My Third Great Grandmother, Amalie Ebritsch Mühlpfordt of Arnstadt and Wittenberg, Germany
My grandmother Viola told me that her family came from Germany and that she only spoke German until she went to school. Her middle name was Bertha, after her mother’s mother, Bertha Milford. My grandmother told me that Bertha came to America and lived with her father. Since Bertha was single, “an old maid,” in the language of that time, her father expected her to take care of all the children in his new family. He told her he would never speak to her again if she married Robert Feldweg, who was almost a decade younger. She saw her chance and took it, and now we are all here. [1] Genealogy documents having come online since I talked with my grandmother, I was able to learn that Bertha’s full name was Amalie Bertha Auguste Mühlpfordt, her father’s name was Johann Carl August Mühlpfordt, and her mother’s name was Johanne Amalie Ernestine Ebritsch. [2] Germans often had three or four given names, but commonly used one. Here I will call them Amalie and Carl. In 1854, Carl left his s...