♂Jacob Andersen

Jacob Andersen (about 1712 – 13 May 1775) was a farmer who held a full farm at Vesterhøjst, in the parish of Højst in the Duchy of Schleswig^W, where he and his wife Maren raised three children. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Peter Jacobsen (1755–1798).

Family

Jacob was the son of Anders Jespersen and Anna Jespersen of Rørkær, in the parish of Hostrup. His elder sister Trincke also made her life in Højst parish, as the wife of Søren Hansen, who held a quarter-farm at Østerhøjst.

He married Maren, whose own surname is not known, and they made their home at Vesterhøjst, written Westerhoist in the German-language registers of the parish. Their eldest son, Anders, was born about 1750. A second son, Peter, was born on 18 May 1755 and baptized at Højst on Trinity Sunday, 25 May, and a daughter, Anne, was born between 21 and 22 December 1761 and baptized on 26 December. All three were confirmed at Højst between 1768 and 1777, each entered as a child of Jacob Andersen.

Farm and death

In the census of 1769 Jacob was listed at Vesterhøjst as a married Bohlsmann, and at his death he was called a Bohlbesitzer: he held a Bohl, or bol, a full farm by the Schleswig reckoning. He died at Vesterhøjst on 13 May 1775, aged 62 and a half, and was buried at Højst on 21 May, leaving his wife Maren and their three children, Anders, Peter and Anna.

When their son Peter married at Tinglev on 28 December 1794, the register named his parents as the former Hufner, or full farmer, Jacob Jacobsen of Vesterhøjst and Ellen Petersen. This later record gives different names from all the earlier ones, and since Jacob died married to Maren, it is taken to misname both parents.

Notes

• His burial gives his age as 62 and a half years, which places his birth in about November 1712; the 1769 census gives his age only as over 48.
• The burial names his parents as Anders Jespersen and Anna Andersen of Rørkær (written Rohkarr). In this register a married woman’s second name is formed from her husband’s forename; the burial of his sister Trincke Sörens, widow of the quarter-Hufner Søren Hansen of Østerhøjst, on 3 February 1782, aged 81 less a few weeks, names the same parents and the same village and gives the mother as Anna Andersen née Jespersen.
• Peter was baptized as Per, the son of “Jacob Andersen u. Ehefrau Maren aus Westerhoist”. Peter Jacobsen of the Tinglev records died on 16 March 1798 aged “43 Jahr weniger 2 Monathe”, which fits a birth on 18 May 1755 to the month, and the godfather at the baptism of Peter’s son in 1795 was Andreas Jacobsen of Vesterhøjst, his brother Anders. The Højst confirmations from 1763 to 1789 show no other children of a Jacob at Vesterhøjst.
• The 1794 entry most likely gave the father his son’s surname, Jacobsen. Jacob had then been dead nineteen years, which fits the register’s “former” Hufner.