♂Carl Rickert

Carl Rickert (dates unknown) was a man of Kaukehmen parish, in Kreis Niederung, East Prussia^W, known from the baptisms of three of his children, the first of them the 1803 baptism of his son Johann Friedrich, in which his family reads as part of a German minority on a register page mostly of Lithuanian-speaking families. He was the third great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Johann Friedrich Rickert (born 1803).

The records

On 20 October 1803 his wife, Florentina Degling, gave birth to a son, Johann Friedrich, who was baptized four days later, on 24 October, in the Evangelical church at Kaukehmen. The parish lay in Prussian Lithuania^W, the corner of East Prussia where much of the rural population spoke Lithuanian, and its register of those years was kept in Lithuanian under German column headings. The families entered around the Rickert baptism carry Lithuanian surnames and Lithuanian forms of given names, such as Jurgis, Jokub and Mikkelis; Carl and Florentina, with German given names, a German surname and the German feminine ending on the mother’s name, read as one of a German minority among them: the mothers Franckin and Mielekin carry the same ending. The index of the register spells the surname Kiechert, most likely a misreading of Rickert as written in the old German script^W by a Lithuanian-speaking clerk.

The same index gives the mother’s maiden name as “Deglingin”. The -in ending is the German feminine suffix, applied on that page to every German-named mother, so the family name is Degling. The 1803 entry itself, which would also give Carl’s village, his trade and the child’s godparents, is known only from the index of the register, on which the name rests. Two later entries in the register give the mother as Florentina, born Deglingin.

The first is the baptism of a daughter, Johanne Sophia, born on 30 December 1804 and baptized on 1 January 1805, which the index of the register dates a year early. The entry writes the father’s name as Carl Riechert and calls him an Arrendator, a leaseholder, and its place column reads Lang Sköpen. The godparents were a Friedrich Riechert, a Johanne Friederique Lessingin and a Euphrosine Deglingin. The second is the baptism at Neukirch of a son, Wilhelm Gustav, born on 22 January 1813 and baptized on 29 January, whose father is again written Carl Riechert; the word that follows his name, apparently Eigenkäthner, a smallholder, is not certain. The godparents were a Carl Noetzel and a Frau Boettcherin. Neither entry gives Carl’s age or names his parents.

Kaukehmen was renamed Kuckerneese in 1938 and, since 1945, has been Yasnoye in the Kaliningrad region of Russia. No record of Carl’s own birth, marriage or death has been found.

Notes

An online family tree gives him the name Carl Riechert, a birth year of 1770, a marriage about 1800 at Kaukehmen, and three further children born between 1801 and 1813: Jacob Carl, Johanne Sophia and Wilhelm Gustav. That account is compiled, not drawn from a record, and it fails its own arithmetic, since it gives Florentina a birth year of 1788, which would make her about twelve at the marriage. Two of the three further children, Johanne Sophia and Wilhelm Gustav, have since been found in the register, but the third, Jacob Carl, and the dates of Carl’s birth and marriage are not confirmed by the register.

Probable parents

Carl’s parents are given as Johann George Riechert and Anna Sophia Koppin, of Groß Neuendorf in the parish of Neukirch. That is probable rather than proven, because no record names Carl’s parents. The case rests on the families around him. In 1797 a widow, Anna Sophia Riechertin, married Andreas Degling, probably the father of the Florentina Degling whom Carl married a few years later; if Carl was Anna Sophia’s son, he married his stepsister. In December 1804 Carl was a leaseholder at Lang Sköpen, which appears to be the village the 1797 marriage entry gives for Andreas Degling. He named the daughter born at the end of 1804 Johanne Sophia. Two of the godparents of his son Wilhelm Gustav in 1813 were a Noetzel and a Frau Boettcherin, as at a baptism in the Kopp household at Groß Neuendorf a week earlier; Koppin is the feminine form of Kopp. None of these ties proves the link, and another Carl of about the right age, baptized in 1777 to Johann Michael Richert and Erdmuth, has not been ruled out.