from that day. The Højst burial register names her as Anna Christina, born Nissen, “from Nørre Fahrenstedt in Angeln”, the village where her younger children were born, and records that of their seven children six were living in 1850. She died a widow at Lundsgaard on 28 July 1865 and was buried at Højst on 2 August 1865, aged 71.

The burial entry of 1865 calls her the daughter of the farmer Claus Nissen and Margrethe Dorthea Nissen of Brodersby. It says that seven children were born of her marriage and that four of them were living that year: Claus Peter at Lundsgaard, Peter Nicolai at Øster-Højst, Peter Hinrich at Abild, and a married daughter, the wife of Nikolaj Nikolajsen in Ladelund parish.

Her son Peter Nicolai married Anna Magdalena Hansen at Højst on 2 December 1842, and in that entry she appears as “Anna Christina, geb. Nissen”, the wife of Thomas Hinrich Thomsen “auf Lundsgaarde”. On 11 July 1845 another son, Peter Hinrich, married the bride’s sister Ingeborg Hansen in the same church, so the two couples’ children were double first cousins. Her surname passed down the family: a grandson born at Alslev in 1851 was baptized Peter Nissen Thomsen.

Notes

Her parentage rests on the burial entry of 1865, which places her parents at Brodersby. A Nissen family farmed at Lundsgaard in Højst parish in the 1810s, but the records do not link it to her. A census index for 1860 lists “Anna Christina Nissen, 66, Widow” at Højst, so she was still living there nine years after her husband’s death and some fifteen years after the census of 1845. Two girls named Andersen, aged 17 and 11, are listed in the same household; the index does not state their relationship to her. The burial entry of 1865 enters her under the Danish form “Anne Kristine Tomsen, født Nissen”, and writes two of the sons as Peter Nikolaj and Peter Henrik.