Maria Margaretha Jung

Maria Margaretha Jung was born 27 February 1814 in Frohnhofen, a village a few miles from Breitenbach in the Kusel district of the Rhineland-Palatinate (the Pfalz). She married the Breitenbach miner Christian Boeshar on 8 December 1836, and they had two children — Jacob (b. 1837) and Catharina (b. 1840).

Widowed young

When Christian died in May 1843, Margaretha was about 29, left with a five-year-old and a not-yet-three-year-old in a Pfalz mining village. Her own later life — whether she remarried, whether she stayed in Breitenbach, and whether she was still living when her daughter Catharina left for America — is not recorded in the family tree, and her death date is unknown. She is one of the deepest-reaching names on the maternal Wildermuth line, and the point at which the documentary trail on this branch currently thins to a single vital record.

Her name survives in this archive largely because of one document: the German-script birth certificate that Robert Earl Wildermuth tracked down and had translated for his “Little Histories” — it named both Christian Boeshar’s trade and “Margaretha Jung” as Catharina’s mother.

Her own parents in the tree are Johannes Jung and Maria Catharina Hoffmann — Chuck’s five-times-great-grandparents, documented so far only by name.

She is Chuck’s four-times-great-grandmother on the maternal Wildermuth side, through Catharina → William Clifford Wildermuth → Earl Adam → Robert Earl → Terrie → Chuck.

Source: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — Maria Margaretha Jung (K8LS-YKW); the German birth certificate reproduced in Robert Earl Wildermuth’s “Little Histories”.