♀Gertrud Spony

Gertrud Spony (about 1751 – 17 February 1812) is known by name, from a modern index of a marriage celebrated at Bamlach, a village on the Upper Rhine in the Grand Duchy of Baden^W, in January 1810, and from the Rheinweiler death register of 1812. She was the third great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her son Louis Bosler (born about 1786).

Life

The couple probably married at Bamlach, in Baden, Germany, on 12 August 1780. In the index of that marriage the groom is written Fidelis Bassler, single and born at Rheinweiler, and the bride Gertrud Sponi, born at Bamlach.

Two FamilySearch indexes record the marriage at Bamlach, on 22 January 1810, of Louis Bosler, aged 23, and Magdalena Zähringer, aged 19, both from the neighboring village of Rheinweiler; the indexes write them as Aloysius Basler and Magdalena Zehringer. One of the two names the groom’s parents as Fidel Basler and Gertrud Spony. The register page itself is not available, so the couple’s place in the family rests on that index alone. The bride and groom are the couple who appear in the Rheinweiler birth registers of the 1820s as Aloys Basler, a farmer, and Magdalena Zähringer, with at least nine children, four of them born between 1820 and 1828.

The Rheinweiler death register records a woman written there as Gertraud Basler, born Sponÿ, a citizen of Rheinweiler. She died on 17 February 1812 at the age of 61 and was buried on 19 February. No husband is named in the entry.

A FamilySearch index of the Bamlach church book probably records her baptism there on 28 March 1751. The index names her father as Joseph and her mother as Elisabetha Reymann, the same given names the family book gives for her parents, and it writes her surname as Syiny, a misreading explained under Notes.

A compiled family book for the two villages, the Ortssippenbuch of Bamlach and Rheinweiler (Pöschl and Kopf, 2006), gives her birth at Rheinweiler in 1751, not at Bamlach as the 1780 marriage index and the baptism index have it, and names her parents as Josephus Spony and Elisabetha Reymann (1717–1763). Josephus is described there as a widower, and he and Elisabetha married in 1744. Elisabetha’s sister was the mother of Jakobea Spony, which made Jakobea Gertrud’s first cousin; Jakobea’s daughter Magdalena Zähringer is the bride of the 1810 marriage above, so the two lines meet again there. Her given name also reappears: Louis’s daughter born at Rheinweiler on 23 February 1822 was named Gertrud.

Notes

The marriage was indexed twice by FamilySearch. The groom’s parents come from one indexing, in the collection Germany, Marriages, 1558–1929, which writes his mother’s name Gertrusd; no scan of the 1810 Bamlach register is online.

The tree keeps Louis Bosler under the spelling Bosler, which his son’s family took up in America; in Baden the name was written Basler.

The death entry is the only record of her death that is known. Her age of 61 places her birth about 1751, and the baptism entry of 28 March 1751 agrees with that. The death register does not name her husband; the link to the Gertrud Spony named in the 1810 index rests on the maiden name Sponÿ and on the 1780 marriage index, which names her husband as Fidelis Bassler.

The 1780 marriage

The marriage of 12 August 1780 is known from one FamilySearch index, in the collection Germany, Marriages, 1558–1929; the register page itself is not available. The tree places it at Bamlach, Müllheim, Baden, Germany. The Freiburg Catholic Church Records index the same marriage again, as Gertrud Spon and Fidelis Bassler. No parents are named for either of them.

Her parents

The parents come from the Ortssippenbuch Bamlach-Rheinweiler 1630–1810 by Felix Pöschl and Ingrid Kopf (Basel: Edition Gesowip, 2006), online at online-ofb.de/bamlach. The book is a compiled reconstitution from the two parishes’ registers; it gives years, and months only sometimes. Its entry for Gertrud gives her birth at Rheinweiler in 1751 and names her father as Josephus Spony, marked as a widower, with no birth year or parents for him, and her mother as Elisabetha Reimann (1717–1763), the book’s spelling of the tree’s Reymann. The same entry gives their marriage in 1744 and their other children: Joannes (1744–1807), Anna Maria (1749), and Jacobus (1754–1770), who drowned as a youth.

The 1780 marriage index gives the bride’s birth at Bamlach, so the two sources differ on the place. The body gives the book’s place and the index’s alongside it.

Elisabetha’s sister Anna Maria Reimann is named in the same book as the mother of Jakobea Spony (born 1766), who was therefore Gertrud’s first cousin. The bride of the 1810 marriage, Magdalena Zähringer, is tied to Jakobea as her mother by a Freiburg baptism index of June 1790, not by the Bamlach-Rheinweiler book; that link rests on the index alone.

The baptism of 1751

The baptism is known from one FamilySearch index of the Bamlach church book, which writes the child as Gertrudis Syiny, baptized 28 March 1751. The register page itself is not online for public view. The index gives the parents as Joseph Syiny and Elisabetha Reymänn; the mother’s name matches the tree’s Elisabetha Reymann, and the father’s given name Joseph matches Josephus Spony.

The surname Syiny is a misreading of Sponi by the indexer. The given names of both parents, the mother’s maiden name and the year all match, and no other Gertrud baptism of those years is indexed, so the tree’s spelling Spony stands. The index places the baptism at Bamlach, where the 1780 marriage index also puts her birth; the family book gives the birth at Rheinweiler.