The Story of a Divorced Couple and Their Children — Where Can the Detailed Records be Found?
Good Day!
I found the second marriage record, below by note (1), for Katharina Magdalena Brand (LB23-VFX) who was noted as being divorced. As I understand, it was not easy to get a divorce then. (Brand ended up marrying her dead sister's husband about a half year later.). Katharina Magdalena and Christian Heinrich Meister, her first husband, resided in Bretzfeld and later in Waidachshof, Adelsheim where their last child was born.
She had 4 children with her first husband and divorced him in 1892 when their children were 15, 13, 12, and 8 years old.
The oldest child, Maria Magdalena Meister, emigrated from Germany to the U.S. when she was 14, a year before the divorce. She was accompanied by her friend, Pauline Reinhardt who was 17 years old. Maria ended up in Ohio where she married a Gottscheer, Ignatz Fink, in 1909. Her two other siblings immigrated to the U.S. later. The youngest, Lina Auguste, stayed in Germany where she got married.
Maria, leaving her home at the age of 14 and moving to another country without her family across the ocean, opens up many questions. (Pauline may be a cousin — that is yet to be determined.).
(1) Can you kindly decipher and translate the marriage record on the far right as to why they were divorced?
(2) What happened to the remaining 3 children? Do we assume they stayed with their mother and stepfather? Would that be recorded somewhere?
Do you know where I might find the actual divorce records to show more details, like what happened with their children at the time of the divorce? Might the records be online? If not, how/who can I enlist someone to locate the record(s) for me?
(3) I've been trying to determine where Christian Heinrich Meister went after the divorce and what he did.
The death record, below, for Lina Auguste, their youngest daughter who stayed in Germany, seems to indicate that someone, either Schimdt (Lina Auguste's husband) or Meister, her father, was a farmer who died in America. Please clarify that. (Did they use commas as end of sentences? If so, Christian may be the farmer in America.).
(4) I found some U.S. records, but cannot confirm exactly which Christian Heinrich Meister he was in the USA. I can't locate the ship's log with a date after the divorce and before Lina died, from 1892 to 1907. Any help on that, like where to look (other than here, heritage.statueofliberty.org, and ancestry.com) would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
Best Answer
-
- The text is: 1st marriage divorced by final judgment of the IIIrd Civil Senate of the Grand Ducal Higher Regional Court in Karlsruhe of May 5, 1892, on the grounds of gross disparagement and harsh mistreatment on the part of the defendant against the plaintiff
- There is no mention about the children. I am not sure if the court records of the divorce are still existing. If so, they are probably archived in some central archive. You may want to contact the "Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe" (https://www.landesarchiv-bw.de/de/landesarchiv/standorte/generallandesarchiv-karlsruhe/47245) for general information about the availability (email: glakarlsruhe@la-bw.de)
- The text is: ... born in Weidachsdorf on 29 July 1884, married to the upholsterer Hermann Julius Oskar Schmidt, daughter of the farmer Christian Meister who died in America, and his wife Magdalene née Brand, now widowed Reichert, living in Langenbeutingen, died in Hamburg in the aforementioned institution on 20 May 1907 at 10:15 p.m. (so it is Christian Meister who was a farmer in America)
3
Answers
-
Can you give us a larger copy of the reason for divorce?
1 -
Oh wow. I thought that you could enlarge it here. Sorry. Here it is. Thank you.
1 -
Much, much better. Now someone way smarter than I will translate for you. KG
2 -
Ulrich Neitzel Ulrich, you amaze me! Kent
2 -
Ulrich,
Superb! Thank you very much. I'll dig deeper into US records to try to find him.
Have a wonderful day!
1
