♂Niels Lorentzen

Niels Lorentzen (dates unknown) was an Inste, a landless lodger, in Hostrup parish, near Tønder in the Duchy of Schleswig^W. They married at Hostrup on 1 February 1754, and their son’s 1782 marriage entry names them as his parents. He was the fifth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Peter Nielsen (died 1793). On 26 January 1782 Peter Nielsen married Agnet Caspersen, and the Hostrup parish register’s entry for that marriage (no. 3 of the year, written in German) names the groom as Peter Nielsen of Rørkær, the legitimate son of the Inste Niels Lorentzen and Annmary, née Petersen, and the bride as Agnet Caspersen of Rørkær, the daughter of the Halbbohlsmann (half-bol farmer) Caspar Andersen and a mother née Peters. The son’s surname, Nielsen, is formed from his father’s given name in the patronymic custom of the region. That entry is the only record of Niels Lorentzen under that name. The Hostrup parish register’s marriage list for 1754 records, on 1 February 1754, the marriage of “Niels Laußen und Anmari Peters”; Laußen (Lausen) is most likely a patronymic formed, like Lorentzen, from the name Laurids or Lorenz, and the entry gives no parents, village or trade, so it is taken to be this couple on the names, the parish and the fit with their son Peter’s marriage in 1782. No record of his parents has been found, and his own baptism has not yet been traced.

Notes

• He was dead by June 1771, when the Hostrup burial entry for Anmari Nielsen, aged 42, calls her the widow of the late (sel.) Inste Niels Laust[sen] of Rørkær. This rests on taking that widow to be his wife; no other record of his death has been found.
• That 1771 entry records that she left one son, Laust, baptized on 2 July 1754, and does not name Peter, who would have been about sixteen. Peter Nielsen is kept as their son on the strength of his 1782 marriage entry.