Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 40

[cahn]

I'm trying to use my other account at least occasionally so I posted about my Yuletide gifts there, including the salon-relevant 12k fic that features Fritz, Heinrich, Voltaire, Fredersdorf, Saint Germain, Caroline Daum (Fredersdorf's wife), and Groundhog Day tropes! (Don't need to know canon.)

Comments

Re: Peter Keith in the archives!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Second biggest outstanding question I can think of: when did his younger son die?

November 1764! Exactly as we suspected: he's in the 1764 Berlin address calendar, living with his brother, and not in the 1765 entry, and by 1786, the older son is mentioned as the only living son of his parents. And remember, he was listed as baptized at home in 1745, because of illness.

Aww, that's sad. He was only 19. :/ And poor Ariane and Peter Carl Ernst Reinhardt, losing husband/Dad Peter in 1756 and son/brother Friedrich Ludwig in 1764. :(

ETA: I don't have a death date, but the burial date is Nov 17. Oh, interesting, looks like it was also the Nikolakirche! AWWW. (Not surprising, but remember that Ariane, as a great governess to the queen, was buried in the Parochialkirche.)

(So what happened is I asked cahn to go look through Family Search for these records, and she pointed out a lot of them come from Ancestry.com. After a bit of digging, I remembered why I had written off Ancestry.com years ago: too expensive for international records. I had forgotten the reason and thought it was because it didn't have what I needed. Well, now that money is no object (at least for one month), I have forked over and am on a genealogical rampage of my own!)

I have also accidentally found the burial record of Suhm's daughter who married a different (presumably distantly related) Lt. Col. von Keith: she died February 1785 and was buried in Neuwerk Rendsburg, Schleswig-Holstein.

Off to find more records!

Re: Peter Keith in the archives!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Next most interesting question to me: when exactly in 1822 (thank you, Kloosterhuis) did Peter Carl Ernst Reinhardt die, and where was he buried?

October 20, buried October 24 in the Parochialkirche! (At least according to the transcription, I'll leave deciphering the text to prinzsorgenfrei.)

So younger son (age 19) is with Dad (age 45), older son (age 78) is with Mom (age 71). <3

ETA: So here's an interesting point to add to the fact that Ariane was buried in the Parochialkirche because she was a great governess: her parents were married there*, she and at least one of her sisters [son and daughter of ETA: make that at least 3 of her siblings] were baptized there, her surviving son was buried there. I think this was also just the church the Knyphausens attended!

(I also think it makes perfect sense that Friedrich Ludwig was buried near the only parent who was dead at the time, and Carl Ernst was buried at the church near to the mother he'd been interacting with and probably attending church with, and possibly close to, until he was almost 50. I think the record says he was buried in the same crypt as his mother, but I'll wait for Prinzsorgenfrei to continue.)

* ETA again: Well, I could have sworn her parents were married there, but now that I'm looking at the doc I originally found, it doesn't name a church, and there's a completely different marriage record for them that says Berlin Dom.

Yes, I have found two completely separate records for almost all of these things: Ariane, Peter, and Friedrich Ludwig all have 2 burial records! Ariane has one in French and one in German. Peter has two burial dates (Jan 2 and Jan 3). Let's just say the record-keeping is iiinteresting.

Btw, this has interesting implications for searching, because apparently the Marienkirche collected data on who died when and where they were buried, somewhat after the fact (like monthly?) and added up how many burials per church. And they tend to just list the title, not the first name, so we've got Leutnant Keith for Peter, Resendarius (a mistranscription for "referendarius") Keith for Friedrich Ludwig, and Baronne Keith for Ariane. So you have to know your history as you scan the lists of results!

No baptism for Carl Ernst yet.

Re: Peter Keith in the archives!

[selenak]

(I also think it makes perfect sense that Friedrich Ludwig was buried near the only parent who was dead at the time, and Carl Ernst was buried at the church near to the mother he'd been interacting with and probably attending church with, and possibly close to, until he was almost 50. I think the record says he was buried in the same crypt as his mother, but I'll wait for Prinzsorgenfrei to continue.)

Yes, absolutely. And may I say: given how thoroughly bombed Berlin was, and that church records not involving a Hohenzollern probably were low on the evacuation and safe keeping priority list, it's nothing short of amazing that all these records still exist and survived long enough to be digitalized.

Peter has two burial dates (Jan 2 and Jan 3)

Maybe someone transcribed badly? If you write 2 and 3 sloppily, I could see a mistake being made, but then I haven't seen the original.

BTW, I just checked Lehndorff who presumably attended the burial, but he doesn't mention the exact date in his lengthy and heartfelt entry on Peter in the 24 - 31 December 1756 section of his diary, and the next printed date is January 11 1757.

Re: Peter Keith in the archives!

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'll wait for Prinzsorgenfrei to continue.

Confirm, not continue.

And may I say: given how thoroughly bombed Berlin was, and that church records not involving a Hohenzollern probably were low on the evacuation and safe keeping priority list, it's nothing short of amazing that all these records still exist and survived long enough to be digitalized.

I know! I was lamenting to Royal Patron in 2021 that I didn't know where Peter was buried, and he said, "Well, that information is out there waiting to be found!" and I said, "You're forgetting about the bombing in WWII. It might very well not be."

But he was right, it was! (I am still surprised.)

Maybe someone transcribed badly? If you write 2 and 3 sloppily, I could see a mistake being made, but then I haven't seen the original.

I thought of that and looked before posting, and I'm *pretty* sure they're a 2 and a 3, but as always, Prinzsorgenfrei can weigh in.

his lengthy and heartfelt entry on Peter

<3

the next printed date is January 11 1757.

Yeah, I searched through the index and the search function for any Keith mentions and collated them back in the day, and didn't get anything on the burial. (But always feel free to check yourself, search functions and indexing are error prone.)

I also turned up a marriage and burial record that I *think* may be one of Peter's brothers, whom Kloosterhuis mentions as a possible candidate for not!Robert. His name is Johann Friedrich, Kloosterhuis says he lived 1714-1793 and lived in East Prussia. I have a marriage record for a Johann Friederich in East Prussia in 1744 (definitely the right age for a first marriage) and a death record for a Joh. Fried. Keitt in 1793 in West Prussia.

On the other hand, there's a Michael Fredersdorf getting married in Berlin in October 1754 who is not our Michael Fredersdorf, so could be a different Keith!

[ETA: The marriage one has a von and is spelled correctly and is in at least the right region; I just realized that in *addition* ot having the wrong spelling and being in the wrong place, the 1793 death has no "von". So I'm inclined to think the burial record is unrelated, but the marriage still might be.]

In other news, I knew Suhm had lost two children at young ages (2 and 10), but it was still sad seeing their burial records.

Also, the handwriting of all the records I found in Dresden is weird! Very loopy, almost looks like Georgian.

Post-bombing

[mildred_of_midgard]

To this point, I meant to share this picture of the Nikolaikirche after the bombing. Only the outer walls remained. So all those beautiful pictures I shared? Restoration work.

https://www.bz-berlin.de/archiv-artikel/das-comeback-der-engel if you want to read the article and see other pictures.