♂Benedictus Carlin

Benedictus Carlin (born 1637) was a villager of Rheinweiler, on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, who married Anastasia Erhard there in 1659 and had eight children with her over the next seventeen years. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Joannes Jacobus Carlin (1662–1717).

Early life

Benedictus was probably born at Rheinweiler in 1637, a son of Geörg Carlin and Anna Klein. His father died in 1653, when Benedictus was about sixteen, and his mother in 1662. Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, the neighboring village, and its baptisms, marriages and burials were entered in the Bamlach church book.

Marriage and family

Benedictus Carlin and Anastasia Erhard married at Rheinweiler on 27 January 1659. She is said to have come from Bruebach, across the Rhine in Alsace. Their first child, a daughter, Anna Maria, was baptized at Bamlach on 12 February 1660, and seven sons followed: Joannes Jacobus in January 1662, Georgius in 1663, Benedict, who bore his father’s name, in 1665, Joannes in 1667, a second Joannes in 1670, Joannes Georgius in 1673 and Nicolaus in 1676. The first Joannes seems to have died young, before the second was given his name. Nicolaus, the youngest, is said to have been baptized at Arlesheim, near Basel, rather than at Bamlach. When Benedictus and Anastasia died is not known.

Notes

Sources of the dates

The village family book^W is Felix Pöschl and Ingrid Kopf, Ortssippenbuch Bamlach-Rheinweiler 1630–1810, 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 his birth at Rheinweiler in 1637, names his parents as Geörg Carlin, who died at Rheinweiler in 1653, and Anna Klein, who died there in 1662, and gives his marriage at Rheinweiler in 1659 to Anastasia Erhard of Bruebach in Alsace, with the eight children. It gives the first Joannes as dead before 1670. His own baptism is not in the index of the Bamlach church book, so the year of his birth rests on the family book alone; another online tree’s date of 3 March 1637 at Bamlach cites no record and is not used.

The church-book index

FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book, in the Freiburg Catholic Church Records collection, gives the marriage on 27 January 1659, with the bride written Anastasia Carder, most likely a misreading of Erhard. It holds the baptisms of seven of the eight children, with the parents written Benedict or Benedictus Carl and Anastasia Erhart or Erhard: Anna Maria on 12 February 1660, Joannes Jacobus on 15 January 1662, Georgius on 16 September 1663, Benedict on 1 August 1665, Joannes on 17 July 1667, the second Joannes on 23 January 1670, and Nicolaus in 1676, with no day. Joannes Georgius, born in 1673, is known only from the family book. The register pages themselves are not available.

Nicolaus at Arlesheim

The family book notes of Nicolaus “fuit Arlishemi baptisatus”, “he was baptised at Arlesheim”, yet the Bamlach index carries an entry for him in 1676. The records do not explain the difference.

The daughter Anna Maria

The family book makes the daughter born in 1660 the Anna Maria Carlin who married Josephus Dossenbach at Rheinweiler in 1693 and whose last child was baptized in January 1715. A mother baptized in 1660 would have been nearly fifty-five then, so the book has most likely joined two women of the same name, and that identification is not followed here.