♀Maria Eva Dossenbach

Maria Eva Dossenbach (1715–1785) was a native of Rheinweiler, a village on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, who married Simon Basler in 1734 and had ten children with him over the next twenty-five years. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her son Fidel Basler (1759–1808).

Early life

Maria Eva was born at Rheinweiler in 1715 and was probably baptized at Bamlach on 14 January that year, the daughter of Josephus Dossenbach (1665–1722) and Anna Maria Carlin (died 1744). 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 the youngest of the seven children of her parents, who had married in 1693, and was born more than seven years after the next youngest. Her father died in 1722, when she was about seven, and her mother lived on as a widow until 1744.

Marriage and family

Simon Basler and Maria Eva Dossenbach married at Rheinweiler on 30 May 1734, when he was twenty-two and she was nineteen. Their first child, Catharina, was baptized at Bamlach on 19 November 1734, less than six months after the wedding, and their tenth and last, Fidel, was most likely baptized there on 20 April 1759. Six of the ten bore names already in the family: Franciscus Jacobus and Catharina, the names of Simon’s parents; Josephus and Anna Maria, those of Maria Eva’s; and Simon and Maria Eva, their own. Simon died at Rheinweiler in 1778 and is taken to be the Simon buried at Bamlach on 6 April that year. Maria Eva survived him by seven years and is said to have died at Rheinweiler in 1785.

Notes

Sources of the dates

The village family book^W 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 Maria Eva Dosenbach, gives her birth at Rheinweiler in 1715 and her death there in 1785, and names her parents as Josephus Dosenbach (1665–1722) and Anna Maria Carlin, who married in 1693 and had seven children, from Josephus in 1693 to Maria Eva. It marks her mother at her death in 1744 as “hon. vidua”, an honorable widow. It gives her marriage to Simon Bassler in 1734 and lists their ten children, from Catharina in 1734 to Fidel in 1759. Her death in 1785 rests on the family book alone.

Her mother’s age

The family book gives Anna Maria Carlin a birth in 1660. A mother born that year would have been about fifty-five when Maria Eva was born, so the book has most likely joined two women of the same name, and that year is not used here. Her mother’s name is not in doubt: the index of the 1715 baptism names her Anna Maria Carl, and her burial at Bamlach on 28 February 1744, indexed as Maria Carler, falls in the year the family book gives for her death. The burial entry gives no age.

The church-book index

FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book, in the Freiburg Catholic Church Records collection, gives her baptism on 14 January 1715 as Maria Eva Dossenbach, daughter of Josephus Dossenbach and Anna Maria Carl, the parents the family book gives; the register page itself is not available. The same index holds the baptisms of all seven children of that couple, from Josephus on 14 October 1693 to Maria Eva, and none between 1707 and 1715.

It also holds one baptism for each of Simon and Maria Eva’s ten children, the ten the family book lists, from Catharina on 19 November 1734 to Fidelis Bassler on 20 April 1759, whose entry names Simon Bassler and Maria Eva Dossenbach as his parents. Two of the ten entries write the mother’s name differently: Mari Anna Dossenbäch in 1745 and Maria Eva Bassler in 1754.

The marriage

The marriage is given here at Rheinweiler, the place the family book names, on 30 May 1734. Two FamilySearch indexes of the Bamlach register give the same day: the collection Germany, Marriages, 1558–1929 writes the couple Simon Bassler and Mari-Eva Dossenbach and places the wedding at Bamlach, and the Freiburg Catholic Church Records index writes them Simon Basler and Mari Eva Dossenbaech. Ancestry’s index of the entry gives the bride’s birthplace as Rheinweiler. Neither index names the couple’s parents. Since Rheinweiler belonged to the parish of Bamlach, Bamlach is most likely where the marriage was entered in the church book, and Rheinweiler the couple’s village.

Simon’s burial

The burial of a Simon Bassler at Bamlach on 6 April 1778 is known from FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book, in the year the family book gives for his death. His son Simon (1745–1815) was living until 1815, so the entry is taken to be the father’s.