Does the Government Have Your Relative's Baptismal Record?

Proving information for pension claims was a challenge for our ancestors. Veterans had to prove their service and widows (or minor orphans) would also have to prove their relationship to the deceased veteran. Sometimes that was not easy.

The image in this post is of an actual baptismal certificate for Johann Jacob Rothweiler that was contained in his mother's Civil War widow's pension application. The certificate was submitted to prove Johann's age at the time of his father's death in 1879. 

Union Civil War Veteran's Pension, George Rothweiler (St. Louis, Missouri), Widow's Claim (Wilhelmina Rothweiler), 17 July 1890; obtained from the National Archives.

Quite a few pension application claims contain similar material. Claims were more difficult when records such as these could not be located and witnesses could not be found. "More difficult" for the claimant usually means "more records" for the genealogist.

We'll be looking various records from the Rothweiler claim in an upcoming issue of Casefile Clues.

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Citation reminder: We are a strong believe in citing genealogical source material in the spirit of Evidence Explained. However, we choose not to include properly formatted citations in these blog posts. There's always enough information in the post to create a citation and full citations are included in my how-to newsletter Casefile Clues. 

They've Only Known Wilhelmina a Short Time

Union Civil War Veteran's Pension, George Rothweiler (St. Louis, Missouri), Widow's Claim (Wilhelmina Rothweiler), 17 July 1890; obtained from the National Archives.

This is the witness portion of a widow's claim filed by Wilhelmina Rothweiler of St. Louis, Missouri, on 17 July 1890. The witnesses are only testifying that they know Wilhelmina. A reading of part of this statement indicates that one witness has known Wilhelmina for three years and the other for two. These witnesses are not making any claims about Wilhelmina's qualification for a pension, how long she had been married to her late husband, whether she had remarried, etc. Witnesses making those sorts of statements usually would have had to have known the claimant longer than two or three years.

One problem with this part of the document is that I cannot read the names of the witnesses and I'm having difficulty reading the names of the streets. The witnesses have signed their names in German. Given that Wilhelmina was of German nativity, this is not unusual. What's slightly odd is that they have only known Wilhelmina for a short amount of time. Since she'd lived in St. Louis since approximately 1850, it would have seemed that she would have been able to find witnesses who had known her longer. But again, they are only testifying to her identity, not the specifics of her claim.

A map of St. Louis may help me in reading the addresses of these two witnesses. The first is probably Victor Street. The other I'm not so certain. It is noted that the house numbers are close, which may indicate that these two ladies (their first names are Christina and Rosa) are neighbors.

A German Marriage Certificate Raises Questions

We've discussed the family of George and Wilhelmina Rothweiler on this blog before. These German natives were living in St. Louis, Missouri, as early as the late 1850s and remained in the area for the rest of their lives.

An 1870 era estate settlement in Hancock County, Illinois, indicates that this Wilhelmina Rothweiler is a member of my Trautvetter family--supposedly the daughter of an Ernestine Trautvetter Hess who was also the mother of William and Valentine Hess. Wilhelmina is referenced in one of the documents as having been Wilhelmina Hess befoer her marriage. The estate records seemed pretty straightforward in terms of stating the relationships, but they did leave out many key details about the family.

I recently discovered that George Rothweiler obtained a Civil War pension and that his widow Wilhelmina received pension benefits upon George's death.

Knowing that Wilhelmina would have needed to prove her marriage to George in order to qualify for the benefit and also reaonably certain that there may be other information on her in the application, I decided to obtain a copy of the pension. I was hoping that it may provide additional clues on either Wilhelmina's siblings or the family's early life in the United States (particularly the location of her marriage to George).

I have a researcher in the area who obtains materials from NARA for me. I indicated that I wanted the pension for Rothweiler and that, in an attempt to help her determine the right George had been located, I indicated that his wife was Wilhelmina and that Wilhelmina was a Hess before she was married.

The researcher emailed me back upon reviewing the file and said that there was a lovely marriage certificate in the application--in German. But, the name on the marriage certificate was not Wilhelmina  Hess, it was Wilhelmina Trautfetter.

I am confused. It is not uncommon on death certificates for maiden names to be incorrect. It is a little less common for a person to provide a wrong last name on their own marriage record.

Stay tuned...there may be more of a story here than I expected. I have a few theories, but it's probably best to wait until I've seen the actual images of George's pension.