I have recently been undertaking more work on Judith Wehrlin's background and I have decided to post an update with some findings, in case any interested parties discover this forum. Contrary to my earlier expectations, I have now discovered that the original church records for Mulhouse and Illzach are not held by the Haut-Rhin Archives, so will not form part of their digitisation programme. This is presumably because Mulhouse and Illzach only became part of France in 1798, previously being Swiss. They are held in the municipal archives at Mulhouse, but there are apparently no plans to make them available online, sadly.
I have noticed that indices for the pre-1798 marriage records are available for both communes on Geneanet. I contacted the individual who produced those indices, Sébastien Langlois-Berthelot, and he has been very helpful. He found only one Judith Wehrlin baptised in either parish around 1774 (the year her burial record said she was born): Judith Wehrlin was born on 23 October 1775 and baptised in Illzach on 29 October. Her parents were Johannes Wehrlin and Eva Eck (Archives municipales d'Illzach, GG 2, p. 150).
Her parents had married on 12 May 1773 at Mulhouse; when they married, her father was described as "Johannes Wehrlin, junior, of Illzach" and her mother was described as "spinster, from Mulhouse" (Archives municipales de Mulhouse, X A 10, p. 246).
The
church records for Mulhouse and Illzach have all been indexed by Sébastian for the Cercle Genealogique de Mulhouse and are available in paper form across multiple volumes. They are quite expensive (€40 per volume, plus shipping), so I will defer purchasing the relevant volume for now, but I post a link here in case anyone else is interested:
https://cgmulhouse.jimdofree.com/publications/notariat/
Without that, I cannot definitely push the genealogy back another generation, but I have spent quite a bit of time
locating Judith Wehrlin's siblings using the indexed civil registration documents.
Jean Wehrlin and Eva Eck's children (so far identified) are as follows:
- Elisse/Elizabeth Wehrlin (born c. 1774, Illzach; died 6 August 1805, Mullhouse) m. 21 July 1805 (Mulhouse) George Döll (b. 23 October 1771 "Obersese" in Prussia, son of Marc Döll and Marie Distteren) (I have not located his birthplace)
- Judith Wehrlin (born 23 October 1775, Illzach; died 17 July 1846 in Basel) m. (1) allegedly August 1795 (Konstanz) Carl Joseph Devit (born reportedly 15 May 1752; died 25 May 1806 in Zurich) m (2) 11 October 1813 (Frenkendorf, Basel-County) Carl Friedrich Müller (son of Eucharius Müller)
- Daniel Wehrlin (born 1 June 1778, Mulhouse) m. 18 May 1801 (Mulhouse) Anne Barbe Mercky (b. 15 March 1774 in Mulhouse, da. of Henry Mercky and Catherine Farconier)
- Anne Catherine Wehrlin (born c. 1780, Mulhouse; died 2 May 1856, Mulhouse)
m. 30 September 1805 (Mulhouse) Daniel Schuttheller (b. 1779 in "Schluchteren", son of Philip Conrad Schuttheller and Christine Elisabetha; d. 4 October 1847 in Mulhouse) (his birthplace was probably Schluchtern in Baden-Wurttemberg)
- Jean Wehrlin (born c. 1782, Illzach; died 24 March 1854, Mulhouse)
- Pierre Wehrlin (born 16 April 1790, Mulhouse; died 6 January 1837, Mulhouse) m. 27 May 1822 (Mulhouse) Barbe Hertzog (b. c. 1786 in Birr, Aargua, Switzerland, da. of Pierre Hertzog and Marie Frei)
- Gertrude Wehrlin (born 30 July 1794, Mulhouse; died 28 November 1858 at Mulhouse) m. (1) 20 October 1824 (Colmar) François Xavier Gaspard Marteron (born 5 January 1790 at Colmar, son of Xavier Marteron and Catherine Kochler; died 29 March 184.? at Strasbourg) m. (2) 25 August 1851 (Mulhouse) Dominique Marck (born 1 June 1797 at Laidenback, son of Joseph Marck and Marie Anne Perbsten)
Eva Eck died on 30 November 1794. On 13 May 1798 at Mulhouse, Jean Wehrlin married Susanne Elisabeth Gasser, who was born 23 January 1774 at Botzingen in Baden-Wuerttemberg
[correction]. She and Jean had at least two children:
- Jean Jacques Wehrlin (born 29 April 1799, Mulhouse; died 26 June 1851, Mulhouse)
m. 26 March 1821 (Mulhouse) Anne Marguerite Wüst (born c. 1795 in Biel, Bern, Switzerland, da. of Jean Wüst and Marie Herth)
- Rosine Wehrlin (born c. 1804; died 3 April 1812, Mulhouse)
Jean Wehrlin died on 13 June 1819 at Mulhouse. Frustratingly, neither his 1798 marriage record nor his 1819 death record appear to mention his parents. Those records can be found here:
Of particular interest is the fact that one of the
witnesses at the 1805 marriage of Elisse Wehrlin (Jean and Eva's daughter) was her uncle Pierre Wehrlin, "labereur age de quarant quatre ans oncle de l'Epouse". Though there is some disparity in the ages given, I am confident that the same man witnessed the marriage of Judith Wehrlin's son Jean Ulric Devit in Illzach on 14 June 1826. In that document he is listed as "Pierre Wehrlin Cultivateur agé de soizante douze[?] ans grand oncle de l'Epoux", along with two Wehrlin cousins. Crucially, Pierre's distinctive signature appears on both records. They can be seen here:
Finally, it is
possible that Judith had another illegitimate child. The birth of one Jacques Wahrlin (son of one Judith Wahrlin) on 2 July 1812 was registered at Mulhouse. The image is here:
https://archives.haut-rhin.fr/ark:/naan ... 0e3c03ec85 (see image no. 1046, the last entry on the left-hand page). I cannot read it all, but I think it mentions Basel. The child died the next day (3 July). The record is here:
https://archives.haut-rhin.fr/ark:/naan ... 745eaf66ab (see image no. 137, the second entry on the left-hand side).
If anyone could read these records in full, I'd be interested to know what they say.