My 5G Grandmother

We are introduced to Maria in her 1762 marriage record to Martin Bayerl.  All we are given is her name and where she was from.  Unfortunately the names of her parents were not entered in the marriage record.  We see her name again in the baptismal records of her children. The last Edenried entry I have is that of her death in 1815, just below.

I had to struggle to interpret this record. Had I not been pointed to it by an index, I am not sure I would have recognized the name! It is written in German and not Latin.  I typed in the words I think I know and question marks where I was still in the dark. Subsequently, my new friend Walli Naßl in Germany helped me with the rest. 

Maria's entry is the one just above my suggested translation insert.  Column #1 tells us this is page 130 (in the Edenried death register of 1802- 1854.) Her name is spelled 'Bayerl or Bayrl(in).' Column #3 tells us she is a Halbbäuerin ['half-farmer' relates to size of the farm] and is Catholic.  Column #4 gives the name of her administrative district, village, and house number 23.   Column #5 tells of her family status of Witwe or widow but I cannot read the heading. 

Initially I could not identify what Column #6 tells us.  However, the heading starts with "Krankheit" which is "illness."   Columns 7 & 8 indicate date and time (Uhr) of death and burial. She died 13 Nov vormittags (in the morning) at 11 Urh.  Column #9 gives the age at death as around 80.  The descriptor "Etlich" precedes the number 80 years.  Etlich in modern German translates as "a number of things; or several".  The adverb etwa translates as "approximately." I assume we are being told that her age at death is an estimation.  The obigen in column #10 means "as above" and identifies the priest.

We also know that in 1808 when she was still alive, Rupert Bayerl, one of Maria'a grandsons, came to Edenried for a visit and to serve as a godparent.

Maria Mall in Gallenbach.

Church records from Gallenbach were available to me through the LDS church.  In 2008 I looked briefly, but looked again more carefully this month.  Indexes are available for baptisms, marriages and deaths from 1707 to 1875. (Interestingly there are a number of Bayerls listed but I cannot yet make a family connection.)

[Note, June 7, 2015: The discussion below was written before I acquired some civil records including the marriage contract between Martin Baÿrl and Maria Mayr! That threw me for a loop, but in the contract, Maria's parents are named Jakob and Agathe. Note below that there was a Mall couple with these names living in Gallenbach and having children in the 1730's. I strongly suspect that while the names may be different, the people are the same!]

There were many Malls and (and a few named Maal, Mahl, and Moll) in Gallenbach in the first half of the 1700s.  There was however, only one Maria in the index and she was baptized in 1727.  If this is my Maria, she would have been 88 at a death in 1816.  This is not out of the ballpark, but not a definitive identification.  The parents of the 1727 Maria were Simon and Maria. [I need to go back and copy this record.]

In 1738, a Maria Mall is a godparent to someone else's child.  This may well be Maria, the wife of Simon.

There were at least four sets of Malls who were having children between 1727 and 1738.

I looked carefully for additional births after 1734 and could not find another Mall through 1746 when fewer Malls were present at all.  I found no Maria Malls.

If Maria Baÿrl was truly 80 at death, she would have been born in 1735.  The church records suggest that this was a difficult or at least disordered time in Gallenbach. In that year, only 3 births were registered: a big drop from the usual.  Simon Mall was still in the village serving as a godparent.  In 1737 there was a single birth recorded.  The records seem not as "neat" in this period.  It may be as simple as the absence of a regular priest in the village, or some social disaster. (The village is close to Augsburg and would have been in the path of any army going through.)

There is one additional record for a Maria Mall in Gallenbach, but it does not help much. The name Maria Maalin appears in a mostly undated list of confirmations occuring on or after 1743.

Conclusions:

I do not have a lot more to go on. There is no reason to doubt that Maria came from Gallenbach, but her ancestry is not known and perhaps unknowable. [Addendum 2015: I spoke too soon! The genealogy community of Germany came to my rescue.]  I will try to learn more about the history of Gallenbach and its church to see if records might have been kept elsewhere at that time. 

[Addendum, Nov 2010:
While looking through the church books of Griesbeckerzell (near Edenried) I found the following Family Register.  It lists an Annamarie Mall who was born in Gallenbach in 1854 and moved into the neighborhood.  This tells us only that Gallenbach was still producing Malls into the 19th Century!]