Andreas Noe and Carolina Harth

My Great Great Great Grandfather Theobald Harth

This brief history of the George Jacob Noe family leads naturally into the ancestry of Carolina Harth, my great great grandmother and wife of Andreas Noe, George Jacob's second son. We read in the document "Deaths 1878-1883 Berg Church" that an emigration of the parents of Carolina Hearth had taken place on May 5, 1846 which was similar to the emigration of the George Jacob Noe family just described above as having taken place in August of 1854. Theobald Harth married Katharina Nau Harth on March 26, 1826. (Another record says 1842, but this would postdate several of his children's birthdates, and is probably an error.) Theobald was born in Selchenbach, Bavarian Pfalz on November 11, 1802 and was the son of Jacob Harth and Katharina Drumm. Katharina Nau was also born in Selchenbach on September 29, 1803 and was the daughter of Daniel Nau and Margaretha Seiler.

The Theobald Harth family emigrated May 5, 1846 (although there is still other conflicting evidence about the exact date) and probably with several or all of the 4 sons and 4 daughters that are mentioned in the death records.

• Carolina was born April 24, 1841 in Selchenbach, and would have been just five years old at that date of emigration.
• Her elder sister, Margaretha, was born August 21, 1838 and would have been seven years old. Recall that Margaretha married Jacob Noe, the brother of my great great grandfather, Andreas Noe. We see in this marrying of elder brother to elder sister and younger brother to younger sister a practice that resurfaces again and again in this transplanted German community.
• Another Harth sister, Elisabetha, was born June 20, 1831 in Selchenbach, and on May 29, 1853 married Jacob Seyler, son of Jacob Seyler and Elisabetha Margaretha Cullmann.
• Theobald and Katharina's son, Jacob was born July 12, 1830. [The conflicting evidence for the emigration date comes from entry 73 in the Personal Directory of the Berg Church. There it says that Jacob Harth, son of Theobald Harth and Katharina Nau emigrated with his parents on Sept. 11, 1833 and married Margaretha Reitenbach on Feb. 11, 1858.] We have met Frau Reithenbach before: she was the stepdaughter of Georg Jacob Noe mentioned above.

Two Noe brothers marry two Harth sisters

Picture this, then: some time after October, 1866, the two Harth sisters from Selchenbach, married to the two Noe brothers from Niederbexbach for a few years, moved into ajacent farms on Pleasant Ridge. They must have been very happy and hopeful for the future, and must have felt very secure in this new move. As for the brothers, they even had their youger brother, Henry, just recently married himself to the immediate south of them. Since their farms were within a half-mile of each other, they no doubt had many occasions to share family life, attend church together, witness and supervise the births and development of children, help each other with the planting and harvest, build homes and farm buildings with each other, and generally get on with the process of life in this beautiful and hilly new land.

More than this, we have reason to believe something else. My great grandfather, Louis Noe, was probably a small child when the move to the new farms were made. Great grandmother, Eva Fickeisen Noe was born on March 4, 1857. Two years later Andreas and Caroline were married on June 25, 1859. My mother remembers that Louis was eighteen months younger than Eva. If we can believe these Berg Church dates and figures, and if Louis was conceived after the marriage of Andreas and Caroline, he probably was the first child, and was closer to three years younger than Eva. A marriage of a younger man to an older woman was rare. But "grandma" Eva Fickeisen Noe and Ludwig Noe grew up just a mile or two apart.