! This is awesome! I didn't really expect much, because Carl Ernst Reinhard apparently didn't have kids and Friedrich Ludwig seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth address calendar, but this might suggest that he did have descendants?
(I can download a jpg of the page if desired)
I think we don't even have a birth date for Friedrich Ludwig, so the jpg would be very appreciated.
This means that at least some of the church records from that time did survive, which is great. It also seems like it's a Lutheran church, which is helpful in narrowing things down for Peter. (Nicolai's Berlin book gives a list of all churches in Berlin and their denominations, i.e. Lutheran, Calvinist, or both.) Also interesting that it's in French, I never thought about that. Hm.
And yeah, I saw that making an account was possible, but I wasn't sure about access levels as a non-member either, so thank you so much for checking!
but this might suggest that he did have descendants?
Actually -- no, it's only the record of his baptism, no other records, so what it suggests is that someone got around to indexing the particular baptism register that Friedrich Ludwig was in. (So the way this works is that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are strongly encouraged -- very strongly encouraged -- all to do our part in indexing documents like this, in whatever languages we can speak. We're encouraged to do at least a page a week; some do more. Even accounting for all the people like me who don't actually do it (probably well over half the active membership don't), that's a veritable army of people constantly indexing.) (This also means that -- even though they try to build in redundancy -- there is a great potential for error as these are primarily amateur volunteers, as you will see.)
In fact... I wonder if Friedrich Ludwig died very early, as the record says that he was baptized "en chambre" because of "maladie." Also, there is a birthdate of 10 August 1745 attached to the record which I think is an error; as far as I can tell the birthdate given in the record is 14 August?
I also went looking for Carl Ernst and found a record... of him as the husband of Oriane Luise. Lol. But it turns out that what this was taken from (there is also very little about him) is the burial record of Oriane Luise! I am having trouble reading this at all besides a mention of Knyphausen, maybe you guys will do better. I assume that it says Carl Reinhard survived her but I suppose it could also be someone (possibly the record writer) getting confused by all those names for Peter :P
No citation BUT it says "Parish register of baptisms, marriages and burials for Parochialkirche in Berlin, Brandenburg, Germany. For earlier years see Dom Kirche." (1703-1877) (!)
But sadly I went back to Dec 1756 in the burial register and as far as I can tell there is no record of Peter's burial in Dec 1756 or Jan 1757. (Possibly someone should check me, though... it's better not to trust anything I do this late at night.)
:DDD Thank you! This is fascinating. And thank you for explaining how it works - I wasn't sure if an existing record meant that somebody had looked him up specifically, but obviously not. Still, lots of great information.
if Friedrich Ludwig died very early as the record says that he was baptized "en chambre" because of "maladie."
He can't have! We have one mention of him by name in 1764, working as a trainee at the Berliner state court, and I don't believe Peter and Ariane (or Oriane apparently) reused the name - while it's not completely unheard of, IMO another, later born kid would have been too young to be a trainee in 1764 (we also know he went to university in between). So either he was a sickly child but rallied - or maybe Ariane herself was too sick? I don't know how these things worked exactly.
As for the rest of the baptism record, I read 14th of August as the birth date as well, at ten in the morning, which might be how the confusion happened. What's interesting is that the register doesn't seem to belong to any one church, though. The other entries on the page all name different churches for the baptisms and the common theme here are the French preachers. The relevant one for us is "le pasteur de Combles", which I believe is Pierre de Combles, who worked at the Dorotheenstädter Kirche from 1728 to 1767 (i.e. the one where Andrew Mitchell was later buried).
Now, godfathers and -mothers! Male ones are Fritz (! although not too surprising with that name) and Frederic Henry de Cheusses, who was the Danish envoy in Berlin from 1743 to 1746 and came from a Huguenot family, just like the preacher. (He's mentioned in the Political Correspondence a couple of times and was envoy to Russia afterwards.)
ETA: Friedrich de Cheusses - the 1745 address calendar says he lived next to the Ilgen's house, which was the family of Peter's mother-in-law and might be where the connection comes from. Also, I had to smile at this description in his wiki record: He did not excel in excellent ability or rich initiative, but he looked good, was very reliable and especially extremely careful. These were precisely the qualities needed opposite Frederick II of Prussia and later opposite Pyotr Bestushev.
Female: Peter's mother-in-law, who apparently wasn't present, as it says she was represented by Ariane's younger sisters, Hyma Maria (the one who married Hertzberg later, but not yet) and Hedwig Charlotte.
Oh, and Peter is described as "premier Ecuyer de sa Majesté le Roi de Prusse, et Lieutenant Colonel dans ses armees natif de Poberow en Pomeranie".
Now, the burial register, which is in German. It's interesting that my hunch re: Parochialkirche + Ariane's great governess position seems to have been correct after all, but I'm still doubtful that it's where Peter was buried, which seems to correspond with your findings. I sure wish the guy writing the burial register had the same lovely handwriting as his French colleague, though, because it's hard to read. I believe the columns are "death date" (unreadable on our page), "dead person", "age" (71 years), "cause of death" (?? - I think it might be saying "Steckfluss" for Ariane, but I'm not sure), and "heirs", so yes, Carl Reinhard shows up as the last one (although I can't read the first line there). I also see the note that Ariane was great governess to the ["something"] Queen, but the rest of it? ..... okay, it says she was a widow (verwittwete Frau) and that she was buried in crypt number five, which I think cost 60 "no idea what the currency is here" (plan of the crypts), but there are still two unreadable-to-me lines there. Hmmm.
Oh, great! Yeah, of course he could have recovered if he had in fact been ill, as could (or presumably did) Ariane if she was the one who was ill, though I suppose after mildred and selenak told us about all those dead babies I was primed to imagine that was what was going on here too. Glad that it wasn't!
I am chuffed that Fritz was his godfather, awwww. (I can't believe I stopped reading before I got to that part!)
I knooooow the burial register guy has awful handwriting, thank you for deciphering it! I wonder what other burial registers FamilySearch has that we can ransack...
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timeasmymeasure
Re: FamilySearch
Date: 2021-04-01 02:11 pm (UTC)earthaddress calendar, but this might suggest that he did have descendants?(I can download a jpg of the page if desired)
I think we don't even have a birth date for Friedrich Ludwig, so the jpg would be very appreciated.
This means that at least some of the church records from that time did survive, which is great. It also seems like it's a Lutheran church, which is helpful in narrowing things down for Peter. (Nicolai's Berlin book gives a list of all churches in Berlin and their denominations, i.e. Lutheran, Calvinist, or both.)
Also interesting that it's in French, I never thought about that. Hm.
And yeah, I saw that making an account was possible, but I wasn't sure about access levels as a non-member either, so thank you so much for checking!
Re: FamilySearch
Date: 2021-04-02 05:20 am (UTC)Actually -- no, it's only the record of his baptism, no other records, so what it suggests is that someone got around to indexing the particular baptism register that Friedrich Ludwig was in. (So the way this works is that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are strongly encouraged -- very strongly encouraged -- all to do our part in indexing documents like this, in whatever languages we can speak. We're encouraged to do at least a page a week; some do more. Even accounting for all the people like me who don't actually do it (probably well over half the active membership don't), that's a veritable army of people constantly indexing.) (This also means that -- even though they try to build in redundancy -- there is a great potential for error as these are primarily amateur volunteers, as you will see.)
In fact... I wonder if Friedrich Ludwig died very early, as the record says that he was baptized "en chambre" because of "maladie." Also, there is a birthdate of 10 August 1745 attached to the record which I think is an error; as far as I can tell the birthdate given in the record is 14 August?
I also went looking for Carl Ernst and found a record... of him as the husband of Oriane Luise. Lol. But it turns out that what this was taken from (there is also very little about him) is the burial record of Oriane Luise! I am having trouble reading this at all besides a mention of Knyphausen, maybe you guys will do better. I assume that it says Carl Reinhard survived her but I suppose it could also be someone (possibly the record writer) getting confused by all those names for Peter :P
No citation BUT it says "Parish register of baptisms, marriages and burials for Parochialkirche in Berlin, Brandenburg, Germany. For earlier years see Dom Kirche." (1703-1877) (!)
But sadly I went back to Dec 1756 in the burial register and as far as I can tell there is no record of Peter's burial in Dec 1756 or Jan 1757. (Possibly someone should check me, though... it's better not to trust anything I do this late at night.)
Re: FamilySearch
Date: 2021-04-02 10:03 am (UTC)if Friedrich Ludwig died very early as the record says that he was baptized "en chambre" because of "maladie."
He can't have! We have one mention of him by name in 1764, working as a trainee at the Berliner state court, and I don't believe Peter and Ariane (or Oriane apparently) reused the name - while it's not completely unheard of, IMO another, later born kid would have been too young to be a trainee in 1764 (we also know he went to university in between). So either he was a sickly child but rallied - or maybe Ariane herself was too sick? I don't know how these things worked exactly.
As for the rest of the baptism record, I read 14th of August as the birth date as well, at ten in the morning, which might be how the confusion happened. What's interesting is that the register doesn't seem to belong to any one church, though. The other entries on the page all name different churches for the baptisms and the common theme here are the French preachers. The relevant one for us is "le pasteur de Combles", which I believe is Pierre de Combles, who worked at the Dorotheenstädter Kirche from 1728 to 1767 (i.e. the one where Andrew Mitchell was later buried).
Now, godfathers and -mothers! Male ones are Fritz (! although not too surprising with that name) and Frederic Henry de Cheusses, who was the Danish envoy in Berlin from 1743 to 1746 and came from a Huguenot family, just like the preacher. (He's mentioned in the Political Correspondence a couple of times and was envoy to Russia afterwards.)
ETA: Friedrich de Cheusses - the 1745 address calendar says he lived next to the Ilgen's house, which was the family of Peter's mother-in-law and might be where the connection comes from. Also, I had to smile at this description in his wiki record: He did not excel in excellent ability or rich initiative, but he looked good, was very reliable and especially extremely careful. These were precisely the qualities needed opposite Frederick II of Prussia and later opposite Pyotr Bestushev.
Female: Peter's mother-in-law, who apparently wasn't present, as it says she was represented by Ariane's younger sisters, Hyma Maria (the one who married Hertzberg later, but not yet) and Hedwig Charlotte.
Oh, and Peter is described as "premier Ecuyer de sa Majesté le Roi de Prusse, et Lieutenant Colonel dans ses armees natif de Poberow en Pomeranie".
Now, the burial register, which is in German. It's interesting that my hunch re: Parochialkirche + Ariane's great governess position seems to have been correct after all, but I'm still doubtful that it's where Peter was buried, which seems to correspond with your findings. I sure wish the guy writing the burial register had the same lovely handwriting as his French colleague, though, because it's hard to read. I believe the columns are "death date" (unreadable on our page), "dead person", "age" (71 years), "cause of death" (?? - I think it might be saying "Steckfluss" for Ariane, but I'm not sure), and "heirs", so yes, Carl Reinhard shows up as the last one (although I can't read the first line there). I also see the note that Ariane was great governess to the ["something"] Queen, but the rest of it? ..... okay, it says she was a widow (verwittwete Frau) and that she was buried in crypt number five, which I think cost 60 "no idea what the currency is here" (plan of the crypts), but there are still two unreadable-to-me lines there. Hmmm.
Re: FamilySearch
Date: 2021-04-03 05:25 am (UTC)I am chuffed that Fritz was his godfather, awwww. (I can't believe I stopped reading before I got to that part!)
I knooooow the burial register guy has awful handwriting, thank you for deciphering it! I wonder what other burial registers FamilySearch has that we can ransack...