♀Maria Anna Reymann

Maria Anna Reymann (1724–1799) was a native of Rheinweiler, a village on the Upper Rhine in Baden, who married Johann Jakob Spony at Bamlach in 1763 and was the mother of two daughters born in the next three years. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her daughter Jakobea Spony (born 1766).

Marriage and family

Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, the neighboring village, and its baptisms, marriages and burials were entered in the Bamlach church book. A compiled village family book for the two places gives her birth at Rheinweiler in 1724 and her death there in 1799, and names her parents as Josephus Reymann, who died in January 1767, and Maria Habin of Bamlach, who died in 1734. The index of the Bamlach church book probably records her own baptism there on 28 March 1724, with the same parents.

On 26 June 1763, by the parish index, Johann Jakob Spony married Maria Anna Reymann at Bamlach; both bride and groom were natives of Rheinweiler. The marriage index names the groom as single, but that is a default the collection applies to Sponi grooms, not a statement about his status; the compiled village family book gives him as a widower.

Their first daughter, Maria Anna, was baptized at Bamlach on 12 April 1764, ten months after the wedding, and a second, Jakobea, followed on 16 August 1766.

Lines of descent

Maria Anna’s line to Ora Emogene Walrath runs through her daughter Jakobea Spony (born 1766), who married Christian Zehringer at Bamlach in 1786. Jakobea’s daughter Magdalena Zähringer (born 1790) married Louis Bosler (recorded as Aloys Basler) at Bamlach on 22 January 1810, and their son Louis Oliver Bosler (1825–1909) was Ora’s great-grandfather.

The family meets again in that 1810 marriage. Maria Anna’s sister Elisabetha Reymann (1717–1763) married Josephus Sponi at Bamlach in February 1744, and their daughter Gertrud Spony (1751–1812) was the mother of Louis Bosler, the groom. Magdalena was Maria Anna’s granddaughter, so the groom was the son of Maria Anna’s niece.

Notes

Her baptism

The FamilySearch index of the Bamlach church book gives a baptism on 28 March 1724 of a child written Anna Maria Reyman, with the parents written Josephus Reyman and Maria Habi. The index is the only source for this baptism, and the register page itself is not cited here. The index spellings differ from the names kept in the text: Maria Anna Reymann, Josephus Reymann and Maria Habin. The same index holds baptisms of her brothers and sisters at Bamlach between 1714 and 1732.

Her parents

A Maria Anna Reymann baptized at Bad Bellingen on 14 June 1747, a daughter of Leodegarius Reymann and Elisabetha Escher, is not this woman, according to the compiled village family book. The marriage entry gives Rheinweiler as the bride’s birthplace, the Bellingen child would have been only 16 in 1763, and a Maria Anna Reymann was bearing a child to Joannes Jacobus Amman at Bad Bellingen in 1770. No other baptism of a Maria Anna Reymann in Baden between 1733 and 1747 appears in FamilySearch’s index. An earlier marriage at Bamlach, in February 1744, joined Josephus Sponi of Bamlach and Elisabetha Reyman of Rheinweiler, whom the compiled village family book names as Maria Anna’s sister.

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. It is a compiled reconstitution from the parish registers and gives years only, with a margin of a few months. It enters her death at Rheinweiler as “Entkräftung”, that is, of weakness.

The marriage and the daughters

The marriage of 26 June 1763 is known from two FamilySearch indexes of the Bamlach register, which agree on the day; the second writes the bride’s name Reymänn. The Germany, Marriages entry gives the groom as single and both bride and groom as born at Rheinweiler; the other index carries no marital field. The compiled village family book gives the groom as a widower and quotes the register’s note “viduus”. The single entry is a default: the Germany, Marriages collection marks the groom single on every Sponi marriage listed there, including the 1744 marriage of Josephus Sponi, whom the family book also records as a widower. The index therefore does not contradict the family book. The baptisms of the two daughters are known from the index of the same church book, which names the parents of the 1764 child as Joannes Jacobus Sponi and Maria Anna Reymänn.