THOUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE

Magdalena Catharina Niedergesees is my 6x great grandmother (GGGGGG-Grandmother) on my father's side. Her father was from the small village Witzig in Silesia. As there seems to be no surviving parish registries, this is about as far as we may get on our research on the Niedergesees family branch.

Magdalena's maternal side of the family, however, seems to have been native upper Frankonians, with families going as far back as the late sixteenth century. Magdalena's mother was Eva Catharina Pusch, daughter of Hans Pusch, a tailor and Catharina Hildner. Hans seems to have come to Bayreuth as a young man. He applied for citizanship in 1663, at the age of about 24. We know his father was Hans Pusch and his mother's name was Margaretha. Unfortunatel, he didn't mention his place of orgin, neither in the parisch records, nor in his application for citizanship.

Catharina Hildner, Magdalena's maternal grandmother's origins however, can be traced bach to Münchberg and a few smaller hamlets between Bayreuth and Münchberg - hamlets carring romantic names such as Waizendorf or Kupferberg. Her father was Jacob Hildner, a tailor from Münchberg, born to Cunradt Hildner and Margaretha Recks. Her mother was Amalia Maria Roleder, daughter of the tailor Hanns Roleder, originally from Waizendorf and Dorothea Hoffritzen, born in Kupferberg to Riclassen Hoffritzen.

All in all, the Niedergesees family seems to have been a tailor dynasty, the son's taking over the tailor trade from the father, the daughter's marring tailors ...

I was able to extend my research to previously unknown female lines of the Engelhardt and Niedergesees families thanks to the fact that the church registries of the Stadtkirche in Bayreuth (luth. church) went online in the fall of 2017 on www.archion.de.