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Johann Jacob Rierschneck
Jacob’s father, Johann Georg Rierschneck, was born in 1725 in Kloster Auhausen, the site of a 16th century Benedictine monastery. Although the monastery was razed two hundred years before in a 1525 peasant uprising, the economic, that is, farming, portion remained. At the time of his marriage, Georg was 25 years old, working about five miles away from home, in Ostheim, as a farm hand. This is where he met and married Jacob’s mother, the maidservant Anna Schwanzer. No information on Anna’s parentage has been found for her yet.
Georg and Anna did not remain in Ostheim very long. They moved west looking for work, first to Schobdach, then to Irsingen. By the time their first child, Anna Catharina, was born in April 1751, the couple, although married, was living and working in two different places; Georg in Schobdach and Anna in Irsingen. It appears that they were so poor that they could not afford to settle down someplace together. Only between the time of their next child’s birth did Georg manage to get a job as a farm hand in Irsingen where Anna had spent the previous year.
Their second child, Jacob, was born in Irsingen, on December 17, 1752. The entry shows that he was christened on the same day as his birth, at home, because he was born sickly and was not expected to live. His sponsor was a man also named Jacob, from Schobdach (where George had worked), who was probably the person for whom he was named.
The family did not stay in Irsingen very long, and there is no further record of them again until Georg mysteriously shows up about twenty miles to the north in a place called Deffersdorf in 1786. The record of the family is pretty confusing at this point, as Georg appears with a son who is not Jacob, but rather named Michael who was born around 1756. George’s wife (and Michael’s mother) is listed as Anna Maria, who died in 1796. It has not been determined if this Anna Maria is the same as Jacob’s mother Anna Schwanzer, or a different Anna, or whether Jacob and Michael were full or half brothers. If Anna Schwanzer died early, and Georg married a second Anna, this might be an explanation as to how Georg could have managed to rise from a very poor farm hand, to a farm owner within his lifetime. More research is still being conducted that will hopefully clear up this question.
While the family did not live in Deffersdorf before 1786, they were obviously living somewhere within this “Waizendorf” district (Vogtamt Waizendorf) at least in the Spring of 1777, when young Jacob was nabbed by the Ansbach Army.
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