Elizabeth

Elizabeth Pastre, my great-great-great-grandmother, was born in a Waldensian enclave in western Germany. Persecutions had driven the Waldensians, a medieval sect the church considered heretical, into the far reaches of the Cottian Alps, but during the Reformation, they had allied themselves with the Calvinists and, since their valleys at that time belonged to France, they were now Huguenots. When the Edict of Nantes was abrogated, the persecutions began anew, and some of the Waldensians moved to the protestant duchy where Elizabeth was born. Those who stayed behind died or became Catholics.

Elizabeth got engaged to a young man named Jean Bert, but before they could solemnize their marriage, he was taken off as a soldier in Napoleon's army and died on the campaign into Russia. But Elizabeth was pregnant and in due time gave birth to their son, Peter.

Eventually, she fell in love with the inn keeper's son who also got her pregnant, but although she came from a venerable family, they were poor, and in a Calvinist society, poverty carried a powerful stigma. The inn keeper would not tolerate the marriage of his son to this poor woman.

Now Elizabeth had two illegitimate sons and little hope for a decent future in Rohrbach. She took her two boys, obtained a loan, and set sail for America. The three went to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where others from the Odenwald had already gone. There her older son soon found work as a weaver with Jacob Wenger, a minister in a strange, plain sect called the River Brethren. He eventually became a member of the Brethren and married one of his employer's daughters.

Elizabeth, who had already had her fill of rigid religious communities, took her younger son and moved on to Ohio. She would not be reconciled to her elder son until much later in their lives. She and Peter also cut off all ties with the community in the old country. When I visited Rohrbach in the 1980s, after a strange set of coincidences reunited the American and German branches of the family, the German Berts showed me a family tree, portrayed like a mighty oak with each branch labeled with names. Peter's twig bore the legend, "Went to America," and ended like its end had been broken off. From 1820 until 1985, they had no knowledge of what had become of him.

So there's the other version of my ancestral story. The sources for the European parts were the German Berts and their local historians. The Pennsylvania schisms and their reasons are partly family lore and partly my own guesses.

Does this version differ from the one in yesterday's entry? Can we count the ways? What do the two versions show us about stories and the people who tell them?

Again, stay tuned.

Treatment count: 33 down, 12 to go.