Early Generations of the Rohr Family from Rosenthal in Soldin
The current lineage I have so far…..
N.N. Rohr, my 6th great grandfather, was born in approximately 1691. I extrapolated this estimated birth year from the time Martin Rohr was born in 1716 assuming N.N. Rohr had Martin at about the age when he was 25 years old. There are assumptions that this is our relative, and the evidence is very compelling [see attachment “B1”, 2 pages, one blown up to see the names better, and is from the Geheimes Staatsarchiv, II. HA, Abt. 33, Generalia, Title II, Number 31]. It is a document that lists a Rohr from Rosenthal, the same Rosenthal as in the documents below, which is now Rozansko, Poland. Our ancestors were foresters, which will have more explanation in the documents following.
This document lists a Rohr from Rosenthal in about 1720 in the district of Amt Himmelstädt, which is now Mironice, Poland in and around the area the Rohrs were “Försters.” This document lists N.N. Rohr as a “Buschläufer,” which literally translates as “Bush Runner.” Buschläufer” is an old German term for “Förster,” or forester. Unfortunately, the church books for Rosenthal were destroyed, probably in a war, so, going back any further may be pretty difficult. This is about all I can glean from this document, but nonetheless, a fantastic find.
I’ve included old photos here of the town of Amt Himmelstädt [see attachment “B2”, 2 photos, one photo from the time N.N. Rohr would have visited here, and an old postcard from about 1919 which shows the style of some buildings at that time].
The other interesting thing about this document is the second person from the top of the list has the last name of Rohr. He is from the town of Berlinchen. Berlinchen is now called Barlinek in Poland and is a small town in Mysiborz, Poland. This was the old town of Soldin which is just north of Rosenthal where our Rohrs lived. There is a very good probability that this is another of our Rohr relatives.
Martin Rohr, my 5th great grandfather, was born in 1716. This date was extrapolated from the mention of his death age when he was an Unterförster and an Oberförster, or a Head Forester for the Prussian Military [see attachment “C” from 1775 found in the Prussian State Archives in Berlin 2 pages]. This document shows Martin Rohr and two of his sons. One of them was Carl Friedrich Rohr, age 22. He is my 4th great grandfather who also became an Oberförster. This was very common for a son to follow in his father’s career path like this. The other son was Christian Ludwig Rohr, and it looks like his age was 20 on this document. I have not been able to find any additional information on him yet.
Martin Rohr was from and lived in Rosenthal, east of and near Königsberg in Neumark. This town is now called Rozansko, Poland.
Now, the next set of documents show the death age of Martin Rohr. These documents [see attachment “D” 8 pages] are essentially the swearing in, and contract (Annehmungsbrief) of Carl Friedrich Ludwig Rohr as Hegemeister in a district called Amt-Chorin near Berlin. This happened in 1784.
An add-on portion of the documents show Martin Rohr dying on April 4th in 1800 at the “Dölzigerbrücke” in the forest of Massin in Kreis Landsberg at the time. Massin was also a village near Rosenthal and is now the village of Mosina, Poland and the Lubusz Voivodeship just west of Gorzow Wielkopolski.
According to the website www.meyersgaz.org, this was a “Försterei,” or a forest ranger station residence.
This would have made him 84 years old.
These documents also show Martin Rohr was being transferred from Massin to a village called Sennewitz, and then more specifically to a mill called Sennewitzmühle [see map attachments “C1” 5 pages for maps of these villages and of this area of Germany and Poland]. Massin and Sennewitz are a town and village essentially next to each other.
The next document for Martin is his marriage record which I found on Ancestry,com [see attachment “CC” 3 pages, I enlarged the right and left side of the document, and FHL film # 1271002]. It shows Martin Rohr, “Unterförster,” from Rosenthal, married Johanna Eleanora Schraube on December 30th, 1742 in Berlin, Brandenberg, Germany. Her father was Carl Gottfried Schraube.
I have attached 4 additional pages here which show the Dorfkirche in Stralau, Germany. This is an area just south and east of Berlin on the Spree River. The marriage document suggests they were married “in the woods” of Alt-Treptow, which is just across the Spree River from this church. There may have been some level of ceremony at this church, but certainly, and at one point, the marriage records were kept here [see attachments “CC2”, 4 pages, for photos of this church both recent and old].
They had at least 2 children that I have documentation for:
Carl Friedrich Rohr born about 1755 to 1759….
Christian Ludwig Rohr born about 1753
Just above would be the birth of our 3rd great grandfather Carl Friedrich Ludewig Rohr. He was born about 1759 in Bromberg, Prussia, which is now Polish territory and is the Polish town of Bydgoszcz now. More specifically, the documents say he was born in Wootgesse, I have not been able to find this town anywhere on any historical map. So, it could have been the name of a farm in the area. At the time he was born this part of Germany was the Province of Pomerania during the 1653 – 1815. Later know as Brandenburg, and after the Thirty Years’ War, the Kingdom of Prussia, and also Hinterpommern or Farther Pomerania. Many of the areas that our family lived in were Prussian Germany at the time and are now part of Poland. From a genealogy standpoint, this has made tracking down this family difficult at times, as the Rohrs moved around quite a bit due to their professions and rank. The word Pomerania comes from the Slavic “po more,” which means “Land of the Sea.” Sweden actually had control over these lands at one point during this period, and more particularly, around 1714. The Treaty of Stockholm concluded in 1720 and Prussia was allowed to retain its conquest, including Stettin. The Rohrs lived in Stettin at one point in the 1800s. Carl Friedrich Ludewig Rohr was born at the end of the Battle of Zorndorf during the Seven Years War. Brandenburgian Pomerania was left ravaged, mainly by Russian troops, and the civilian death toll amounted to 72,000. In the early 1800s Napoleon and the French troops invaded the Province of Pomerania. Stettin surrendered without battle. I mention this as our Rohr family was also subject to French occupation at one point in history. In about 1813, the French troops were pushed back out of Pomerania.
Carl Friedrich Ludewig Rohr was born about 1755 – 1759, as extrapolated from documents, (I have not been able to find his baptism record, so his birth year is approximate).
In about 1779 he was an Oberförster, also written as “Königlicher Hegemeister,” “Grenzaufseher,” and “Obergrenzkontrolleur”–the head or royal forester north of Berlin near the city of Joachimsthal, Germany. This is near the town of Britz. Being a “head” or “royal” in any profession, as associated in the Prussian military, are prominent positions within the military, and the Rohrs were fairly affluent due to this.
I have heard numerous times from family members that the Rohrs were of royalty. I am not sure this is specifically true with regard to being nobles and owning larger tracts of land. However, the Rohrs held positions of prominence. In Prussia, the chief forester, or Oberförster or Hegemeister, had his voice and seat in the chamber and sat next to the chamber president. In some principalities, the rulers used one or more chief forestry masters, who were responsible for the territory of the entire principality.
[1] In einigen Fürstentümern setzten die Landesherren einen oder mehrere Oberforstmeister ein, welche für das Gebiet des gesamten Fürstentums zuständig waren.[2] Der Oberforstmeister war Leiter der Forstaufsicht über einen Distrikt der landesfürstlichen Waldungen. The “chamber“ controlled the incomes of the sovereign. The sovereignty were those who were those nobility and land owners that exercised the highest power. My speculation is that these positions helped the future generation of our family get into the position of head tax and customs collectors for the Prussian Army. This would also explain that in many of the Rohr baptism records where the witnesses present at the births of many of the children were not so much family members, like one sees in many other German script records, but prominent members of nobility for the territory that our Rohr males were in charge of.
I will expound more as I write about following generations, as the Rohr family was heavily involved in the Prussian military.
So, I have been able to extrapolate the birth year of Carl Friedrich Ludewig Rohr from his death record found by Martin Sohn a genealogist I hired from Burow, Germany, in the archives of Podanin, that he died in 1808 and was 49 years old. Again, I have not found his baptism record for his birth. This death information is in FHL Film #1194741.
Now, the children were born at the turn of the century in 1800 around the village of Podanin, in Kreis (county) Kolmar in Posen at these times. The Polish name for the county is now called Chodziez/Poznan. We know that the family traveled around quite a bit due to dad’s work. This was the early 1800s and during the time when Napoleon was on the march, defeating Prussia in 1807. In 1815 Prussia defeated Napoleon. Their son, our 2nd great grandfather, then became a Grenzaufseher–which is a customs and tax collector and inspector–for the preuĂźische Armee around 1830 in the town of Rosenthal in Germany.
Carl Friedrich Ludewig Rohr was born about 1755 to 1759 (extrapolated from death record in Greifswald, Germany, and the 1775 förster records from above. He died in 1808 at the age of 49 [see attachment “E”, FHL film #1194741].
I found several records of this family in the Podanin archives [see 5 table of content pages for this, I did not give a letter to these]. I thought these pages were pretty cool to look at.
He married Sophia Friederike Heinriette Krieger in Berlin on July 16, 1794 [see the attachment “F”, 2 pages FHL Film 78207]. One of these documents is a birth announcement and the other the actual marriage document. The marriage document says, “On the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Sunday after Trinitatis, Mr. Carl Friedrich Rohr, Royal “Hegemeister” in Britz, Amt Chorin, and virgin Sophia Friederica Krieger, only daughter of Mr. Johann Michael Krieger, owner of an estate near Köningsberg in Neumark (now the town of Chonja, Poland on the Oder River) announced the intention of their marriage. Both got married on Wednesday, 16 July, 1794, through Mr. “Ober Consistorial Rath” Hecker, with consent, in the house of the “Hofrath” Krieger on Friedrichstraße. I have attached 6 pages of the church they were married in (six pages because I wanted to show the history of this church (Kirche) over the years as the church had a long history and is pretty famous [see attachment “G”, 3 pages].
I have attached the birth record of Sophia Friederike Henriette Krieger. Sometimes spelled Krueger and Krüger in other records. She was born on October 1, 1761. She was the daughter of Johann Michael Krieger and Anna Dorothea Berndt [see attachment “I”, 2 pages FHL Film 008025239].
They had at least 5 children:
Carolina Friederica Louisa Rohr born December 2, 1795 in Joachimsthal, Germany, which is a little north of Berlin in a district called Amt-Chorin. She was baptized December 6, 1796 [see attachment “J”].
Julianne Rohr born 1798 in Podanin, Kreis Kolmar (now Polish Chodziez), Deutschland, and died November 2,1886 in Greifswald, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Her birth year was extrapolated from her death record from the civil archives in Greifswald, Germany. Greifswald is the village this part of the Rohr family lived in after they moved from Podanin. Her death record shows she was 88 years old when she died. She never married [see attachment “K”].
Emilie Heinriette Amalia Rohr born March 13, 1803 in Podanin. I have not found a death date yet for her. She was baptized on March 26, 1803. The key for this link for me was that her father, Carl Ludewig Rohr was an “Oberförster” [see attachment “K1, for her baptism record FHL Film 1194741].
I also found her marriage record. She married Friedrich Laurencius Claviter on May 13, 1824 in Königsberg in Neumark [see attachment “L”, 2 pages, FHL Film 887242].
Augusta Louisa Leopoldine Rohr born February 14, 1805 in Podanin, no death date yet. Her baptism record shows she is the daughter of Oberförster Carl Ludwig Rohr and Sophia Friederika Krieger. She was baptized in April the 28th in 1805 [see attachment “M”, 2 pages, FHL Film 1194741].
It is here that I decided to add some more maps. They show Germany at different times in history when our family Rohr was living there. There is some level of chronology to hopefully put some of what went on during those times into context [see attachments “N”, 7 pages].
