♂Christian Zehringer

Christian Zehringer (died 1774) was most likely born at Kirchzarten, in the Dreisam valley east of Freiburg im Breisgau, and made his home some forty kilometres to the southwest at Bamlach, a parish on the Upper Rhine, where he married and had his children baptized. He was probably the fourth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his son Christian Zehringer.

Marriage and family

Christian Zehringer and Maria Ursula Dossenbach, who was born at Rheinweiler in 1727, married at Bamlach in 1756; Rheinweiler belonged to the Bamlach parish. A compiled village family book names her parents as Ursus Dossenbach and Anna Maria Fräulin. Two indexes of the marriage entry disagree on the day, giving 5 February and 2 May. The couple had six known children. Five were baptized in the Bamlach parish between 1759 and 1769: Udalricus, Anna Maria, Christian, and two daughters named Joanna, the second most likely given the name of a sister who had died. A sixth, Catharina, was born in October 1773, as the same compiled book gives.

Notes

The marriage of 1756

One index of the marriage entry gives 5 February 1756 at Bamlach, calls the groom Christianus Zehringer, single, born at Kirchzarten, and the bride Maria Ursula Dossenbach, born at Rheinweiler. A second index of the Catholic register gives 2 May 1756 and calls the bride Ursula Dossenbach. Neither names the couple’s parents. Both are index entries only, so the tree gives the year alone, and his birthplace rests on the first index. The compiled village family book gives the year 1756 only and places the marriage at Rheinweiler, not Bamlach; the tree keeps Bamlach.

His son Christian

The baptism of a Christianus Zehringer on 15 August 1764, son of Christian Zehringer and Maria Ursula Dossenbach, appears in the index of the Bamlach register. It fits the Christian Zehringer who married Jakobea Spony at Bamlach in 1786: a Christian Zehringer buried at Bamlach on 25 September 1800, aged 36, was born in 1764. But another Christian Zähringer, married to Elisabetha Merz, was living after 1800, and his birth year is not known, so the 1764 baptism could be his. The link from the younger Christian to this couple is therefore probable rather than proved.

Birth and death

Zähringer was a common name in the Dreisam valley, and the Catholic register index holds several baptisms of a Christian Zehringer in the 1720s and 1730s with no parish named; nothing ties any of them to this man, so his birth date and parents are not known. The family book gives his origin as “in Kirchzarten” and names no parents. A church-book burial of a Christian Zehringer dated 22 August 1774 is also recorded; the family book places his death at Rheinweiler.