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Descendants of Edelmann

Generation No. 1

1. EDELMANN¹ was born in Hesse Darmstadt, Germany.

Notes for EDELMANN:
A Brief Description of a Typical Southern German Village in the Past Centuries

Social Classes
The first class consisted of wealthy farmers (German=Bauer) (ca 2-5 %). They possessed the big farms. Generally, smaller parts of their farm were owned by them and larger parts were obtained by fief (German= Lehen, Schupflehen, Erblehen) from a landlord or the church or a monastery. Also, these farmers occupied the important village positions, like Vogt (=Governor), village judge, etc.

The common farmers (ca 60-80 %) made up the second class. They possessed land, also obtained by fief. These farmers worked hard, and usually were able to have a modest standard of living for themselves and their families.

The third class consisted of the day laborers (German= Tageloehner, in Southern Germany also called Seldner) (ca 20-40 %). They worked for the other farmers for day wages. They were very, very poor and had many children, many of which died immediately after their birth.

Occupations

Most of the farmers had a sideline profession that was usually handed down from father to son.

Upper class: an occupation that brought in the most money: innkeeper.
Middle class: smith, cartwright, cooper, tailor, shoemaker, etc.
Lower class: weaver, ropemaker, tanner etc.

The word "Bauer" (farmer) not only denoted the profession of a farmer, but was also used as a title. A "Bauer" had to have at least two horses and/or bulls and one plow. A wealthy first class Bauer had six or more horses and a net worth of more than 1000 fl. (=guilders). On the other hand, a third class "Tageloehner" possessed not much more than a cottage, a vegetable garden and possibly, a goat and some chickens. In order to get a feeling for wealth and poverty, here are some figures from ca. 1800: a good horse cost about 100 fl., a bull about 40 fl. and an old cow 15 fl. The daily (12-hour day) wage for a "Tageloehner" was six Kreuzer that is one tenth (!) fl.

Marriages

Before roughly 1820 marriage was allowed only with the permission of the landlord. First of all, the engaged couple had to pay the lord for his permission (2-10 fl). Secondly, the couple had to prove to him and to the community that they would be able to support themselves and their children without any outside help. A minimum net worth of 100 -200 fl. was required for marriage. Since many engaged couples could not come up with this sum of money, a large number of the people remained unmarried. Illegitimate births were a frequent occurrence. The parents of illegitimate children were punished heavily. Both were subjected to a painful interrogation by the village judges and fined (the maximum allowable fine was ca 12 fl). A worse fate was to be exposed publicly on Sunday in front of the church, the woman with a straw garland on her head, the man, with a straw sword at his side. Because of these difficult conditions, many emigrated to Hungary and Russia (mainly before 1800) and to America (after 1800), usually not always asking the lord for permission because he would require some remuneration (dozens of guilders).

Emigration

For the most part, emigrants were recruited from the middle and lower classes. Often a family group put all their money together in order for one of their sons to emigrate. They hoped that he would earn enough money in the New World to later pay for their crossing. In many cases, this happened. Upper class people only emigrated when a farm had been willed to one son (not too rare, the youngest one!) and this heir would give his brothers some money to find a new existence outside the village.
Another social group for emigration consisted of those persons who were a permanent burden to the community: e.g., extremely poor families, unmarried or widowed women with children, violent persons and prisoners. In these cases, the community paid partly or fully for the crossing. In 1884, the fee for Bremen-New York crossing was 80 Mark (equiv. 60 fl).
Names and Ancestor Research

An important consideration for family researchers is the fact, that marriage between the classes was nearly impossible. At best, a mixing of classes only took place after disasters like war or plague. The result of all this was that all families within each class of a village and its neighboring villages as long as they belonged to the same landlord were related. This is good for finding ancestor relatives , but bad for identifying specific individuals because many persons had the same name (both first and family names).
In a typical Catholic village, two-third’s of all sons were named Johann or Jakob and two-third’s of all daughters were named Maria or Anna. The rest were named after saints, especially the local ones. Sometimes the children were named after the landlord or infrequently, after the present or deceased sovereign provided he was respected or beloved.

Here some very rough but nevertheless useful rules of thumb for first names related to the sovereigns:

Baden: Burkhard, Bernhard, Friedrich, Hermann
Wuerttemberg: Ulrich, Eberhard
Bavaria (Bayern): Leopold, Ludwig, Max (Maximilian)
Village Government/Officials

There were rights for self-administration and self-jurisdiction of the villages. The head of the village was the Vogt (=Governor). The lord selected him out of the members of the community. Under him, two or three Buergermeisters (Mayors) were selected by the Gemeinde (=community). Sometimes, communities owned considerable amounts of land and forest for common use. Not infrequently, the community and the lord would have a quarrel on property rights.

Children of EDELMANN are:

2.	i.		CHARLES² EDELMANN, b. July 13, 1827, Hesse Darmstadt; d. April 19, 1909, Baltimore.
3.	ii.		VALENTINE EDELMAN, b. November 1830, Hesse Darmstadt, Germany; d. December 13, 1880, Baltimore.

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