Mapping spread of the oldest Schochenmaiers

Today I'd like to map one more time the oldest Schochenmaiers (which can be found on FamilySearch) after we "erased" Leopold Schahenmeyer from our family tree. By the "oldest" Schochenmaiers I mean the Schochenmaiers before the relocation to the South Russia (1820s?)

It looks like follows:

I am not sure if we can trace the spread of the family or find any system. However, we could recognize:

1. In the middle, there is Maria Schochenmeyer(in), actually the oldest one (highlighted with blue).

2. The cluster 1 (highlighted with green) is to be seen to the North where there were five families within three areas:

Stuttgart 1690s-1720s
Ludwigsburg 1770s-1800s
Heilbronn 1800s-1860s

3. The cluster 2 (highlighted with yellow) can be found to the South where there were 4 families in the limits of

Freiburg (1730s)
Herbolzheim (1790s)
Lahr (1750s-1790s)

Should we conclude that there had been two spread branches of Schochenmaiers: one in Baden (South: Freiburg - Lahr), another in Württemberg (North: Stuttgart - Heilbronn)? I think the splitting of the family is not so visible, we are just trying to reconstruct the distribution of the Schochenmaiers and we do not possess all data from the church records. That is why it's only one of the possibilities.

One thing is clear that the only candidate for relocation, in the terms of time!, is the family part from the Heilbronn area. The same idea is supported by another Schochenmaiers who are actually living in Bavaria (Germany) and St. Petersburg (Russia). It's important to notice that in Heilbronn, the Swabian dialect was and is speaking, such an interesting fact corresponds with the statement of my great grandmother who said that we had spoken the Swabian German.

I don't know if it's enough to pick this theory. Let's advance!!

  

The oldest Schochenmaier ever 2.0

As we proved in some previous posts that Leopold Schochenmeyer was not the oldest Schochenmaier (because he was Schahenmeyer from Austria), I am asking myself again who actually had been the first Schochenmaier. Well, of course, it cannot be the very first Schochenmaier, but the first one known to us from the archives.

Let me remind you of Maria Schochenmeyerin which I presented to you attention on October 2014. Yes, it's strange enough to state that the oldest known Schochenmaier is a woman. Therefore, we suggest that she should have had a father with the same family name. Let's go deeper into details:

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. Thus, her farther X Schochenmeyer should have been born in 1620-30s(?). But there are no hints in the digitized resources about him or any other relatives. 

4.  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. 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 where 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 Alsacer egion 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 Schochenmeyerin christened their children here: 

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 have contacted them to question if they have any information on our Maria Schochenmeyerin but I have got no response since then. 

Thanks for your attention and interest.