♀Maren (surname unknown)

Maren (dates unknown) was the wife of Jacob Andersen, who held a full farm at Vesterhøjst, in the parish of Højst in the Duchy of Schleswig^W, and the mother of children born there in 1755 and 1761. She was the fifth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Peter Jacobsen (1755–1798).

Marriage and family

Her parents, her birth and her maiden name are not known. She was Jacob’s wife by 1755, when their son Peter was born at Vesterhøjst on 18 May and baptized at Højst on Trinity Sunday, 25 May, as the son of Jacob Andersen and his wife Maren. A daughter, Anne, was born between 21 and 22 December 1761 and baptized on 26 December. With an elder son, Anders, born about 1750, they were the three children who survived Jacob when he died at Vesterhøjst on 13 May 1775, aged 62 and a half; his burial records that he left his wife, Maren, and the children Anders, Peter and Anna. She was then still living, and her death is not known.

Notes

• The baptism of 1755 enters the parents as “Jacob Andersen u. Ehefrau Maren aus Westerhoist”, and that of 1761 as “Jacob Andersen u. Ehefrau Marren aus W. Hoist”.
• The same register gives other wives and widows a name from their husband’s forename: in 1778 a “Maren Jacobs” who was the wife of Jacob Nissen and the daughter of Hans Paulsen, and in 1782 a “Maren Jacobs geborne Matthiesen”, widow of Jacob Adams.
• No burial of hers appears in the Højst register between May 1775 and January 1784.

Her name

At Jacob’s burial she is written Maren Jacobs. The Højst register formed a wife’s or widow’s second name from her husband’s forename, so the name means Jacob’s Maren and says nothing of her father.

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.