♂Caspar Andersen

Caspar Andersen (died before December 1788) was a landholding farmer at Rørkær in the parish of Hostrup, near Tønder in the Duchy of Schleswig^W, and the father of eight children. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Agnetha Caspersen (died before 1815).

Rørkær

He married Botilla Peters, and the couple’s children were baptized at Hostrup between December 1738 and October 1756, all as children of Rørkær. In 1782 the marriage register calls him a Halbbohlsmann, a half-bol farmer; in 1788 the burial entry for his wife calls him a Hufner, a landholding farmer, and weyland, “late”, so he had died by then. The year of his death is not known. His parents are not known, and his own baptism and burial have not been identified.

His daughter

On 26 January 1782 his daughter Agnet Caspersen of Rørkær married Peter Nielsen of Rørkær, son of the Inste (landless lodger) Niels Lorentzen and Annmary, née Petersen, so a landholding farmer’s daughter married the son of a lodger. Botilla’s burial in December 1788 names eight surviving children, Agnetha among them, which ties her to this couple a second time. The name Caspersen that Agnetha carried is a patronymic formed from his given name, not a fixed family surname, and it passed on again when her daughter was baptized at Hostrup in August 1784 as Cathrina Caspers Petersen.

Notes

• The baptisms write his name as Casper Andersen or Casper Andresen; the spelling Caspar follows the 1782 marriage entry.
• Agnetha’s own baptism has not been identified, and one of the eight children, a son Peter, has no baptism among those found.