Wednesday 29 December 2010

The Hayes Family Bible

The Hayes Family Bible.

I saw this for the first time about five years ago. My uncle has it and we arranged a swap of information when I gave them a colour photocopy of Wilhelmina in return for photocopies of the entries in the Bible.



There it is, written in elegant copperplate handwriting, the fact that James Henry Hayes and Anna Henrietta Wilhelmina Frederika Vollmer were united in Holy Matrimony on Saturday the 21st February 1863 at St Erth Church in Cornwall.

Below that written their date and place of birth.

James Henry Hayes was born on the 9th November 1840, while Wilhelmina was a few months older, her birthday being the 7th March. The place of birth is hard to read but it appears to be Shlettwig Rhur..

I did some more internet research based on the date 1860. One site told me that the country we now know as Germany did not exist at that time, and it was also about 100 years behind us in terms of industrial development. It was the opening of the coal mines and the establishment of an iron and steel industry that created modern Germany from the various states like Shleswig- Holstein and Saxe-Gotha and Bavaria.

So we now know where she came from, but not why, or how she came to meet and marry James Hayes

No comments:

Post a Comment