Which Berlin?

Berlin, Pennsylvania or Berlin, Germany?  Where was Frederich Nihart/Neuhart born?  Some records indicate Pennsylvania and others Germany.  1820 is a difficult year to find birth records for if you are looking directly for birth records.

Tried the death records and came up empty-handed.  Likely as not, the death records would not have been much help as they are far removed from the event.  Birth information is dependent on the informant.  My ancestor, Josephine Nihart Nussberger always stated her father was born in Germany.  Her brothers waffled on the issue, stating their father was born in either Pennsylvania or Germany.  His own wife waffled on the issue.... Besides, Minnesota is notoriously difficult to search in my humble opinion, which is where Frederich Nihart likely died.  Adding to the difficulty are the endless number of surname variations the Niharts are indexed under!  The 1860 U.S. Federal Census is a prime example of how guessing and imagining surname variations based on how the surname might have sounded to the census enumerator is not always helpful.

More on the 1860 U.S. Federal Census (and the 1857 Minnesota Census) in another post.  For now, my focus is on immigration records.

If Frederich Nihart was born in Germany, then he immigrated at some point in time before he married his wife Elizabeth, who herself immigrated in 1843 at the age of five - according to the 1900 U.S. Census, that is.  If Elizabeth immigrated when she was five years old, then Frederich Nihart immigrated separately and he and Elizabeth were not married in Germany.  Therefore, since Elizabeth and Frederich Nihart were married in about 1857, Frederich Nihart must have immigrated to the United States before 1857... assuming he was born in Germany and not in Pennsylvania.

The Scotland
In 1840 the Scotland set sail from Le Havre for the port of Baltimore, transporting three Frederich Niharts.  Could one of these be the father of Josephine, Augustus, and Frederich Nihart Jr.?  All three Frederich Niharts listed Pittsburgh as their final destination implying that if one of these is the Frederich Nihart we are looking for, this may be where the confusion over where the senior Frederich was born stems from.  He may indeed have spent time living in Pennsylvania after arriving in the United States.

In Germany, the more usual form of the surname is Neuhart or Neuhard.  On the passenger's list, we find it spelled Neuhard or Neuhardt.  In the index, however, the name is listed as Neuhardt for one and Newhard or Newhardt for the other two Frederichs.  On first glance, it would appear one of these Frederichs can be eliminated as a possibility right away -  he is the five year old son of Catharina and Valentin Neuhardt, too young to be the Frederich Neuhart we are looking for.  According to the 1870 U.S. Census, the Frederich Neuhart we are looking for was born about 1820.  However, we have conflicting data in the 1860 census, which reveals a birth year of 1836, which puts five year old Frederich Neuhart back in the running.

The other two Frederich Neuhart's are aged 14 and 20.  The latter, if the 1820 birth year is to be believed, is the most likely candidate.  However, there is no guarantee the birth year implied by the reported age in the 1870 census is accurate.  It may actually be several years off, so that the 14 year old may be the Frederich Neuhart we are looking for.  I have seen early censuses off by ten years or more when it came to the ages of some of my ancestors and I have the actual death and birth records to prove it.  So the Census doesn't really help us narrow it down - it can only suggest possibilities.  Of course, the fourth possibility is that none of the three is the Frederich Neuhart we seek, since the Frederich Neuhart we seek may indeed have been born in Pennsylvania.

For now, however, we assume he was born overseas in Berlin, Germany.  There are plenty of Niharts and Neuharts in Pennsylvania in the early U.S. Censuses, but none in Somerset, Pennsylvania until the 20th century.  There are many in Pittsburgh, starting in the 1820's.  This means Berlin, Somerset, Pennsylvania can be safely ruled out as a place of birth for Frederich Nihart.  The listings of his birth in Pennsylvania are probably in error.  However, while it is easy to dismiss his children's census data indicating their father was born in Pennsylvania, it is not so easy to dismiss the data of censuses in which Frederich Nihart himself took part.  Assuming, of course, it was he who provided the data and not another individual.

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...

Related articles by Zemanta

• 210 Census Will Count Same-Sex Couples In Reversal Of Bush Policy (huffingtonpost.com)