♂Peter Jacobsen

Peter Jacobsen (18 May 1755 – 16 March 1798) was a farmer of Vesterhøjst, Dübbelgaard and Eggebæk in the Duchy of Schleswig^W, who held a full farm, married a farmer’s widow in 1794 and died when his baby daughter was ten months old. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Mariana Jacobsen (1797–1839).

He was born at Vesterhøjst on 18 May 1755 and baptized at Højst on 25 May 1755, Trinity Sunday, as Per, the name the register gives him. He was the son of Jacob Andersen and his wife Maren. The household also held two other children: Anders, born about 1750, and Anne, born in December 1761. Peter was confirmed at Højst on 15 April 1771, aged 16. His father died on 13 May 1775 and was buried at Højst on 21 May.

Marriage and family

The Tinglev church register enters him at his marriage on 28 December 1794 as Peter Jacobsen of Westerhöist, the German-language clerk’s spelling of Vesterhøjst, son of the former Hufner Jacob Jacobsen and his wife Ellen Petersen, as that entry names them. The Højst registers name his parents differently, as Jacob Andersen and Maren. A Hufner was the holder of a full farm, a Hufe. His bride was Ingeborg Hansen, entered as the widow of the late Hufner Hans Jessen in Eggebek.

Their first child, a son, was born at Eggebek on 19 November 1795 and baptized at Tinglev on 29 November as Hans Petersen, the lawful son of the Hufner Peter Jacobsen in Eggebek and Ingeburg Hansen. The register writes his surname as Petersen, a patronymic meaning “son of Peter”, where his father was Jacobsen, son of Jacob.

Their daughter Mariana was born on 6 May 1797 at Dübbelgaard and baptized at Tinglev on 14 May, and the register called Peter a Hufner himself.

Death and descendants

He died on 16 March 1798 and was buried at Tinglev on 25 March. The burial register calls him a Hufner of Eggebek, the village where Ingeborg’s first husband had held his farm, and records that he left a widow, Ingeborg Hansen, and one daughter, Marianna; it gives his age as 43 years less two months, which agrees with his birth on 18 May 1755. The entry names no son, only the daughter, so Hans had most likely died before then; his burial has not been found, and the Tinglev baptisms from 1795 to January 1799 hold no other child of the couple.

Forty-one years later the burial entry of Mariana, the wife of Anders Hansen of Vesterhøjst, still identified her as the daughter of Peter Jacobsen in Eggebek and his wife Ingeborg. Mariana’s eldest son, born at Vesterhøjst on 1 May 1817, was baptized Peter Jacobsen Hansen, bearing his grandfather’s name in full.