Archive Rehmerloh, near Minden and Bielefeld, 1776

STLKrijger

Hello,

Where could I find genealogical records of the region around Rehmerloh around 1776? (Gemeinde Kirchlengern, now in Detmold, situated between Minden and Bielefeld, in Nordrhein-Westfalen)

Where are the genealogical books kept? I wouln't mind paying a visit with my mother, but where to go?

Which website could I search (for 1776, Rehmerloh, Nekkers)?

I am trying to find the birth records and therewith the parents of my ancestor Jacobus Nekkers (or de Nekker). He was born in November 1776 in the village of Rehmerloh, 'under Prussia'. He emigrated to the Netherlands and was married there in 1804 to Maria van Krugten. They lived in the peat colonies of benevolence (veenkolonien) in Willemsoord, Friesland, Netherlands, where he died in 1854. He is my 'pater familias' of my mother's line.

Thanks!

Karen

A van Helsdingen

For the year 1776, you will be reliant on church records. You will need to know their religion.

According to the Mayers Gazette, there were no churches in Rehmerloh. But if you click on the "ecclesiastical" tab, you will be shown a list of nearby villages and whether they had churches. https://www.meyersgaz.org/place/20564043

If they were Catholic, then the free website Matricula may have the records. If you look at this map: https://data.matricula-online.eu/en/landkarte/?bbox=792118%2C6804431%2C1183475%2C6964030 you can see the places they have records for.

If they were Protestant, you may be able to access the records through the FamilySearch Catalog if you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Otherwise you will need to look at the catalog of Archion: https://www.archion.de/de/browse/?no_cache=1 If Archion has records for the villages around Rehmerloh, you can subscribe and view the records. Ancestry.com also has some German Protestant records.

Cedar Kedar

Hi,

Have you tried to see if there is any information on Research Wiki? To find Research Wiki, login to FamilySearch and click on the Search tab at the bottom you will find Research Wiki. Click on that and type in the bar The place/county you want to research. I have just entered Detmold (a lovely area by the way) and a long list of results popped up. Unfortunately there weren't any results for Rehmerloh, but that does not mean there will not be any in the Detmold results.

Also have your tried this group FamilySearch - Deutchsprachig? They will most probably be able to help you even more.

https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/71-familysearch-deutschsprachig

Best of luck

Cedar

STLKrijger

Many thanks for the useful tips.

I followed the suggestion of A van Helsdingen for the baptism records of the catholic churches, and found an entry for a Nekker-relative very nearby and in the same period (Church of Riemsloh, 1780). So I am a step further! The protestant records are hard to get insight in.

A van Helsdingen

I found their civil marriage in Fijnaart en Heijningen, which does not mention their religion: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99QX-YJP3?i=131&cc=2037960&cat=186709

I did not find a Catholic marriage for them. The Protestant records for that time period do not exist (the Netherlands was under French occupation then, and there was some restructuring in the way marriages were registered and recorded).

But I found a son of theirs, baptised as a Protestant: https://www.openarch.nl/sha:805d559b-c50c-c08d-c7d3-8804518a9367

So it seems that they were Protestant, not Catholic.

Have you looked at the records for marriage consents in Fijnaart en Heijningen? These might name Jacob's parents: https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/186709?availability=Family%20History%20Library

STLKrijger

Thanks for pointing out the marriage consents. I'll look through them; it will take a while because there does not seem to be much order in them.

Their actual marriage records do not provide his parents' names, unfortunately.

Could Jacobus have changed his religion when he came from Germany? Based on your Matricula-map, it seems as if his birth-town Rehmerloh was on the edge between a catholic region to the south and a protestant region to the north (judged by the lack of churches to the north). Following your previous tips, I found a Joannes Nekker baptised in the catholic church at nearby Riehmsloh in 1780, son of a Joannes Henricus Nekker and Anne Elisabeth Wilken. The name Johannes comes back in the 2nd son of Jacobus, so it seems likely that these people were relatives of Jacobus. Hence my uncertainty whether Jacobus was catholic or protestant.

A van Helsdingen

Matricula has records from only a few Catholic Dioceses in Germany- so a sudden change from many churches to no churches may indicate a Diocesan boundary.

If you look at this very good religious map of Germany:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Verbreitung_der_Konfessionen_im_deutschen_Reich.jpg

and zoom in, you'll see Minden (abbreviated to Mind.) and Osnabrueck (Osnab.). Rehmerloh lies between those two cities, and the colour in that region indicates that over 95% of the population was Protestant.

If you refer back to the Mayer's Gazette entry I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, you'll see the names of the villages around Rehmerloh where there were Protestant churches. I looked at Archion and found some of them in their Catalog: https://www.archion.de/de/browse/?no_cache=1&path=189038-573064-573586&cHash=954b88e2def45c8628116f8b713f06c1 The cheapest subscription to Archion costs 20 euros. You can also get these records through FamilySearch, but they are available only to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The name Johannes (also Johan, Johann, Hans, Jan etc) means John, and was the most common first name. A lot of families named all their sons Johannes and gave each of them a different middle name. So I wouldn't use naming patterns involving Johannes as proof of a relationship.