♂Ursus Dossenbach

Ursus Dossenbach (1696–1781) was a native of Rheinweiler, a village on the Upper Rhine in Baden, Germany, who married Anna Maria Fräulin in 1723 and was her husband for fifty years, until her death in 1773. He was probably the fifth great-grandfather of Ora Emogene Walrath (1925–2014), through his daughter Maria Ursula Dossenbach (born 1727).

Early life

Ursus was born at Rheinweiler in 1696 and was in all likelihood baptized at Bamlach on 24 March that year, the son 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. He was the second of the seven children of his parents, who had married in 1693. His father died in 1722, the year before Ursus married, and his mother lived on as a widow until 1744.

Marriage and family

Ursus Dossenbach and Anna Maria Fräulin married at Bamlach in November 1723, when he was twenty-seven, and made their home at Rheinweiler. Between December 1724 and February 1749 they had ten children baptized at Bamlach, eight daughters and two sons, Hans Jörg and Franciscus Xaverius. Their second child, Maria Ursula, was born at Rheinweiler in 1727 and married Christian Zehringer at Bamlach in 1756. A daughter Helena, baptized in May 1735, most likely died young, since the name was given again to a daughter baptized in March 1738; this second Helena died in 1753, at about fifteen.

Anna Maria died at Rheinweiler in 1773 and was presumably buried at Bamlach on 26 November that year, fifty years after the wedding. Ursus survived her and is said to have died at Rheinweiler in 1781, at about eighty-five.

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 his name Ursus Dosenbach, gives his birth at Rheinweiler in 1696 and his death there in 1781, and names his 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 in 1715. It gives his wife as Anna Maria Fräulin, born at Bamlach in 1701, who died at Rheinweiler in 1773, and lists their ten children, from Maria Barbara in 1724 to Agatha in 1749, among them a first Helena, born in 1735 and dead before 1738, and a second, who lived from 1738 to 1753. His death in 1781 rests on the family book alone.

The church-book index

FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book, in the Freiburg Catholic Church Records collection, gives his baptism on 24 March 1696 as Ursus Dossenbach, son of Josephus Dossenbach and Maria Carl, the Anna Maria Carlin of the family book; the register page itself is not available. The same index holds the baptisms of all seven of that couple’s children, from Josephus on 14 October 1693 to Maria Eva on 14 January 1715.

It also holds one baptism for each of Ursus and Anna Maria’s ten children, the ten the family book lists, from Maria Barbara on 9 December 1724 to Agatha on 4 February 1749. The entries write the mother’s surname in several forms, among them Frey, Freyl, Freuler, Freyler and Freuwl. Maria Barbara’s entry is indexed under the surname Gossenbach, and the entries for Mari Anna in 1740, Catharina in 1743 and Franciscus Xaverius in 1745 give the father’s forename as Jacobus or leave it blank; the family book places all three in this family.

The marriage

FamilySearch’s index in the collection Germany, Marriages, 1558–1929 gives the marriage of Ursus Dossenbach and Maria Freylin at Bamlach in November 1723, without a day, and a second FamilySearch index of the Bamlach church book holds the same marriage. Neither names the couple’s parents.

Anna Maria’s burial

The burial of an Anna Maria Fregl at Bamlach on 26 November 1773 is known from FamilySearch’s index of the Bamlach church book, in the year the family book gives for her death. The entry gives no age and names no husband, so it is taken to be hers on the forenames, the year and the surname, a variant of the Freyl of her children’s baptisms.