♀Anna Maria Ruhin

Anna Maria Ruhin was the wife of Andreas Degling of Neukirch parish in Kreis Niederung, East Prussia, and is known only from the index of its Evangelical church registers. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her daughter Florentina Degling (about 1778–1820).

Daughter Florentina

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.

Marriage

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 probably a sister of Maria.

Children

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. Another son, Johann Friedrich, was born on 26 October 1766 and baptized four days later, ten months after his sister Anna Maria, which is possible but close enough that one of the two years may be misread in the index. 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.

Notes

Later records

On 10 November 1797 an Andreas Daegling, a widower aged 56, married the widow Anna Sophia Riechertin at Neukirch. He was probably Anna Maria’s husband, so she had probably died by then. Her parents and her birth are not known, and the place and exact date of her death are unknown; it was probably before 10 November 1797.