At the Library-Paul Jacobs Martens (1739-1820)

So far all of the ancestors I’ve written about are on my paternal side. But I have so many interesting ancestors on my mother’s side too. Today I’m writing about an ancestor whose name I’ve had for a while now, but I only just recently learned more about on a trip to the New York Public library.

A year or so ago, while looking through my parent’s genealogy files, I found something very exciting. In the 1930s Theodore, a cousin of my great grandmother, traveled to Germany and re-connected with some of his German cousins. They continued their correspondence and in 1936 sent him a pedigree chart that goes four generations back from their common ancestor (my 4x great grandfather). Apparently this was the last time the German cousins wrote to Theodore and both died around the time of World War II. Much later, in 1969, my great grandmother wrote to Theodore asking about family history and he sent her a packet including the letters and the pedigree chart. My great grandmother made and kept copies which eventually ended up in my parent’s files.

The One branch of the pedigree chart contained two names with little info. Paul Jacobs and Antje Berens were supposedly the parents of Geshe Margarethe Pauls, who married Cassen Carls. That was all I knew about Paul and Antje until recently when I visited the New York Public Library over Christmas. The NYPL houses a good number of Ortsfamilienbuch from various parts of German, including some from Lower Saxony, where my German ancestors lived. Ortsfamilienbuchs (or OFBs) are books made by people going through all the parish records in one town and listing all the family members together. Since many German parish records are not online and not indexed they can be invaluable for finding your German Ancestor’s dates, locations, and family members.

I found Paul as number 2198 in in Die Familien der Kirchengemeinde Neustadtgödens (1695-1900), the OFB for the town of Neustadtgödens. He is listed as the Manorial lease holder for Wedelfeld, which seems to have been a windmill located very close to Neustadtgödens. He was also a merchant. The OFB lists a different last name than I expected; his full name in the OFB is not Paul Jacobs, but Paul Jacobs Martens, to make matters more confusing some of his children used the patronymic surname of “Pauls”, while others took his middle name “Jacobs” as their surname, but none took the name Martens. I think this is because Paul was living at a time when last names were changing from patronymic to passing the same surname through the generations. I would guess that Pauls father was Marten Jacobs and Paul himself may have alternated between using the patronymic Martens, or his father’s last name of Jacobs.

Paul was born about 1739, probably somewhere in Lower Saxony. He married Antje Eva Berens, probably around 1758 and had at least four children. About 1777 they must have moved to Neustadtgödens, as they begin appearing in records there. Their two youngest children were baptized in the Lutheran church and most of their children’s marriages were recorded there as well. On December 16^th 1802 Antje died of Typhus. Paul did not waste any time marrying again. In March of 1803 he married Anna Margarethe Borchers, who was not only forty years younger than Paul, but also younger than all but Paul’s youngest child from his first marriage. Paul and Anna had five more children in the next fifteen years. Gershe, Paul’s daughter from his first marriage and my ancestor, served as the Godmother for one of her much younger half-siblings. Paul died April 3^rd 1820 at the age of eighty-one. His oldest daughter was probably about sixty-two years old, while his youngest was only about two years old.

I was very glad to find so much more info on Paul during my trip to the library, but I still hope that eventually the original parish registers that the OFB was made from will be scanned so I can see the original. I would also like to figure out where Paul and Antje came from before they moved to Neustadtgödens.