Friederica Catharina Diederica Ruwolt – Poor Friederica! – 52 Ancestors #23

Entry #23

With the help Fritz Kruse and Dolly Jackemeyer Kikuchi from the Mecklenburg Germany Region Genealogy Facebook group, I am feeling fairly comfortable that Friederica Catharina Diederica Ruwoldt and Friedrich David Schatz are the parents of Johann “John” Schatz. As mentioned in week #8 of my blog, Johann Schatz was my two times great-grandfather, who immigrated to Cincinnati, Ohio, from the grand duchy of Mecklenburg. There seem to have been two possibilities for my forebear in the Mecklenburg 1819 census (1) Johann Schatz of Satow with a 1 February 1817 birth date or (2) Friedrich Schatz of Bützow with a 20 June 1818 birth date. I have always felt that Johann from Satow was the one for whom I was looking. The actual birth record from the church confirms that the real birth date for Johann was 17 January 1818. This is very close to the estimated date of birth calculated from the burial record for my John Schatz.  

This, of course, leads us to Friederica Ruwolt, my three times great-grandmother. She would have been born 8 May 1798 to Jochen Hinrich Ruwolt and Maria Schoof.

Friederica was 19 when Johann was born. She and little Johann are domiciled with her family in the 1819 census; her husband, Friedrich David Schatz is not present. With help from Fritz to access the Satow church records, I learned that Friedrich David Schatz and Friederica Ruwolt married on 5 December 1817 – very close to Johann’s entry into the world. As Fritz observed, this seems to have been a “shotgun wedding.” It also appears that the marriage didn’t last very long; otherwise, how else would you explain Friederica Ruwolt’s husband-less appearance in the 1819 census? Did Frederica’s husband desert her, or was there another reason for his absence?

Sadly, Friederica Catharina Diederica Ruwolt Schatz died on 10 November 1819.

She was a mere 21-1/2 years old. Her cause of death was listed as “ruhr.” That was puzzling, but the interpretation is that it is some kind of strong movement in the lower body, diarrhea, dysentery, etc. More details were offered by Klaus Cook:

“Ruhr” in English is “Shigellosis.” Shigella can be transmitted through food, including salads (potato, tuna, shrimp, macaroni, and chicken), raw vegetables, milk and dairy products, and meat. Contamination of these foods is usually through the fecal-oral route. Fecally contaminated water and unsanitary handling by food handlers are the most common causes of contamination. Apart from hand-to-mouth infection, Shigellosis is transmitted through fomites, water and mechanical vectors like houseflies.

Johann Schatz was left motherless before he was two years old. In the meantime, there is a long gap between his mother’s death and his emigration to the United States in 1854. Poor Friederica! Such a sad, short life!