Zwillingstöchter
The twin daughters of Wilhelm and Christiane Peters
In early 1835 Wilhelm Peters and his wife,
Christiane moved in to a home on Lange Straße, then known just as number 153 in
the town of Tangermünde. Christiane’s
parents, Johann Wilhelm Breÿde and Dorothee Elisabeth Knappe had raised their 4
daughters there. Three of the daughters,
including Christiane, had married and moved out, but one daughter, Carola, was
still living there when their mother died on March 29, 1835.
Wilhelm had spent his life as a farm hand,
working on the family property, first managed by his father, then by his
half-brother. But with his brother’s
death in 1832 he now venture in to trade work in Tangermünde and now living within
the town walls the family started to grow.
There were already two small children, Wilhlem, aged 4, and Charlotte 2.
At 7 o’clock on the evening of the 26th
September 1835 Christiane gave birth to twin daughters. Charlotte Dorothee arriving first, closely
followed by Friederike Louise. In the
Peters family, as in many German families, the children are known by the last
of the first names, hence they were Dorothee and Louise.
A few days later in the evening of the 1st
of October, the local pastor, Herr Becker, quickly called round to the home and
there little Louise was quickly baptized before she past away at 8 o’clock in
the evening from Krämpfe. Infantile convulsions (Krämpfe) was listed often as the death of new born babies and very young children in the 1830s.
Two days later the young father took Louise’s
remains to the local cemetery in Hünerdorfe Straße, and she was buried there having
only been with her parents for 5 days.
The
following day the main pastor, Herr Hemprich, arrived at Lange Straße and quietly
baptised Charlotte Dorothee. There was
to be no Christening ceremony at the St. Stephan’s Kirche, just down the road
from where the family lived.
Over the next
few years the Peters family continued to survive. Wilhelm continued to work in the town, but
was making plans to get back to farming.
Another daughter, Mathilde, arrived in June 1838.
In May 1841,
little Dorothea was suffering from consumption (Abzehrung). The word consumption was often used for what we now
know as Tuberculosis. Like her twin
sister Louise, Dorothee was suffering from a disease that affected many
families not only in Germany but also around the world.
At 11 o’clock on the night of May 3rd,
1841 Dorothee past away. She was 5 years and 8 months old.
Wilhelm and Christiane and now lost both of
their twin daughters (Zwillingstöchter), and 4 days later they took the remains
of Dorothee to lie with those of her sister Louise in the local cemetery.
Although these two little girls had very short lives I feel that their story still needs to be shared. They are my Ur-Ur-Tanten (Great Great Aunts).
70
Lange Straße, Tangermünde – a guesthouse[i]
that is next-door, and similar to the house where the Dorothea and Louise spent
their short lives.
Wilhelm Peters (1805-1806) married Christiane Breÿde
(1796-1868)
________________________|________________________
| | |
Dorothea (1835-1840)
– Louise (1835-1835) – Mathilde (1838-????)
|
Theodore Wilhelm Vetter (1866-1943)
|
Alan Louis Brady (1916-1995)
|
Kevin Reginald Brady (1961
Kevin R. Brady
August 10, 2014
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