Jacob Nachtigal

Buller Time was recently contacted by a reader of the blog asking for help in tracing the family line for his ancestor Jacob Nachtigal. Jacob, his wife Katharine, and their six children immigrated to the U.S. in 1874 on the S.S. Teutonia, Jacob’s brother Benjamin and his family joined them on the same voyage. Based on this basic information—matching the known names of the children against the ship’s passenger list—one can find Jacob and Benjamin in the GM database: Jacob is GM 70260; Benjamin is 70253.

The information provided in the two GM entries is sparse: their father’s first name is unknown, and their mother’s name is a mystery. Other information given is suspect: the brothers were presumably not born in Molotschna, since neither name appears on the 1835 census, well after the brothers had been born. Tracing the family line back will require further time and resources, but with this post we look forward to Jacob’s death, or so it appears.

The GM entry for Jacob includes this note: “Could his obituary be in Mennonitische Rundschau, 10 Feb 1892, p1?” Thanks to the online availability of all issues of Die Mennonitische Rundschau, we can check for ourselves. For the issue in question, see here. 

The report (pictured to the right) was sent from Kirk, a village in western Colorado. Dated to 27 January 1892, it was written by J. Bergthold. It reads: 

The Mennonite community here has grown somewhat since the Bergthold and Esau families moved here last fall. They like it here and are now setting themselves up at home. Last Thursday we were at A. Fast’s to attend the funeral of her father, Jacob Nachtigal. The deceased reached the age of seventy-two years. He leaves behind a few grown-up children and a widow in poor circumstances; she fell four years ago and turned both her feet off. She also suffers from what is known as a serious illness and must be cared for like a small child, which is extremely difficult for A. Fast’s children.

The winter has been somewhat harsh so far, but today it is quite mild, the snow is melting, and we are talking about going to the field.

A few details are fuzzy (What does it meant to turn both feet off?, but the gist of the report is clear enough.

For our purposes, we note that the deceased Jacob Nachtigal had a daughter whose married name was A. Fast. According to GM, our Jacob Nachtigal had three daughters: Helen, Katherine, and Anna. However, Anna, whom one would assume is the A of A. Fast, was actually married to Johann Buller. This casts doubt on the identification of this Jacob Nachtigal with the one who interests us.

However, the GM entry for Katherine (70258) states that “one record calls her Anna.” Why she would be called Anna when she had a younger sister of the same name is hard to imagine. However, it is interesting to see that Katherine/Anna was, in fact, married to one Isaac Fast, and they raised a family in Henderson, Nebraska, at least through 1892.

One final note: the notice above states that Jacob Nachtigal died in 1892 at the age seventy-two. The Jacob Nachtigal who interests us was born, as far as we know, in 1820. The dates match perfectly.

Is the Jacob Nachtigal in the Mennonitische Rundschau report the same person who immigrated with his family and brother to the U.S. in 1874? If we stopped at this point and did not explore further, we might judge it probable that the two are one and the same. However …

GM also enables us to look for other women named Anna Nachtigal who married someone named Fast; in fact, there is only one other: Anna Nachtigal 82504. Importantly, although she lived in Henderson early on, by 1888 she and her husband and family had relocated to Kirk, Colorado. Later on it appears that they moved on to Kansas and eventually to Oklahoma. We can say that, if the birth locations of her children are given correctly in GM, she and her family lived in Kirk in through all of 1892.

Given J. Bergthold’s passing statement that he (or she) went to the Nachtigal funeral “on Thursday,” the most natural conclusion is that this was a local affair and did not require a trip of 300+ miles from Kirk to Henderson, where Katherine/Anna Nachtigal Fast lived.

In the end, we did not learn anything about the Jacob Nachtigal whose life we are investigating. We did, however, fill in a puzzle piece of another Mennonite’s life: the name of Anna Nachtigal 82504’s father. GM does not know or include either parent’s name, but now we know that her father was named Jacob. We also found reason to correct an erroneous suggestion in the entry for Jacob GM 70260. He is not the person referenced in the Mennonitische Rundschau report; that is a different Jacob Nachtigal who is apparently not listed at al in the GM database.