Maria Elisabeth (Schultheis) Fritzler (abt. 1773 - aft. 1813)

Born about 1773 in Grimm, Saratov, Russia

Ancestors

Descendants

Died after 1813 after about age 40 in Grimm, Saratov, Russia

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Biography

Elisabeth (Schultheis) Fritzler was a Volga German.

Elisabeth (Schultheis) Fritzler has German Roots.

Family #73 in the 1775 Grimm census.

Family #88 in the 1798 Grimm census.

Birth Date and Place

• 1773
• Grimm, Saratov, Russia

Parents

• Johann Heinrich Schultheis
• Anna Catharina (Busch) Felde

Marriages

• Johann Christoph Fritzler
• before 1794
• Grimm, Saratov, Russia

Children

• Anna Margaretha (Fritzler) Leonhardt, born 1795
• Maria Barbara (Fritzler) Schneider, born 1798
• Martin Fritzler, born 1802
• Maria Elisabeth Fritzler, born 1808
• Konrad Fritzler, born 1811
• Daniel Fritzler, born 1813

Death Date and Place

• after 1813
• probably Grimm, Saratov, Russia

Maria Elisabeth Fritzler and her family lived with her maternal grandparents, Balthasar and Margaretha Busch at the time of the 1775 census. This was unusual because most men married and lived with their families, not their wives families. The reason is most likely because Balthasar and Margaretha Busch had no sons, at least not that lived with them in 1775, and this was a way for the family to keep their home and farm in the family. Upon their deaths, the property would go to their son-in-law, Elisabeth's husband, Johann Christoph Schultheis.

By the time of the 1834 census, Christoph had a different wife, Eva Margaretha, who was six years older than he was. There is no mention of Balthasar and Margaretha Busch, nor of Elisabeth Schultheis Fritzler. Most likely all three had passed away, Christoph remarried, and his former in-laws property was passed down to him.

Elisabeth had two children as of the 1798 census, Anna Margaretha and Maria Barbara. There was a two-year age difference between the girls, with Maria Barbara's birth in 1797-1798. After that, there is a four-year gap between Maria Barbara's birth and her brother Martin's, in 1802. In the 1834 census, Martin is not listed as belonging to his father's first wife, as would be the custom if that were so. But a closer examination of the ages of the children compared to second wife Eva Margaretha's age reveal that all the children probably belonged to Elisabeth. Eva Margaretha 45 years old at the time Daniel Fritzler was born in 1813, at a time when she was probably perimenopausal. If Elisabeth was his mother, she would have been 40, a more reasonable age at which to have a child. I suspect Elisabeth passed away shortly after the birth of her last child in 1813, and that her husband's second wife helped raise his young children.

Sources

• The 1775 and 1798 Census of the German Colony of the Volga Lesnoy Karamysh, also known as Grimm; Published by the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA; Published date: 1995; family #73 in the 1775 census, Maria Elizabeta Schultheis, age 1 1/4; family #88 in the 1798 census, Elizabeta Schultheis Fritzler, age 25.

• 1834 Census of Grimm in the District of Saratov, Russia, dated 2 February 1835; Translated by Brent Mai, Concordia University, Portland, Oregon; Published by Dynasty Publishing, Beaverton, OR, USA; Published 2011; page 45, family #145.