Black Forest Nussbergers

My German immigrant ancestors are Casper Nussberger and his father, Johann Nussberger.  Johann Nussberger came to the United States with two of his sons - Casper and Conrad - aboard the Belgique on 27 October 1856.  He brought no wife with him and married, by 1870, Cecilia Ebener.  In the 1860 U.S. Federal Census for Bear Creek, Wisconsin, Johann Nussberger heads a household with four boys - no female lives in the household.  The boys are 14 year old Casper, 9 year old Conrad, 3 year old Hans, and an unnamed 1 month old male, indicating Johann Nussberger may have remarried sometime after arriving in the United States and before he married Cecilia Ebener.  (Or he had two children out of wedlock before marrying Cecilia Ebener.)  In any case, we have two possible mystery mothers.  By 1860, Johann had dropped the an in his name and started calling himself "John."  Clearly, the mother of Hans and the 1 month old male of the 1860 census are not the same person as the mother of Pauline, Mary, and John Jr., who are born in the years 1861-1865.  We have three wives here - the first one lived and died in Germany before October 1856, the second who died before June 1860, and Cecilia Ebener, the third wife, who had her first child with John/Johann Nussberger in 1861.  Judging by the age of the baby boy in the 1860 census (one month), the mother of that child - if legitimate - likely died in early to mid June of 1860, given the census date of 29 June 1860.  The baby is likely Benedict Nussberger and, if that's the case, the 1900 census with a birth date in March of 1858 may be incorrect.

However, Benedict Nussberger is not the individual I am interested in at the moment.  My concern is with the identity of the woman who bore my direct ancestor, Casper Nussberger, the first wife, who died in Germany.  For a long time, I could find nothing on her.  Let's face it, I didn't even know where to look or where to begin.  My first thought was Ancestry, but there was nothing there.  They have only recently begun to put German records on the site and I don't have the World Deluxe Membership that would grant me access to those records.  There was nothing on the LDS site, Family Search, at the time.  The German sites I knew of were not much help either.  I found Johann Nussberger's immigration records on Auswanderer, but nothing of course on his wife.  Not having a knowledge of German does not help me, but my thought was that I initially had no knowledge of Norwegian when I began researching my Norwegian ancestors on Norwegian sites - I learned to read a little Norwegian.  I learned to read Gothic handwriting.  I could learn a little German, too.  Why not?

Then, this last week, I visited Family Search Labs, an experimental LDS website.  Family Search Labs has a record search project that you can enter and type in names of ancestors and find records.  You can even view actual images of some of these records online and if you haven't tried this site, I highly recommend you do.  I typed "Johan Nussberger" in the name fields and by the end of the night had my German ancestors back to the 18th century.

Best of all, I had found the mother of Casper Nussberger -- Magdalena Spiegelhalter/Spiegelhalder, daughter of Andreas Spiegelhalter and Maria Siebler, born 31 August 1819 in Holzschlag, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany.  I found the marriage record of Johan Nussberger and Magdalena Spiegelhalter after finding the baptism records of their children and the marriage record had the birth dates, christening dates, marriage date, and parents of both spouses.  Johan Nussberger and Magdalena Spiegelhalter had more than two children, some of whom died in childhood or married before Johan left for the United States.  So Nussbergers of Wheeler, Dunn and Durand, Pepin, Wisconsin, you have relatives who were left behind in Germany!

The caveat is the German records online are merely indexes, so must be checked against the original records for accuracy.  I sense a major project coming on...

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