Martha Mayer (1882-)

Martha Mayer (dutch link) was born 2 Apr 1882 in Schifferstadt in the Pfalz, 8th child of Leopold Mayer and Henriette Julia Wolff. She is my husband’s grand-aunt on his mother’s side.

As I realized that I had only secondary sources for her and her siblings’ birth dates, I spent the entire morning going through the microfilms of Schifferstadt on Familysearch. Part of them are indexed, and are searchable,⁽¹⁾ however, a lot of them are not⁽²⁾. And the ones that are indexed, are not linked to the images yet. But I did find birth certificates for all 10 siblings, as well as an 11th sibling, who died at age two.

Martha married in Saarbrucken, and lived in Neuenkirchen, according to my father-in-law. However, there are at least seven places called Neuenkirchen:⁽³⁾

Neuenkirchen near Steinfurt (Nordrhein-Westfalen)
Neuenkirchen near Wiedenbrück (Nordrhein-Westfalen)
Neuenkirchen near Bersenbrück (Niedersachsen)
Neuenkirchen near Melle (Niedersachsen)
Neuenkirchen near Soltau (Niedersachsen)
Neuenkirchen near Dithmarschen (Sleeswijk-Holstein)
Neuenkirchen near Steinburg (Sleeswijk-Holstein)

None of them are close to Schifferstadt  or Saarbrucken. And on the Google map of Neuenkirchen near Melle there are two other Neuenkirchen, aside from the main one: one a little north east from the main one, west of Bramsche, and Neuenkirchen-Vorden, a little further north of Bramsche. Which one to choose? So many places with the same name!

(1) “Deutschland Geburten und Taufen, 1558-1898,” database, FamilySearch.  Note that this index sometimes gives christening dates, even though the Mayers are Jewish!
(2) Zivilstandsregister, 1798-1918, Schifferstadt (Bayern) https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/234137
(3) Amsterdam has a handy book called “Geografic Names in Court Records and Banns Registers” (Geografische Verwijzingen Notarieel en Ondertrouw), available for download at https://www.amsterdam.nl/stadsarchief/archief/downloads/herkomstonderzoek/