Friday Find: Christoph Hacker’s Manumission

Kris Hocker on 30 Sep 2016

I recently ordered Werner Hacker’s Auswanderungen aus Baden und dem Breisgau through Interlibrary Loan for some research I’m doing. I’ve wanted to check it out for a while, so I was really excited when my library notified me it was in. But that was nothing compared to the excitement to come.

I was idly flipping through the book, getting accustomed to it’s contents and organization. I don’t know German, so I was looking more than reading, but keeping an eye out for words and locations that I do know.

The book covers eighteenth century emigrations from Baden, now part of Baden-Württemberg, and Breisgau, then a kingdom ruled by Austria. One section of the book includes examples of manumissions from various locations.1  My eye caught on Baden-Durlach. My Hackers and Weidmans were from the Karlsruhe section of Baden-Durlach. So, I paused and skimmed the text and I saw “…Christoph Hackers von Rußheim Manumissions…”

HOLY SMOKES!

Searching the text I saw the date of 7 March 1752. My ancestor Christoph Hacker, his wife, two daughters and two sons-in-law, arrived in Philadelphia on 23 October 1752.2 They would have had to leave Rußheim in the spring of 1752, and, in fact, may have left on 16 March 1752.3

Name, location and date all seem to indicate that this could be the actual manumission for Christoph and Anna Margaretha (Jock) Hacker. Wow! Talk about a lucky find.

And if Professor Hacker could include it in his book, I could get a copy, too. I always presumed that those records likely didn’t exist anymore due to the destruction of WWI and WWII. Lesson: Don’t presume a record is lost. Always check.

I’m going to have to write to the Archives in Karlsruhe. Anybody know German?

Footnotes

  1. As I understand it, before emigrating, Germans needed to receive permission to leave from their local government. If they received it, they were issued official documents—a passport, if you will—that allowed the to travel out of the country. Officials along the way could ask to see those papers at any time. ↩
  2. Christoph and Margaretha’s sons Adam and George had emigrated in 1749 and 1751. The rest of the family—Christoph, Margaretha, daughter Christina and son-in-law Michael Lang and two children, and daughter Margaretha and son-in-law Lorentz Haushalter—came over in 1752. ↩
  3. A biography of Daniel Grove, a descendant of Michael and Christina (Hacker) Lang, states the family left Germany on that date and that Grove still had Lang’s passport. ↩

Cite This Page:

, "Friday Find: Christoph Hacker’s Manumission," A Pennsylvania Dutch Genealogy, the genealogy & family research site of Kris Hocker, modified 29 Sep 2016 (https://www.krishocker.com/friday-find-christoph-hackers-manumission/ : accessed 20 Apr 2024).

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2 Replies to “Friday Find: Christoph Hacker’s Manumission”

  1. J Hoover 30 Sep 2016 at 9:55 pm

    Congratulations! What a find!

    1. Kris Hocker 1 Oct 2016 at 10:38 am

      Thank you. I was alternately surprised, then stoked.

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