♀Anna Maria Fräulin

Anna Maria Fräulin (1701–1773) was a native of Bamlach, a village on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, who married Ursus Dossenbach in 1723 and was his wife for fifty years. She was probably the fifth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her daughter Maria Ursula Dossenbach (born 1727).

Early life

Anna Maria is thought to have been born at Bamlach in 1701. Who her parents were is not settled: two couples in the parish, each with a husband named Martin Fräulin, were having children baptized there in those years, and each had a daughter Anna Maria, one baptized in 1701 and the other in 1704. The neighboring village of Rheinweiler belonged to the Bamlach parish, and the baptisms, marriages and burials of both villages were entered in the Bamlach church book.

Marriage and family

Ursus Dossenbach and Anna Maria Fräulin married at Bamlach in November 1723, when he was twenty-seven, and made their home at Rheinweiler. Between December 1724 and February 1749 they had ten children baptized at Bamlach, eight daughters and two sons, Hans Jörg and Franciscus Xaverius. Their second child, Maria Ursula, was born at Rheinweiler in 1727 and married Christian Zehringer at Bamlach in 1756. A daughter Helena, baptized in May 1735, most likely died young, since the name was given again to a daughter baptized in March 1738; this second Helena died in 1753, at about fifteen.

Anna Maria died at Rheinweiler in 1773 and was presumably buried at Bamlach on 26 November that year, fifty years after the wedding. Ursus survived her and is said to have died at Rheinweiler in 1781, at about eighty-five.

Notes

Sources of the dates

The village family book^W is Felix Pöschl and Ingrid Kopf, Ortssippenbuch Bamlach-Rheinweiler 1630–1810 (Basel, 2006), online at online-ofb.de/bamlach, a compiled reconstitution of the two villages’ families from the parish registers. It gives years rather than full dates. It gives her birth at Bamlach in 1701 and her death at Rheinweiler in 1773, names her husband as Ursus Dosenbach (1696–1781), and lists their ten children, from Maria Barbara in 1724 to Agatha in 1749, among them a first Helena, born in 1735 and dead before 1738, and a second, who lived from 1738 to 1753.

Her parents

The family book places her as the daughter of Martinus Fräulin (1670–1742) of Bamlach and Maria Bassler of Bellingen, who died in 1729, but the compilers add that she perhaps came rather from the marriage of Martin Fräulin and Elisabetha Rotin. FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book shows why the question is open. Two couples with a husband named Martin Fräulin were having children baptized there at the same time: Martin and Maria Basler, whose children included an Anna Maria baptized on 1 January 1701, and Martin and Elisabetha Roth, whose children included an Anna Maria baptized on 3 September 1704. The index holds no infant burial and no other marriage for either girl. Her last child, Agatha, was baptized in February 1749, when a mother born in 1701 would have been forty-eight and one born in 1704 forty-four; that leans towards 1704 but does not decide it. Her parents are left open here, and the family book’s year of birth is kept.

Her name

The index entries write her surname in many forms: Freylin at the marriage, Frey, Freyl, Freuler, Freül, Freyler and Freuwl at her children’s baptisms, and Fregl at her burial. The family book writes Fräulin, the form kept here, and gives Freüwlin as a variant.

The marriage

FamilySearch’s index in the collection Germany, Marriages, 1558–1929 gives the marriage of Ursus Dossenbach and Maria Freylin at Bamlach in November 1723, without a day, and a second FamilySearch index of the Bamlach church book holds the same marriage. Neither names the couple’s parents.

Her burial

The burial of an Anna Maria Fregl at Bamlach on 26 November 1773 is known from FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book, in the year the family book gives for her death. The entry gives no age and names no husband, so it is taken to be hers on the forenames, the year and the surname, a variant of the Freyl of her children’s baptisms.