Nathan Rind - On the merging of profiles of "Nathan Rind"

I have merged three distinct profiles of persons named "Nathan Rind." I have written this message to explain and to justify this merge.

The first thing that must be understood is that the surname "Rind" was not at all common among the Jews of Hapsburg Bohemia and Austria. There are just two original Familianten in all the Bohemian Familiant books who took the surname of Rind: Jakob, the son of Josef, of Radenín (c. 1740–1832) and Bernard, son of Philipp, of Přehořov (c. 1747–1843). I have been able to trace nearly every record of a Jew born with the name of "Rind" in Hapsburg Bohemia or Austria to either the one or the other ancestor. When a record of someone named "Rind" identifies that person's Zuständigkeit as in Radenín, or a nearby village such as Chýnov, the person is a descendant, or the wife of a descendant, of the first Jakob Rind. When the Zuständigkeit is in Přehořov or Soběslav, the person is a descendant or the wife of a descendant of the first Bernard Rind. Curiously, despite the geographic proximity of the two Rind progenitors, I have not found a single case of marriage a descendant of the one and a descendant of the other.

The main point here is that, when Jakob Joseph (as he was called) became Jakob Rind, his family was the only Rind family in Radenín and environs. So when he had, as his Familiant record as well as a birth record attest, a son named Nathan, that son was the only Nathan Rind in Radenín and environs. There is simply no plausible way in which there can have been a second person of that name in the village or a neighboring one. Certainly it can happen that a name given to a child that dies in infancy is subsequently given to another child in the same family: see, for example, the two sons of Jonas Rind named "Jakob." But nobody gives the same name to two sons when both are alive.

Before I merged them, the three profiles of persons named "Nathan Rind" were as follows:

(1) Nathan Rind

Name: Nathan Rind
Married Anna Kerpen
Father of Franziska, a.k.a. Fanny, Saxl (born Rind), born 1814/15
Occupation: butcher
Place of adult residence: Pořín
Documentation: marriage record of daughter Fanny—"Franziska Tochter des Nathan Rind Fleischhauer aus Pořín."

The fact that this Nathan was the father of a girl born in 1814/15 allows us to infer that he was born no later than 1795, and most likely between 1770 and 1790.

(2) Nathan Rind

Name: Nathan Rind
Born in Radenín in 1769/70
Son of Jakob Rind (first Rind Familiant, born in 1739/40)
Married Veronika Wiener in or not long after 1801
Died in Pořín in 1845
Documentation: (1) Familiant record; (2) death record: "Nathan Rind Sohn des Jakob Rind aus Radenin Familiant Fleischhauer aus Pořin."

The attribution of a date of birth in 1769/70 rests only on the death record; and death records in this era are not generally reliable as to the age of the deceased. As the Familiant record says that Jakob received his marriage permit in 1775, it is far more likely that Nathan was born after that date than before.

(3) Nathan Rind

Name: Nathan Rind
Born in 1776/77
Married Marie Teller in Oblajovice in 1802; she is of age 24 (b. 1777/78) to his 25
Documentation: marriage record in Radenín book 1749

In view of the consideration with which I began, namely that there cannot have been more than one Nathan Rind in Radenín and environs at this time, and setting aside for the moment the different names of wives occurring in these records (a weighty thing to set aside!), there is no room for reasonable doubt that these are three profiles of the same person: Nathan Rind, son of Jakob, born in Radenín in the 1770s, living and working as a butcher in Pořín until his death in 1845.

But then there is the fact that I set aside, namely that each profile mentions a wife of a different name—and not just a different given name (it is common enough for one woman to be called by different given names in different records) but also a different surname. Of course, a man may marry more than once. But Nathan-2 received a permit to marry a certain woman in 1801 while Nathan-3 married a woman of an entirely different name in 1802. What are we to make of this?

I note first that there is no profile of anyone in Geni with the surname of "Wiener" located in or near Radenín, and I don't think I have ever come across that surname in the vital records of Radenín and Hroby. Using "Tábor District" with "Wiener" in a site search yields only five profiles. So I think we should consider seriously the possibility that the name "Veronika Wiener" was an error. Still, it is not plausible to suppose that some scribe meant to write "Anna Kerpen" or "Marie Teller" and then produced "Veronika Wiener" by a slip of the pen. Every one of these names must have come from some source.

Although, unfortunately, I cannot remember the names of the persons concerned, I recall one instance in which the wife attributed to a certain man in his Familiant record was one woman and the woman whom that man married, according to a record that was assuredly of the same man, was a different woman. So it is not unprecedented for a Familiant to marry a different woman from the one in his Familiant record. If this happened in the present case, it explains why the Familiant record says that Nathan received permission in 1801 to marry Veronika Wiener but instead in 1802 he married Marie Teller. As for the discrepancy between his recorded marriage to Marie Teller and the marriage record of his daughter Fanny saying that her mother was Anna, born Kerpen, that can be explained by supposing that Marie died and Nathan remarried.

These are, of course, mere hypotheses. It remains to find confirmation or disproof of them. But to weight these hypotheses in the balance against the hypothesis that two or three persons named "Nathan Rind," born around the same time as the first-born son of Jakob Rind, lived in Radenín and in Pořín at the same time as he did is to weigh a lump of lead against a feather. The second option is so wildly improbable that it is not a serious option at all. There can have been only one Nathan Rind in this period. How exactly the attribution to him of three different wives is to be explained remains an open question.

What further relevant records might we hope to find?

#Death record of a wife of Nathan (Nathan-2 died "verheiratet").
#Any sort of record of another child of Nathan, which would identify a wife.