Bavarian Royalty

Hello SirLouises and Aberths!

Thanks to Lori's excellent family research, I think I've discovered a long-forgotten, yet interesting fact about our family heritage. Although maybe some of you knew about this already?

Here's what happened.

My mom (as well as everyone else, apparently) was extremely fond of her Uncle Jacque Aberth, son of my great grandpa Henry Aberth. Uncle Jacque died young, before I was born. But as I was growing up my mom would mention him often, and always in the most glowing terms. According to mom, he had a great sense of humor and was constantly telling jokes and playfully teasing everyone around him and making everyone laugh.

A specific detail about him that my mom told me more that once: "Uncle Jacque used to always say that my grandmother was Bavarian royalty."

Given that Uncle Jacque was apparently known for his relentless, yet good-natured teasing and tricks, I always assumed this line about being Bavarian royalty was just another one of his jokes. But mom seemed to think it was actually true. How naive!

So over the last 3 years, I've been teaching myself German.

And during that time, my mom has mentioned Uncle Jacque's old claim about us allegedly being descended from Bavarian royalty at least once. Having recently learned quite a bit about german geography during the course of my self-study of the German language, I told my mom – in a very condescending tone:

"Mom, that's fake news. Your entire family is from the far-west side of Germany. Practically France. Everyone knows that Bavaria is on the east side of the country. There's no way your family is Bavarian anything let alone royalty. Obviously, Uncle Jacque was just teasing you."

Cut to last month, when I discovered all of the family research that Lori has shared on Ancestry.com. (Y'all should check out her account and family tree on Ancestry, it's awesome.) As I've said, I was fascinated by all of the info Lori has gathered on the SirLouises and Aberths, and I was inspired to do some online research of my own.

And since the political map of Europe has changed significantly over the past couple of centuries, I've been collecting a few historical maps of Germany to aid my research. Specifically, I found and saved this particular map of Germany from the 1800s:

Note the two large regions colored light green in southern Germany – the Kingdom of Bavaria (Königreich Bayern in German). When I saw this map, I thought to myself, Huh. Look at that. Bavaria used to own a totally separate, big chunk of land way over on the west side of Germany, near modern-day France. And that western Bavarian colony overlaps with the region that my mom's side of the family comes from. Wow. Who knew?

I saved the map for future reference and I didn't think much more about it.

Then, I began translating some of the old German church records that Lori has gathered online – old german baptism, marriage and burial records of our ancestors in Germany. (I can't thank Lori enough, she's collected so much interesting info.) Soon, I came across this record:

This is a baptism record from the protestant church in Rumbach, Germany from 1853. The child being baptized is my great-great grandmother along the strictly-maternal line (SirLouis > Aberth > Niess > Hunsicker), one Elisabetha Hunsicker. (Which, again, I only know because of Lori's research! Thanks Lori!)

As I started translating this particular baptism record for my great-great grandma (full translation of this record is here), all of the details I uncovered seemed thoroughly mundane and normal. The printed, generic portion of the text in the record was easy to read, and contained no surprises. Normal baptism stuff.

The proper names of all the central figures discussed in the record (my GG grandma and her parents, and the town they lived in) were written in what we'd consider normal cursive handwriting, and I quickly deciphered those – all as expected.

But the majority of this record is a list of 4 witnesses to the baptism, hand-written in a different cursive script used only by germans prior to the 20th century, called Kurrent. In the Kurrent cursive script, many letters have very different shapes than what we are used to, making it far more difficult to read and translate. For a minute, I considered not even bothering with translating the witnesses – it seemed like that would be the least interesting part of the record and certainly the most difficult. But then I decided to give it a go after all.

The witnesses ("all of the protestant confession") were:

"Philipp Stephan", a "Miller" from nearby "Steinselz in Alsace" (the same town my great-grandpa Henry was born in)
"Ludwig Stoffel", a "single" "Farmer" from "Rumbach"
"Carolina Stöhn" a "single" woman from "Rumbach"

So far, so boring. But the final witness contained a surprise:

⌈Eva Elisabetha Hunsicker Ehefrau des K. Revierfürsten Sieß, zu Bruchweiler wohnhaft⌋

In English:

⌈Eva Elisabetha Hunsicker, wife of the Royal Regional Prince Siess, resident of Bruchweiler⌋

Wife of a Royal Prince? What?

I immediately remembered the old map I had found a couple of weeks ago that shows the western Bavarian colony from the mid-1800s, and pulled it up to compare. Sure enough, the prince's town of Bruchweiler, as well as the town of Rumbach, where the baptism occurred, were located within the borders of that Bavarian western colony, just along the southern border.

Holy crap, maybe Uncle Jacque wasn't joking? An honest-to-goodness royal bavarian princess attended my great-great grandma's baptism. And the princess has the same last name as my great-great grandma. Maybe they're related? To be fair she was apparently only a regional princess (whatever that means), but still. Maybe we really are bavarian royalty!

So again, with the help of all of the excellent research that Lori has already done on the family, I was able to track down our princess.

The good news: So far, I've found and translated three more old german church records involving our ancestors which mention our Bavarian prince and/or princess, and they are all in agreement about this prince's royal credentials, and his marriage to one of our ancient relatives. The prince is also mentioned in an old book with very long lists of minor bavarian nobility.

So we are at least related to Bavarian royalty. Or maybe Bavarian nobility. By marriage.

Here's the bad news. Unfortunately, it looks like none of us are directly descended from Bavarian royalty or nobility.

Recall that the record above describes the baptism of my great-great grandma Elisabetha Hunsicker. The regional princess witnessing the baptism is the sister of her father (my great-great-great grandfather), Friedrich Hunsicker. That makes the princess, whose maiden name was Eva Hunsicker, the aunt of my great-great grandma (the child being baptized).

In 1850, my "3rd great-aunt" Eva Hunsicker married a minor – yet legitimate! – "Royal Regional Prince", named Ferdinand Georg Sieß (pronounced like "cease" as in "cease fire") of Bruchweiler, Germany, which was – at that time – under Bavarian control.

So there you have it. Uncle Jacque was right. My mom's grandma's family was Bavarian royalty. Kinda. And I've apologized to mom for doubting him. :)