♀Elisabetha Reymann

Elisabetha Reymann (1717–1763) was a native of Rheinweiler, a village on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, who married Josephus Spony in 1744 and was the mother of four children baptized at Bamlach in the next ten years. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her daughter Gertrud Spony (1751–1812).

Early life

Elisabetha was born at Rheinweiler in 1717 and was probably baptized at Bamlach on 15 August that year, a daughter of Josephus Reymann and Maria Habin of Bamlach. Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, the neighboring village, and its baptisms, marriages and burials were entered in the Bamlach church book. She was one of seven children baptized to her parents between 1714 and 1732, among them her younger sister Maria Anna Reymann (1724–1799). Their mother died in 1734, when Elisabetha was about seventeen.

Marriage and family

Josephus Spony and Elisabetha Reymann married in 1744 at Rheinweiler, by the village family book^W of the two places; the index of the Bamlach register gives the wedding in February 1744 at Bamlach. Josephus is said to have been a widower already, and his first wife is not known. Their first child, Joannes, was baptized at Bamlach on 13 December 1744, ten months after the wedding, and Anna Maria, Gertrud and Jacobus followed between 1749 and 1754. Elisabetha is said to have died at Rheinweiler in 1763, when the youngest child, Jacobus, was about nine.

Lines of descent

Elisabetha’s line to Ora runs through her daughter Gertrud Spony, whose son Louis Bosler (1787–1831) married Magdalena Zähringer at Bamlach on 22 January 1810; their son Louis Oliver Bosler (1825–1909) was Ora’s great-grandfather. The bride of 1810 was most likely the granddaughter of Elisabetha’s sister Maria Anna, through Maria Anna’s daughter Jakobea Spony (born 1766), so the 1810 wedding joined two lines descended from Josephus Reymann and Maria Habin.

Notes

Sources of the dates

The village family book is Felix Pöschl and Ingrid Kopf, Ortssippenbuch Bamlach-Rheinweiler 1630–1810 (Basel, 2006), 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 writes her name Elisabetha Reimann, gives her birth at Rheinweiler in 1717 and her death there in 1763, and lists her among the seven children of Josephus Reimann, who died in January 1767, and Maria Habin of Bamlach, who died in 1734. Her death in 1763 rests on the family book alone.

Her baptism

The baptism of 15 August 1717 is known from FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book, which writes her name Elisabetha Reyman and gives the same parents as the family book; the register page itself is not open to public view. The same index holds the baptisms of all seven children of the couple, from Sebastianus in 1714 to Antonius in 1732, and they are the seven the family book lists.

The marriage

The family book gives the marriage as 1744 at Rheinweiler, and this page keeps that year and place. A FamilySearch index of the Bamlach register, in the collection Germany, Marriages, 1558–1929, gives it in February 1744 at Bamlach, with the groom written Josephus Sponi, born at Bamlach, and the bride Elisabetha Reyman, born at Rheinweiler. The family book marks Josephus “vid.”, its abbreviation for a man who was a widower at the marriage it lists, and names no first wife. The index marks the groom single, but the collection enters every Sponi groom as single, including men the family book records as widowers, so the word is a default and does not contradict the family book.

The children

The family book gives the children as Joannes (1744–1807), Anna Maria (1749), Gertrud (1751–1812) and Jacobus (1754–1770), who drowned as a youth. FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book holds these four baptisms and no other child of the couple: Joannes on 13 December 1744, Anna Maria on 4 January 1749, Gertrud on 28 March 1751, written Gertrudis Syiny, and Jacobus on 23 July 1754, written Sponis. The index entry for Anna Maria gives her the surname Dossenbach, with a mother written Elisabetha Reymän, while an adjacent entry of the same day, for an Anna Maria Sponi, names Josephus Sponi with a mother written Mar Eva Kab; the mothers of the two entries appear to have been crossed in the index.