I started by pulling the family records (German: Familienbücher) for the village of Wolfhalden, where the Toblers were from. Katharina's father was Sebastian Tobler (1806-1874), and led what seems to be quite a wild life; I will blog about him at another time. Katharina's mother was Anna Tobler (1804-1831), a citizen of the neighboring town of Lutzenberg. She was born and raised in Wolfhalden. So far, everything checked out. Her mother was Anna Ursula Niederer (1766-1827), and her father was Johannes Tobler (1766- ), who is the focus of this blog.
The Barlocker family had hired a researcher, Julius Billeter, in the 1920s-1930s to go to Switzerland and research their ancestral lines. He came back, having researched the Bärlocher and Tobler lines (among others). His research had indicated that Anna Tobler
It had always bothered me that the family had "lost track" of Johannes Tobler after the death of his wife Anna Ursula Niederer in 1827. I thought it would be fairly easy to figure out when he died. I started by wondering if Johannes Tobler may have married after the death of his wife. I looked through the marriage records of the town of Wolfhalden, where Johannes was living. I didn't find a marriage for him, and a search of the death records through 1846 (when he would be 80- quite old in Switzerland) didn't result in an identifiable death entry for Johannes. I thought that was fairly odd that he would move from the village he'd grown up in and lived in his whole life, after he was 60 years old.
I went to the neighboring parish of Lutzenberg, where he was a citizen, and started looking through the marriage records there, to see if perhaps he'd gone there to remarry. Sure enough, only 8 months after the death of Anna Ursula Niederer in March of 1827, he married the widow Elsbeth Bänziger on 13 November 1827. Elsbeth was a lot younger than Johannes. I thought it might be useful to then search the burial records of Lutzenberg for Johannes Tobler after this second marriage, thinking that perhaps he moved down to Lutzenberg after his marriage to Elsbeth.
In 1836, I finally found the death entry for Johannes Tobler! I was quite excited. It turned out that the entry was only a notification of the death of Johannes Tobler, who had actually died in Wolfhalden where he had lived his whole life. The entry read:
"in Wolfhalden, April 27 (died)/May 1 (buried): Johannes Tobler, the husband of Elsbeth Bänziger, aged 78 years, 12 weeks, 2 days. Gave 3 Thaler (unit of money) to the village of Lutzenberg".
I immediately noticed the discrepancy. The Johannes that Julius Billeter had linked as the husband of Anna Ursula Niederer and father of our ancestor Anna Tobler was born in 1766. He should have only been 69-70 years old. This entry listed our actual ancestor as a full 8 years older than the one we had assumed was our ancestor!
I went to the Wolfhalden death registers to verify that the age was accurate. I thought perhaps the recorder had made a mistake. The death entry gave a bit more information:
"April 27/May 1: Johannes Tobler (Prinz bot [unknown what this means as of yet]), of Lutzenberg, residing in Unter Wolfhalden [part of the parish of Wolfhalden], the husband of Elsbeth Bänziger, aged 78 years, 12 weeks, 2 days. Gave 7 Kreuzthaaler [unit of money]: 3 Thalers to the village of Lutzenberg, 2 to the orphans in this village [Wolfhalden], and 2 to the school by the church."
Here was the same age. I decided to see if perhaps the marriage entry of Johannes Tobler and Anna Ursula Niederer would help me solve the current dilemma of having a Johannes who was 8 years older than his christening said he was. The marriage entry states:
"December 3, 1790: Johannes Tobler, living in Under Wolfhalden, legitimate son of the deceased Johannes Tobler, and Anna Ursula Niederer, the legitimate daughter of Christian Niederer."
There was no information in this marriage record that proved that Johannes Tobler born 1766 was the same Johannes Tobler who married in 1790 to Anna Ursula Niederer. True, the Johannes Tobler born in 1766 was the son of a Johannes Tobler, who had died before 1790, fitting the description in the marriage. But he wasn't the only "candidate", as I soon discovered.
I calculated what the date of birth would be if the age given at death was accurate. It calculated to be 1 February 1758. I first checked the parish of Lutzenberg. Because Johannes Tobler was a citizen there, he or one of his male-line ancestors originated from this parish. However, I did not find a Johannes within a reasonable amount of time that could be a "candidate". I then decided to look in Wolfhalden. In his marriage in 1790, Johannes Tobler was a resident of Under Wolfhalden. Perhaps he was also born in Wolfhalden.
Sure enough, on 1 February 1758, a Johannes Tobler was christened in Wolfhalden. Furthermore, he was the son of Johannes Tobler and Dorothea Künzler. Johannes Tobler Senior was also living in Under Wolfhalden. Further research on the family verified that Johannes Sr. had died before the time his son married in 1790, collaborating the marriage entry, and that Johannes Sr. was also a citizen of Lutzenberg.
I then went to the Ordinance Index to see if the temple work for Johannes Tobler (born 1758) had been done. I was very surprised by what I had found there. The temple work for Johannes Tobler (born 1758) was indeed done --- by the Barlocker family itself, in 1880. In fact, Johannes Tobler (born 1758) was sealed to Ursula Niederer, also in 1880. I learned that Katharina Tobler had submitted the temple work for her grandparents, whose information she would have known, in 1880 in the St. George temple. Sometime between 1880 and 1920, the "correct" ancestor, Johannes Tobler (1758) was somehow replaced by the "incorrect" ancestor Johannes Tobler (1766) --- probably through the research of Julius Billeter (who had incomplete records and did some guesswork in linking this generation). Since Billeter's Tobler research was given to the family in the 1930s, the family had since assumed that his research was correct, when in fact, Katharina Tobler Barlocker had been right all along --- it was Johannes Tobler (born 1758) who was her grandfather. Although the family has had the incorrect family tree for the Toblers for 80 years, verification using the original records has again returned Katharina Tobler Barlocker's grandfather to the family tree.
