Rick J. Schochenmaier crossed the Great Divide

Rick J. Schochenmaier
(July 18, 1953 - October 25, 2014)

A Time of Remembrance for Ricky J. Schochenmaier, 61, of Oacoma, SD will be Saturday, November 1, 2014 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm with family present from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm at the Hickey Funeral Chapel in Chamberlain.

Ricky John Schochenmaier was born July 18, 1953 at Oacoma SD to Walter and Alice (Bauman) Schochenmaier. He attended school in Chamberlain and graduated from Chamberlain High School. After high school, Rick attended Mitchell Vo-Tech. On November 27, 1982, Rick was united in marriage to Marie Payton. They made their home in Oacoma where they raised their children Tracy and Brian. He worked for Nortel for many years and most recently for Gen Band Telecom.

Rick loved fishing, hunting, playing cards, and cooking.

Rick passed away on October 25, 2014 at his home in Oacoma at the age of 61 years. Gratefully sharing his life are his wife Marie of Oacoma; mother Alice of Chamberlain; daughter Tracy of Swedesboro, NJ; son Brian of Rapid City; three brothers Glen and wife Margie of Lemon Grove, CA, Dick and wife Tammy of Mitchell, SD, and Terry and wife Terri of Las Vegas, NV; a sister Beth of Chamberlain; several nieces and nephews; and special friends he shared his life with Paul Krogstad of Chamberlain, Lee and Tina DeHaai of Chamberlain, Mick and Cathy Zeman of Vermillion, and Steve and Doris Dominiack of Chamberlain. Preceding him in death were his father Walter.

In lieu of flowers donations can be made in Rick's name at.... castforkids.org

The Schochenmaiers' relocation of the 17th century discovered?

Playing with the spellings of Schochenmaiers, I stumbled upon a woman with the name of Maria Schochenmeyerin who, being married to Michaele Dettling, got a baby Christoferus Dettling in 1676 in Altheim.

1. The forename of Michaele Dettling is written in a correct way, it's just a south dialectal form of the full name Michael that expresses any aspect of being "small". It might be read like Mikhele (compare with the Swiss Company name "Nestle" - small nest);

2. The spelling of Maria Schochenmeyerin corresponds to that of Sara Schachenmeyerin where I explained that "It's not a problem at all. In the Southern Germany until the 18th century (and in the Bavarian dialect till now!) the female family names got ending -in." So, we may conclude that father of Maria had had the surname of Schochenmeyer.

3. If Maria bore a child in 1676, she could be born between 1640s and 50s. After I thought of it, it caught my imagination. What if this is Maria Schochenmeyer daughter of Leopold Schochenmeyer from my posting on the oldest Schochenmaiers ever!!! Maria Schochenmeyer had been born in 1652 and thus she could get a baby in 1676 being just 24 years old at that time. There is a time coincidence but what about the spatial continuum?

4. The family of Maria (1652), namely Leopold Schochenmeyer and Anna Saueber had lived in Britzingen, it's South Baden near Freiburg, today on the border with France but at that time it was German Alsace (biggest towns are Straßburg and Mülhausen). The today's Maria had got her child (1676) in the catholic Altheim of the Schwarzwaldkreis within Württemberg. Where is it?

On Wikipedia you may find three different Altheims:

Altheim, Biberach, a municipality in the district of Biberach, Baden-Württemberg

Altheim (Alb), a municipality in the district of Alb-Donau, Baden-Württemberg

Altheim (Ehingen), a municipality in the district of Alb-Donau, Baden-Württemberg

All of them are not far from each other, but it's not Schwarzwald. Schwarzwald might be here:



On the net you may find a hole list of areas which made part of Schwarzwaldkreis:

Below are the Oberamt cities for the Schwarzwaldkreis area of Württemberg: 
Oberamt Balingen 
Oberamt Calw 
Oberamt Freudenstadt 
Oberamt Herrenberg 
Oberamt Horb 
Oberamt Nagold 
Oberamt Neuenbürg 
Oberamt Nürtingen 
Oberamt Oberndorf 
Oberamt Reutlingen 
Oberamt Rottenburg 
Oberamt Rottweil 
Oberamt Spaichingen 
Oberamt Sulz 
Oberamt Tübingen 
Oberamt Tuttlingen 
Oberamt Urach


Under Oberamt Horb you may find the following:

Parish Cities/towns for Oberamt Horb

Horb 
Ahldorf 
Altheim !!!!!!!!
Baisingen 

.........

So, we found out there there was another Altheim in Schwarzwald, that is a part of Horb today.

Horb am Neckar is a town in the southwest of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river, between Offenburg to the west (about 56 kilometres (35 mi) away) and Tübingen to the east (about 29 kilometres (18 mi) away).

In addition to the main town of Horb, the municipality includes a number of communities which are recognised within the terms of the 1970s Baden-Württemberg local government reform, that is they have an elected council and council chairman. These are Ahldorf, Altheim, Betra, Bildechingen, Bittelbronn, Dettensee, Dettingen, Dettlingen, Dießen, Grünmettstetten, Ihlingen, Isenburg, Mühlen, Mühringen, Nordstetten, Rexingen and Talheim, the last of which is made up of the formerly independent parishes of Obertalheim and Untertalheim. These are referred to formally (for example, in postal purposes) as Horb-Ahldorf, Horb-Altheim, etc. 

The history of Horb is relatively boring because from 1381 to 1806 it belonged to Austria, and that's why it was officially Catholic:

Further Austria or Anterior Austria (German: Vorderösterreich, formerly die Vorlande (pl.)) was the collective name for the early possessions of the House of Habsburg in the former Swabian stem duchy of south-western Germany, including territories in the Alsaceregion west of the Rhine and in Vorarlberg.

While the territories of Further Austria west of the Rhine and south of Lake Constance were gradually lost to France and the Swiss Confederacy, those in Swabia and Vorarlberg remained under Habsburg control until the Napoleonic Era.

Here is the Württemberg map of the 17th century. The Austrian territory is highlighted with brown:

Some pictures of Altheim in Horb:

The Catholic Church of St. Maria's Birth does exist till now. Who knows, maybe Maria Schochenmeyer christened their children here: 

 It's only 120 km (75 miles) from Britzingen where she probably was born.

To go on foot will take 25 hours, thus it might be half day by carriage or 4-5 hours of horse riding. It seems pretty realistic. If it's true, then we have found the very first example of the Schochenmaier's relocation!!! It's not so far as Stuttgart and Heilbronn, but it's already a sort of trend ... 

I should add that on November 1677 Maria will get another boy called Conrad:

but before those two boys she had got a girl Catharina Detling on the 29th March 1671: 

So, she had two boys Conrad and Christofer who were Dettling as their father Michaele Dettling. 

The surname distribution map proves that the highest rate of Dettling family name is precisely in Horb a.N.: 

The bearers of this surname organized a real club dedicated to their genealogical research: http://www.dettling-familiengemeinschaft.de/index.shtml

  I think I'll contact them, maybe they have any information on our Maria Schochenmeyer. We can't be sure that it's the same Maria from Britzingen but it's so suitable that can be true)))

Thanks for your attention and interest. 

Russian Jacob Schochenmaier on TV

It's a Russian video ("Without term of limitations") dedicated to victims of Josef Stalin. It's about Jacob Schochenmaier (1896-1937) shot dead in Soviet Georgia (Caucasus where he had worked as a book keeper) for being active Christian of German nationality.

Jacob is grandfather of Walter Wahler (1959), son of Gottlieb Schochenmaier (1862-????), husband of Margaritha Grauer (1899-1952) and brother of Wilhelm Schochenmaier (1897-????) who is my great great grandfather.

"The genocide committed against the ethnic Germans of Russia comprised a series of mass murders and genocidal actions that unfolded in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In all, from 1915 to 1945, probably over one million Russian Germans perished from unnatural causes under three successive Russian governments—those of Tsar Nicholas II, Lenin, and Stalin—chiefly by means of mass executions, forced labor, deliberate starvation, and brutal deportations."

From 1930-1937, around 300,000 to 350,000 Russian Germans lost their lives as a result of the deliberate starvation, deportation, or massacres of resisters to "collectivization."

The German-Russian Genocide: Remembrance in the 21st Centuryby Samuel D. Sinner

 

Third theory on the Schochenmaiers' family name origin

On July, 2014 I presented the first theory advocated by some of us. On September, 2014 I suggested the second theory. Today, I will explain the third and actually the last possible origin of our surname.

According to the first theory, our family name represents a sort of fusion of Schoch and Maier when two families had united their businesses and married their children))). As for the second theory, it was speculated that Schochenmaier is a surname of occupational origin, thus the very first Schochenmaiers could be chiefs or heads of those who ricked /cocked or stacked/ the hay.

The third theory represents the Schochenmaier as an alloy of occupational and topographic (or toponymic) names. With intent to distinct it from the second one, I will call it simply "toponymic origin" (topos in Greek means "place", so toponym is place-name). It states that, as well as in the second theory, the part "Maier" is of occupational or job-related origin, but the first part "Schochen" is going from a toponym, where our ancestor became a "maier" (mayor!).

Well, the part "schO/Achen" could be related to a place in Germany (or German-speaking area). Let's give some examples of such places:


1. Schochen is a mountain of Bavaria in the Allgäu Alps near Oberstdorf:

It's already the South Swabia.


2. This mountain range is to be found in Austria as well. There you can climb on the Schochenspitze (Schochen Peak).




3. Schochenhof (Schochen Farm) is a part of the Upper Swabian Ottobeuren that is a municipality in Bavaria, located 11 km southeast of Memmingen. It is famous for Ottobeuren Abbey, situated next to the Basilica.

 

 

4. Schochenbach (Schochen Creek) is the local name for a 2 km long tributary valley in Katzensteig and belongs to the town of Furtwangen in the Black Forest region of south western Germany. The small valley extends from northwest to southeast. The valley floor is 880-960 m above sea level.

 

5. Schochenwinkel (Schochen Corner) - is a field place within Bahlingen, not far from the Schochenbach, closer to France.

 

To that list you may add a dozen of Schochen field names on the Swiss coast of the Constance Lake and several street names, like Schochenweg (Schochen way) in Landshut (Bavaria), Schochengasse, Schochenstrasse, Schochenhaus, etc. However, you'll see only two distinctive clusters where the "schochen"-based place-names are to be found: near Alsace in Baden (Nr. 4 and 5) or Upper Swabia (Nr. 1-3). As you can see, we are squeezed  between the Badish and Swabish regions again...

If Schochen part is to be rooted in place-names, let's map all geonames (geographical names), which contain "schochen" or "schachen" in the German-speaking countries or in the former parts of the Germany. I did it easily by means of Google Maps highlighting the "schochen"-based names by red and "schachen"-based names by blue. What did I get?

Let's have a look:

A considerable majority of dots (around 25) are to be found in the Southern Germany (plus one in Hesse) except 7 places in the Northern Switzerland and 6 places in the Western Austria. So, it demonstrates a sort of continuum in space.

After studying this map, I drew the following conclusions:

1.  There are more "schAchen"- than "schOchen"-based place-names;

2. In some general features, this map corresponds to the map of today's schO/Achenmaier distribution from http://schochenmaiers.blogspot.de/2014_06_01_archive.html

3. The two highest concentrations of "schachen" (blue!) in the Southern Bavaria, close to the Swiss border, may explain why lots of Schachenmayrs are living there. The more red German South West gives us to think of the presence of some Schochenmaiers at those regions. By thinking so, we may conclude that some of "schAchenmayrs" could be of toponymic origin. But, the highest concentration of the schAchenmayrs is to be overlapped with "schOchen" placenames in the South Swabia!!! How can it be?

We must be very careful with our results. Accidentally, I stumbled upon a report from the archives which told that some places in Upper Swabia (Southern Germany, in the middle!!!) had been renamed in 1526 near Ravensburg:

It's very interesting to get to know that "Schachen" was replaced by "Schochen" ! What does it mean? Is it a dialect change? It's in the 16ing century...  If our family name hadn't been formed yet at that time, then the schOchenmaiers  could be a separate family. And if our family had already existed, then there is a possibility that we are remote relatives...

4. If the toponymic theory is right, then the Schochenmaiers originate from the Upper Swabia (near Switzerland and Austria) or South Baden (near France) during the 16th-17th century century (f.ex. Leopold Schochenmeyer in 1630s around Freiburg!), but then from the beginning of the 18th century they removed and in the course of the 19th century multiplied themselves in the Lower Swabia or North Baden (Stuttgart, Ludwigsburg, Heilbronn, etc.).

Well, it's more complicated than I thought, but that's why it's getting much more interesting)))