John Pape's 1851 Baptism Record from Germany

Back on October 15, 2021, I participated in the 2021 Genealogy Lock-In hosted by

the Genealogy Center of the Waco-McLennan County [Texas] Library, the Texas State Genealogical Society, the Genealogy Network of Texas, and the Central Texas Genealogical Society.  This all-day, one-day-only, all-virtual event featured eight pre-recorded sessions, including some by well-known genealogy speakers.

For me, though, the best session was "So, You’ve Found Your German Town of Origin, Now What?" by Teresa Steinkamp McMillin.  Given that I have birth dates and places for many of my German ancestors, this was of great interest to me.  Just having the indexed information wasn't enough - I really wanted to see the original records.  

Her session walked through using the online Meyer’s Gazetteer to verify the town name and identify religious and governmental jurisdictions that might have vital records.  For example, here is the entry for one of the two Bödefelds (note that you can click on all images in this post to view them in a larger size):

You can also view a historic map of the area. The one I've pictured is for the other Bödefeld, and has the toggle turned on to mark the Catholic parishes (yellow C marker).

Teresa then spoke about, and demonstrated, some of the records available online.  One that she spoke about that I had not heard of before was Matricula Online, which has "church registers (mostly books of birth, marriage and death) from various European countries (currently Austria, Germany, Poland, Serbia and Slovenia)."  And luckily for me, such books from the Archdiocese of Paderborn, where my relatives are from, have recently been added to the site.

You can use the Map or Search for Places functions on Matricula to enter your town of origin, and find the name of (and a link to) the Catholic parish records for it.

This will bring up the available registers.  There are 106 currently available for Sts. Kosmas und Damian parish in Bödefeld, so you can use a slider on the date range column to narrow down the field:

Teresa explained what some of the German words mean.  Taufen are baptisms, Trauungen are marriages, and Sterbefälle are deaths.  A Namenregister is an index.

So I used the Namenregister Taufen that covered 1826-1858 and found the page indexing the baptisms for surnames beginning with P.  Here is the relevant snip from that index page:

The first Johann Pape is an older brother to my John Pape, who was born in 1849 and died the following year.  My John Pape is the second Johann.  The 473 refers to the page number in the baptisms register covering 1826-1858, and the 45 indicates it was the 45th baptism in that year (1851).  Anton is the oldest (born 1854) of John's three younger brothers.

So next I went to the Taufen for 1826-1858 and navigated to page 473.  And there was my great-grandfather!  Here is the left half of the page, and the following image is the right half.

What got me especially excited, though, was the information that I've outline in red boxes.  I could see dates and names of John's first two wives, Elisabeth Dameris and Gertrud Kramer (who is my great-grandmother).  The latter was particularly thrilling, because prior to this, I had no information on when and where John and Gertrud married.  The family story was that John went back to Germany to find a bride after Elisabeth and their two daughters died in Chicago in 1886 and 1887.  All I knew was that John and Gertrud were back in the United States by August 1889, when their first child Clara Pape was born.

I posted these images on Facebook, and asked for translations of information in the red boxes.  Here is the translation for the image above, about Elisabeth Dameris:

"married since 27 Nov 1879 with Elisabeth Dameris from Schmall____ (possibly Schmallenberg: https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/20727066)

addition: Elisabeth Dameris was 'Lehrerin dahier' = teacher here."

Elisabeth was in fact from Schmallenberg, and I have now found her baptism record there.   I also found the marriage record for Elisabeth and John in the Sts. Kosmas und Damian parish registers in Bödefeld.

Here is the image of the right half of John Pape's baptism record:

And here is the translation of the information in the red box, about Gertrud Kramer:

"and has emigrated to America with his second wife, Gertrud Kramer, born in Wennemen (https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/21116023), Catholic church 9 Jan 1859 and married in Düsseldorf 9 Oct 1888 and then emigrated to America 13 Oct 1888.

Addition: Gertrud Kramer was also a 'Lehrerin von hier' = teacher from here."

Can you see why I was so excited?!  I knew Gertrude was baptized in nearby Calle (I've now found her baptism record), but I did not know she was actually born in Wennemen.  I now also have a date and place for John's and Gertrude's marriage.  Although the records for churches in Düsseldorf are not online, the incredibly helpful parish pastor did include a record of John's and Gertrude's marriage in the Sts. Kosmas und Damian parish registers in Bödefeld.

I've spent most of the past week doing additional searches for family members in Matricula Online, and filled more holes in my family tree!

© Amanda Pape - 2021 - e-mail me!