The Baumgartens of Usingen

It’s been so long since I last did some family history research worth writing up, but with the passage of time, I thought it might be worth a look on FamilySearch to see if they had any new films online worth trawling through. Bingo!

I’ve suspected for a while that Samuel Christian Frederick Baumgarten, my 5x great grandfather, was related to a Baumgarten and his son whom I had found references to working as cantors (church choir leader) in Usingen, Germany. A number of things lead me to believe this, including family members named in wills, and various snippets from historical newspapers etc. 

I strongly suspected that Samuel’s father was one of the cantors in Usingen, but I had yet to find evidence. I found it today!

I believed that Samuel had siblings named Leopold Christian, Juliana Ernestina, John Henry (anglicised, presumably Johann Heinrich), Frederick, Gertrude, Magdalen and Frances. Today I found references to all of them, bar John Henry, in church records from Usingen, including Samuel’s birth record, which I believe has never been identified before. I now have the name of Samuel’s father, Johann Nicolaus Baumgarten, though disappointingly, Johann’s wife, the mother of his children, was not named specifically. 

In the Usingen birth records (1685-1734) I have found the following records for the children of Johann Nicolaus Baumgarten:

• Samuel Christian Friedrich, born 31 January 1725, son of Johann Nicolaus
• Christian Leopold, born 10 April 1727, son of Johann Nicolaus, Stadt Cantor (city cantor)
• Johann Friedrich, born 1 April 1729, son of Johann Niclas
• Juliana Ernestina, born 22 April 1732, daughter of Cantor zu Usingen (cantor to Usingen)
• Francisca Dorothea, born 31 March 1734, daughter of Herrn Cantor.

The birth records for 1735 onwards are not currently available online in any form, so I’ll have to see if I can get access to the film of them at some stage. I suspect John Henry was born after 1734.

As well as these births, I found a record of the confirmations of both Anna Gertraud Baumgarten and Anna Magdalena Baumgarten in 1730 in Usingen, suggesting to me that they are the eldest children in the Baumgarten family, the only ones who had reached the age of confirmation (traditionally around the age of 14 in the Lutheran Church) during this period of records. 

I searched for a marriage record for Johann Nicolaus and his wife, but there was none in Usingen between 1685 and 1734. I deduce from this that they were married elsewhere (where?), and arrived in Usingen within a year or two of Samuel’s birth, the first Baumgarten birth recorded in the parish. 

So there we are. I can confirm for the first time ever that Samuel Christian Frederick Baumgarten, bassoonist of London, England, was born in the town of Usingen, in the principality of Nassau-Usingen (today in the state of Hessen in Germany) on 31 January 1725.