In the first article in this series we identified the marriage and birth records of Bertha Marie Madeleine Hirschhausen. This, in turn, led us to her parents, although we don’t yet know much about them. In this article I’ll discuss how we might use further records of varying types to flesh out our knowledge of this couple. In particular, I’ll look at Personalbuchs, death records, and a useful biographical dictionary.
The single most important source for late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Baltic-German genealogy is the Personalbuch, a listing of members of an individual parish congregation which at its best gives the names of a couple, their dates and places of birth, marriage, and death, and the names and births of their children. Not only does this single record type offer a wealth of information for which there’s simply no comparison in most other countries, it’s one of the few types of document for which substantial digital indexes already exist. A quick search of the “Personal name indexes of registers of parishioners” at Saaga reveals a Hirschhausen entry in the Personalbuch for Roicks between 1895 and 1929. We know that Bertha married in Roicks and an examination of the Personalbuch itself confirms that this is the right family:
The single most important source for late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Baltic-German genealogy is the Personalbuch, a listing of members of an individual parish congregation which at its best gives the names of a couple, their dates and places of birth, marriage, and death, and the names and births of their children. Not only does this single record type offer a wealth of information for which there’s simply no comparison in most other countries, it’s one of the few types of document for which substantial digital indexes already exist. A quick search of the “Personal name indexes of registers of parishioners” at Saaga reveals a Hirschhausen entry in the Personalbuch for Roicks between 1895 and 1929. We know that Bertha married in Roicks and an examination of the Personalbuch itself confirms that this is the right family:
We now know much more than we did before. Bertha had four siblings and we can see from the far righthand column that at least some of them moved to Palamuse (German St. Bartholomäi) near Tartu in 1922. Palamuse is distant both from Roicks and from the family’s previous residence in Wesenberg, so it may be that they moved to be near family after the deaths of their parents. We’ve also learnt more about the parents themselves: their birth dates and places, their marriage date, and their death dates (even if all of this is a bit hard to read since their names have been scored out – probably to indicate that they had died).
Closer examination also reveals something unexpected about Bertha’s mother, Emilie Wilhelmine von Lemm:
Closer examination also reveals something unexpected about Bertha’s mother, Emilie Wilhelmine von Lemm:
She was born in “Katharinenfeld[,] Kaukasus”, a town now known as Bolnisi in Georgia which had been founded by German colonists in the early nineteenth century (most of the descendants of those colonists were later deported during World War II, but some of their homes can still be seen. On the face of it, this might suggest that the von Lemm line will be a dead-end; using Estonian archives is one thing, making sense of what’s left of Georgian archives is quite another. However, we will see. It’s slightly odd that someone from a German farming colony in the far south of the Empire should first end up Reval (where she was confirmed in 1886) and then marry a Baltic-German clergyman, so the full story may turn out to be a bit more complicated.
The Personalbuch has now given us all the data we need to perform a sweep of relevant (but unindexed) vital records for Bertha’s parents. Let’s start with their deaths. Although no place of death is indicated for either, they probably occurred in Roicks. Sure enough we first find Pastor Hirschhausen:
The Personalbuch has now given us all the data we need to perform a sweep of relevant (but unindexed) vital records for Bertha’s parents. Let’s start with their deaths. Although no place of death is indicated for either, they probably occurred in Roicks. Sure enough we first find Pastor Hirschhausen:
And then his wife:
As you can see, death records give dates of death and burial, name and occupation, place of birth, age at death, marital status, and cause of death – a rich mine of data (even if, in these cases, we already knew most of it from the Personalbuch).
The Personalbuch indicates that Richard and Emmy were married in the Ritter- und Domkirche in Reval (Estonian Tallinn), the ecclesiastical centre of the Baltic-German world. This might mean that they were from prominent families – many leading noblemen and civil servants were married there – or simply that they happened to be residing within the parish boundaries. Their marriage is easy to find (it was a small parish):
The Personalbuch indicates that Richard and Emmy were married in the Ritter- und Domkirche in Reval (Estonian Tallinn), the ecclesiastical centre of the Baltic-German world. This might mean that they were from prominent families – many leading noblemen and civil servants were married there – or simply that they happened to be residing within the parish boundaries. Their marriage is easy to find (it was a small parish):
Now we know the names of Richard and Emmy’s parents and a pattern is beginning to emerge. Richard’s father was August Hirschhausen, Pastor of St. Matthäi, and Emmy’s was Pastor-Diaconus Joseph Lemm. It would appear that both were from career ecclesiastical families (a tightly-knit social group of their own within Baltic-German society).
We could now proceed directly to working on Pastors Hirschhausen Senior and Lemm, but first I’d like to at least try to flesh out what we know about Richard and Emmy. Working up genealogical data into an interesting biography is never easy, but in Richard’s case we’re helped by his occupation. Nearly every Lutheran pastor in the Baltic-German lands was educated at the University of Dorpat (Tartu Ülikool). The Dorpat Album Academicum for this period has been published, so it’s only the work of a moment to look for Richard:
We could now proceed directly to working on Pastors Hirschhausen Senior and Lemm, but first I’d like to at least try to flesh out what we know about Richard and Emmy. Working up genealogical data into an interesting biography is never easy, but in Richard’s case we’re helped by his occupation. Nearly every Lutheran pastor in the Baltic-German lands was educated at the University of Dorpat (Tartu Ülikool). The Dorpat Album Academicum for this period has been published, so it’s only the work of a moment to look for Richard:
It’s not much, but it tells us that he studied theology at Dorpat, 1877-1884, and spent a year as a parochial vicar (training for the pastorate), 1884-1885, before being appointed adjunct pastor in Wesenberg. This is a fairly typical career progression for a Baltic-German clergyman, but interesting nonetheless. One can perhaps get a sense of what this entailed from modern pictures of the churches he would have worked in at Wesenberg and Roicks.
We could keep working on this family – maybe tracing Bertha’s siblings forward to Palamuse, for example – but what we’ve found already serves to gives us a pretty good picture:
We could keep working on this family – maybe tracing Bertha’s siblings forward to Palamuse, for example – but what we’ve found already serves to gives us a pretty good picture:
It’s possible, as you can see, to discover a remarkable amount of information about Baltic-Germans in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In the next articles in this series, I’ll explain how we might trace the ancestry of Emmy von Lemm. What do you when someone is born beyond – as one might say – the archives we know?
[1] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v; Roicks, Deaths, 1892-1929, EAA.3170.1.198, fols. 100v-101r.
[2] A. Hasselblatt and G. Otto, Album Academicum der Kaiserlichen Universität Dorpat (Dorpat, 1889), 737.
[3] Ritter- und Domkirche, Reval, Banns and Marriages, 1864-1891, TLA.237.2.7, unpaginated [digitised image 69].
[4] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
[5] Roicks, Deaths, 1892-1929, EAA.3170.1.198, fols. 106v-107r.
[6] Wesenberg, Births (town church), 1879-1891, EAA.3057.1.21, fols. 100v-101r.
[7] Wesenberg, Births (town church), 1879-1891, EAA.3057.1.21, fols. 100v-101r.
[8] Roicks, Banns and Marriages, 1892-1929, EAA.3170.1.197, not paginated [digitised image 74].
[9] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
[10] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
[11] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
[12] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
Copyright © 2013 Kelsey Jackson Williams
[1] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v; Roicks, Deaths, 1892-1929, EAA.3170.1.198, fols. 100v-101r.
[2] A. Hasselblatt and G. Otto, Album Academicum der Kaiserlichen Universität Dorpat (Dorpat, 1889), 737.
[3] Ritter- und Domkirche, Reval, Banns and Marriages, 1864-1891, TLA.237.2.7, unpaginated [digitised image 69].
[4] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
[5] Roicks, Deaths, 1892-1929, EAA.3170.1.198, fols. 106v-107r.
[6] Wesenberg, Births (town church), 1879-1891, EAA.3057.1.21, fols. 100v-101r.
[7] Wesenberg, Births (town church), 1879-1891, EAA.3057.1.21, fols. 100v-101r.
[8] Roicks, Banns and Marriages, 1892-1929, EAA.3170.1.197, not paginated [digitised image 74].
[9] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
[10] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
[11] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
[12] Roicks, Personalbuch VIII, 1895-1929, EAA.3170.1.200, fol. 56v.
Copyright © 2013 Kelsey Jackson Williams