Marriage: Johann Heinrich Wasmann and Anna Sophia Bruns, Oldendorf, 5 April 1768

The record

PDF: Marriage_Record_Johann_Heinrich_Wasmann_Anna_Sophia_Bruns_Oldendorf_1768_Archion_Oldendorf_Kirchenbuch_1750-1820_Bild_179.pdf

Source

Transcription

Transcription

2\. d. 5ten April ist der Junggeselle Johann Heinrich Wasmann mit Jungfer Anna Sophia Bruns copulirt, ihre erste Ehe.

Translation

No. 2 [1768]. On 5 April the bachelor Johann Heinrich Wasmann was married to Miss Anna Sophia Bruns; first marriage for both.

Reading of the surname

The surname reads Wasmann (Waſmann). The descender of the p in “April” on the line above runs down through the surname and looks like the upper loop of an h; with that stroke set aside, the letters are W-a-long s-mann. Reading by Paul, confirmed on the full-zoom image.

Notes

• No place of origin is given for either partner. On this spread the clerk adds origin only for outsiders (“aus Lüdersen gebürtig”, a regimental drummer “gebürtig aus … Rotenberg”), so both were most likely residents of Oldendorf parish in 1768.
• Not the marriage originally sought (Friedrich, or Johann Friedrich, Wasmann and Sophia Elisabeth Bruns, parents of the Salzhemmendorf children of 1776–1787). No marriage of that couple appears in the Oldendorf marriages 1765 to April 1776; this is the only Wasmann–Bruns marriage there.
• Leading working theory (Paul, 9 October 2026): this is the same couple. The groom would be Johann Heinrich Friedrich Wasmann, called Johann Heinrich here and Friedrich or Johann Friedrich at Salzhemmendorf (1776–1809; died 1809 aged 72, so born about 1737 and 31 at this marriage). The bride appears as Anna Sophia (1768), Sophia Elisabeth or Sophie (1776–1787) and Dorothea, born at Oldendorf (1820 burial). One Wasmann–Bruns marriage explains the record better than two men of one family marrying two Bruns women with near-identical names. Not proven: the forename shift Heinrich to Friedrich is the weak point.
• Alternative: the groom is a second Johann Heinrich Wasmann, possibly the Linse miller Johann Heinrich Wesemann, who would then have been a widower by 18 November 1770. The miller’s Salzhemmendorf entry gives no status (neither Junggeselle nor Wittwer), so it does not decide.
• Spelling: the Salzhemmendorf clerks write Wesemann for the miller’s family throughout (1770–1828) and Wasmann for Friedrich’s family throughout (1776–1820). Within that register the two names are kept apart, which supports two separate families.
• Test: Oldendorf baptisms 1768–1776 for children of this couple and how the father is named (Johann Heinrich, Friedrich, or both); Sophie Wasmann, who married at Salzhemmendorf in 1810, may be one of them. Also Oldendorf burials 1768–1776 for Anna Sophia Wasmann. Oldendorf’s books on Archion begin in 1750, so a baptism of about 1737 cannot be checked there.

Conventions: text in square brackets is editorial. [?] marks an uncertain reading, [...] an illegible word, and a struck word is shown as ~~struck~~. Spelling, abbreviation and capitalization follow the original. Ditto marks are shown as “do” or [ditto] with the value they carry in brackets.

Transcribed 8 October 2026 from the PDF image or text layer. Readings in brackets are drafts to be confirmed on the original before they are cited as stated.