Of the Vinegar Makers

I’m wrestling with relearning Latin and learning some more French. And what are you doing to delay the onset of dementia? Ha ha.

I have been working on the Selgrad family line in southwestern Germany for several weeks nonstop. They lived in the town of Sankt Ingbert, which is close to Saarbrucken and part of Saarland. Back the days of the records I have been studying, the town had been taken over by the French under Napoleon Bonaparte.

Civil records started having to be kept in French, but I’m still decoding the Latin church record books. Happily for me, the microfilmed images are available online, but they aren’t translated nor indexed. My challenge is to find all the Selgrads (and Schmelzers, whom they married) and translate their records so I can assemble them into family groups and eventually figure out how they are interrelated.

In the year of the Lord one thousand eight hundred first on the twenty first day
of September was born and the following day was baptised, Maria Johannetha . . .

The records for the 1790s had been in Latin and started with “In the year of the Lord one thousand seven hundred ninety” - something. Then domini was dropped as the French Revolution promising Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity did not include religion. I find the omission curious, since these were still, after all, records kept by the Catholic church parish clerk. In the record below, despite his use of the new French government-mandated dating system, with the “month” Thermidor and its ten-day weeks, he still wrote down the centuries-old dating system too, “August 17” providing me with a very welcome orientation in time. I’m still amazed after all these years since I first learned it that the Revolutionaries thought they could replace something so basic and entrenched as a calendar system. It boggles the mind.

I had to take a year of Latin as part of my graduate school studies. I was very busy that year, working to support myself and pay for my schooling, as well as studying and writing like mad. I gave my Latin classes the bare minimum attention in order to pass, but I didn’t do well. So now I’m looking up word lists and using Google Translate and studying various online dictionaries and taking online classes in genealogy-specific Latin. I’m finding out that it’s hard when the clerk doesn’t spell things the way the dictionaries and Google Translate think is correct. It’s hard when the clerk doesn’t seem to use the inflected endings I expect from my studying. I am sure my studying is more than partly to blame, but I’m working harder at it now!

The occupations have caught my fancy and I am more than curious to know what these people did for a living. I am, in fact, determined to know.

agricola - that’s easy, that’s a farmer.
pistoris - that’s the baker
molinarius - the miller, and of course the baker chooses him to be godfather to his child
mercatoris - merchant, of whom there would have to be some
tutoris - that’s a tutor, but the way it’s written I wonder if it was really sutoris, a cobbler?
textoris - weaver, which is further broken down into linen or wool
sartoris - the tailor, upon whom the weaver depends for sales, obviously
calcearii - a shoemaker, maybe of a different flavor from the sutoris?
fabri - a carpenter or maybe a smith; the term can also be combined as a workman or artisan in something
fabro ferreo - this looks like iron maker, and indeed, a number of the records show men “de oficina ferrea” or workers in an iron making factory, likely using the puddling method developed in 1784 to lower the carbon content of cast iron or “pig iron” and turn it to the less-brittle wrought iron.
mercenarii - of the day laborers, of which there were quite a few
operarii - workers for hire, like the day laborers
fabri carbonum - of the charcoal makers; this region was rich in iron and coal ore
vinarii - of the vintners
clavi fabrii - of the makers of nails or spikes (but Google Translate insisted on “vinegar makers”)

In the year 1804 on the 17th of August, the 12th year of the Republic of
France on the 27th of Thermidor was baptised Johann Jacob the legitimate
son of Peter Sellgrad [occupation] and Eva Bauer his wife living in St. Ingbert.
He was born the third hour of the same morning. Godfather was Johann Jacob
Gries unmarried son of Ludwig Gries nail maker and Elisabetha Holzer his 
wife of St. Ingbert. Godmother was Maria Selgrad unmarried daughter of 
Johann Jacob Selgrad nail maker and Maria Johannetha Decarm his wife of 
St. Ingbert. Each has signed [made their mark] below.

“Petri Selgrad, clavarii” it says. Google Translate says he’s a vinegar maker. What? My Latin dictionary says clavarii has to do with money given to soldiers for shoe-nails, and clavi are nails or spikes. I think I believe the Latin dictionary over Google Translate, and the clerk had been busy reading about Roman wars before he made this entry . . .

There’s a lot of difference between someone who hammered metal into a square-and-tapered shape and someone who poured alcohol into a vat and let it sit for months to make vinegar. At least, I hope so.

Meanwhile, what have those folks programming Google Translate been drinking? Too much sour wine?