♀Maria Ursula Dossenbach

Maria Ursula Dossenbach (died 1807) was a woman of Rheinweiler, a village on the Upper Rhine in Baden, who married Christian Zehringer at Bamlach in 1756 and had her children baptized in that parish. She was probably the fourth great-grandmother of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through her son Christian Zehringer.

Marriage and family

Christian Zehringer and Maria Ursula Dossenbach, who was born at Rheinweiler in 1727, married at Bamlach in 1756; Rheinweiler belonged to the Bamlach parish. She was probably baptized there on 18 January 1727, the daughter of Ursus Dossenbach and Anna Maria Fräulin; an index of the Bamlach church book gives the baptism and the same parents, and the compiled village family book names them too. Two indexes of the marriage entry disagree on the day, giving 5 February and 2 May. The couple had six known children. Five were baptized in the Bamlach parish between 1759 and 1769: Udalricus, Anna Maria, Christian, and two daughters named Joanna, the second most likely given the name of a sister who had died. A sixth, Catharina, was born in October 1773, as the same compiled book gives. She was probably the Maria Ursula Zehringer, aged 79, who was buried at Bamlach on 28 March 1807.

Notes

The marriage of 1756

One index of the marriage entry gives 5 February 1756 at Bamlach, calls the groom Christianus Zehringer, single, born at Kirchzarten, and the bride Maria Ursula Dossenbach, born at Rheinweiler. A second index of the Catholic register gives 2 May 1756 and calls the bride Ursula Dossenbach. Neither names the couple’s parents. Both are index entries only, so the tree gives the year alone.

Her son Christian

The baptism of a Christianus Zehringer on 15 August 1764, son of Christian Zehringer and Maria Ursula Dossenbach, appears in the index of the Bamlach register. It fits the Christian Zehringer who married Jakobea Spony at Bamlach in 1786: a Christian Zehringer buried at Bamlach on 25 September 1800, aged 36, was born in 1764. But another Christian Zähringer, married to Elisabetha Merz, was living after 1800, and his birth year is not known, so the 1764 baptism could be his. The link from the younger Christian to this couple is therefore probable rather than proved.

The burial of 1807

The index of the Bamlach burials gives Maria Ursula Zehringer, aged 79, buried on 28 March 1807, which would put her birth about 1728, one year after the 1727 that the compiled village family book gives. On a baptism of 18 January 1727 she would have been 80 by March 1807, a year more than the burial gives. The entry names no husband. She is taken to be this Maria Ursula because she carries both forenames and the married surname, and hers is the only burial of a Maria Ursula Zehringer at Bamlach in the index. The same book gives her death at Rheinweiler in 1807, of weakness, which fits this burial, and her husband’s death at Rheinweiler in 1774, thirty-three years before hers.

Her parents

The baptism is dated 18 January 1727 in the index of the Bamlach church book. It gives the child as Anna Maria Ursula Dossenbach, where the tree has Maria Ursula, and names the parents as Ursus Dossenbach and Anna Maria Freyl, the spelling the index uses for the tree’s Anna Maria Fräulin. The compiled village family book, the Ortssippenbuch Bamlach-Rheinweiler 1630–1810 by Felix Pöschl and Ingrid Kopf (2006), gives her birth as 1727 at Rheinweiler, the daughter of Ursus Dossenbach (1696–1781) and Anna Maria Fräulin (born 1701 at Bamlach, died 1773). The index and the book name the same couple.