♀Anna Schmidler

Anna Schmidler lived in the parish of Bamlach, on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, where her three children with her husband Hans Spony, called the elder, were baptized in the last years of the Thirty Years’ War^W. She was possibly the seventh great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her son Joannes Spony (died 1726).

Family

Where she came from is not known, and she was probably not a native of the two villages of the parish. Their son Joannes was born at Rheinweiler and baptized on 28 October 1641, the feast of Saints Simon and Jude. Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, the neighboring village, and its baptisms were entered in the Bamlach church book. Dorothea followed on Palm Sunday 1645 and Marcus on 25 January 1648. Dorothea married twice and was buried at Bamlach on 21 February 1720. Joannes may have been the man of that name who married Jacobe Haug of Großkembs in 1666 and died at Rheinweiler in 1726, an aged widower.

Notes

Her name and origin

The village family book^W of Bamlach and Rheinweiler, a compiled reconstitution of the two villages’ families from the parish registers of 1630 to 1810 (online at online-ofb.de/bamlach), enters her as Anna Schmidler, also Schmidlerin (the feminine form of the surname), with no dates and no parents. She is the only person of that surname in the book, which is why she is taken here to have come from elsewhere. Her own baptism, marriage and burial are not in FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book; her name appears there only at the baptisms of her three children. The records do not say where she came from.

The children

The family book lists exactly three children of Hans Sponi “senior” and Anna Schmidler: Joannes in 1641, Dorothea (1645–1720) and Marcus in 1648. FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book holds the three baptisms, the father written Hans Spon, and no fourth child of the couple. Another couple of the parish, Joannes Spon and Anna Baumän, had children baptized in the same years, Caspar in 1640 and Ursula and Bartholomaeus in 1643. They were a separate household.

The family book gives Dorothea’s baptism “uff Palmarum”, on Palm Sunday, and dates it 30 March 1645. The day is not settled, and only the feast and the year are given here.

The link to Joannes Spony

The family book keeps the Joannes baptized in 1641 apart from the Joannes Sponi of Rheinweiler who married Jacobe Haug in 1666 and died in 1726; its compilers did not join them. The 1641 child is the only Joannes in FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book between 1630 and 1650 apart from a Joannes Georgius (died 1671), born in 1643 to Hans Sponi the younger and Maria Emminger. A boy baptized in 1641 would have been about twenty-four at the marriage in 1666 and about eighty-four in 1726, which fits the family book’s “bejahrter Witwer”, aged widower. Against the match, the family book also holds the burial of a “Joan. Sponi” in February 1675, with no age and no wife named, who could be the child of 1641. An age at either burial would settle it, and the index records none. A family tree on FamilySearch joins the 1641 child to the husband of Jacobe Haug; the link is given here as possible only.