Driving from Euskirchen - more Genealogy

I asked the Voice to take me to Bad Ems first, another location in the Loth pilgrimage. 

Bad Ems is a beautiful town, a place to “take the waters”, situated on the River Lahn, about 20 ks from Koblenz.  Adam Loth was born (1831) in Oberelbert in the neighbourhood of Montabaur, a small village about 20 kilometres north-east of Bad Ems.  He had moved up to the Rheinbach area, and married Margaritta Crèmer in 1855, in nearby Neukirchen, the first of their six children being John Adam.   In the mid1870s it seems, the family moved back to the Bad Ems area, perhaps to be closer to the Loth family, perhaps for work, perhaps in reaction to the deaths of two sons  - Herman Joseph, (born 24^th September 1860, who died in 1874) and Hubert Joseph ( born 15^th March 1865 who died in 1875).  It is not known how the boys died.

John Adam was by that time a young man, and perhaps he remained in the Rheinbach area.  Certainly he married Anna Gertrude Breuer, in Rheinbach, in 1877 (or 1879?). But the couple must have also moved to the Bad Ems area, as their German children are recorded as being born and baptised in Bad Ems. (Except for Jacob, who was baptised there, but not born there).  These recorded German children are John Adam (b. 29.1.1880), Jacob (b. 24.5.1881), Quirin Josef, (17.7.1882), Elisabeth (b 6.6.1886) and Valentin (b. 14.8.1887). 

The interesting thing is that when Elisabeth was born, the priest at Bad Ems made a note in the Church Register:  “This is the fifth child of John Adam and Anna Gertrude Loth, but only three children are alive”.  However, the records show only three children born before Elisabeth, not four.  Yet two children had died before mid-1886.  One of them was Quirin.  The other child is not recorded as having been born in Bad Ems (as Jacob was not), and there is no record of the two children dying in Bad Ems. 

The story in the family has always been that the two who died were twins, a boy and a girl, who died by drowning in the Lahn River, at Bad Ems.  But the lack of a record at Bad Ems raised the possibility that the deaths occurred at Nassau, a smaller resort town very near to Bad Ems.  This story came from the daughter born to John Adam and Anna Gertrude in Australia in 1895 – Mary, who became Sr. M Dorothea of the Townsville Sisters of Mercy.  Mary thought the children died around 1888, but must have been incorrect in this, as the church record says they had died before the birth of Elisabeth in 1886. There is a photo kept in the family (see above)  of the children laid out for burial; they could easily be twins.

This sort of discrepancy within the historical records and between the records and family oral history, of course invites speculation.  If twins, the children could not have been born in different places.  But if twins, why was only one birth recorded?  Was the second child, the girl, sickly at birth and not expected to survive, and hence not recorded.  That does not seem likely, a sickly child would have been baptised very promptly, and hence recorded.  Were they in fact not twins, but very close together, and the second was not born in Bad Ems?  Possible – Jacob was not born in Bad Ems, but in Longeville-les-Saint-Avold, (known then as Lubeln) in Lorraine (Lotharingen in German).  

We do know that John Adam was drafted into the Prussian Army, though he would have been too young to be involved in the Franco-Prussian war.  He could, however, have been posted to Lubeln in Lotharingen after the war, when the territory had been taken from France.  Possibly, another child was born while the family was temporarily absent from the Bad Ems region.

Obviously, there are still mysteries to solve.  

The Bad Ems region is very beautiful, near where the Lahn and the Mosel meet the Rhine, rolling farmlands, woodlands, and nearer the Rhine, vineyards.  After leaving Nassau, the Peugeot continued at the direction of the Voice, following along the Rhine, until the Voice said “Turn right and board ferry”.   What! A ferry!  I see no ferry.  But there down by the quai, there were cars waiting, so Peugeot got in line.  And for three euros eighty cents, we were carried across.  There followed a glorious 10 k drive along the other bank of the Rhine, all the time wondering just where we were, (the crossing was at Trechtingshausen, I have since discovered)  until we hit Bingen.  Of Hildegard fame. I made a silent salute.  A spectacularly located town, stunningly beautiful in the afternoon light. Followed the A61 from there, down towards Karlsruhe and eventually Strasbourg.  But somewhere along the way, we had to sit for 3 hours in an Autobahn carpark, which I heard on the radio, stretched for 36 ks.  The reason was roadworks which narrowed the autobahn, and then a big truck had broken down at a critical point and stopped everything.  I was so glad to have the Kindle in the car.  Never go anywhere without it.  Waiting is part of the travelling game.  (As QANTAS clients are now experiencing )