Loosening the Mortar in My Hanover, Germany Brick Wall: 52 Ancestors 2026 Prompt “A Brick Wall Revisited”

Possible Parents for Maria Christina Uepkendanz

Maria Christina Uepkendanz: 1806-1850 (Maternal Third Great-Grandmother)

 

When I first started researching my Hoffman line several years ago, I hit a brick wall at my third-great-grandmother, Maria Christina Uepkendanz. I had very minimal, poorly sourced information that indicated she was born on October 24, 1806 in Hanover, Germany, but there was no information on her parents. I didn’t even have proof of her birthdate—I had copied the birthdate information from other Ancestry trees. When I saw Amy Johnson Crow’s prompt for this week, A Brick Wall Revisited, I decided it was time to revisit Maria, and see if I could loosen some of the mortar in that brick wall.

All I really knew about Maria was that she was married to my third-great-grandfather, Friedrich Behrend Heinrich Christoph Hoffman around 1830 in Hanover, Germany. Their children were born in Oedelum, a village in Hanover. Maria purportedly died in Oedelum in 1850.

Aerial view of Oedelum, Hanover, Germany today.

I was excited when I saw that Ancestry had “Potential Father” and “Potential Mother” listed for Maria. But when I realized there was only one new “Hint” for her, and that hint was merely a link to someone else’s tree, I could feel the brick wall re-hardening.

I examined the three Ancestry trees that contained Maria and her purported parents, Johann Heinrich Christoph Uepkendanz and Catharina Sophie Dorothea Baarman. The only citations on any of the three trees for Maria’s parentage were each other. Who came up with these parents originally and where did they get the information?

I decided to check FamilySearch. It too lacked any verifiable information on Maria’s parents. The entry for Catharina Sophie Dorothea Baarman gave a source for her birth from a researcher going by the name “aosmith2”. The “record” said her birth date was December 8, 1779 and she was born in Germany. The source was listed as “Legacy NFS Source”. According to AI, “A legacy NFS source is informational data on FamilySearch that was transferred from the "New FamilySearch" (NFS) system to the current Family Tree when it went live around 2012. These are essentially inherited text notes—including old censuses, birth records, or user-submitted research—that often lack direct digital documentation, serving more as clues to be verified.”

That was not helpful. It basically means someone may have found a non-digitized source years ago, but didn’t bother to copy or transcribe it or tell where they found it.

The record for Maria’s father also reference a “legacy NFS Source”, so I have no actual records to evaluate.

I tried using whole text search on FamilySearch, but, given the number of potential variations of the spelling of even the surname Uepkendanz, not to mention the first and double middle names, it is probably unsurprising that I met with no success.

I next tried the FamilySearch Card Catalog for Hanover, Germany, but the only potential resources are not accessible from home.

I had slightly more luck with individual genealogies posted on FamilySearch. I cannot view their sources, only the actual trees. Two trees contain the following parentage information:

This corresponds to what other Ancestry trees indicate, although on Ancestry the other two potential grandparents are also listed, once again without any records as sources.

In summary, I have very, very slightly loosened the mortar in my Maria Uepkendanz brick wall. I now have the names of potential parents and potential grandparents for her. Sadly, the names are all I have been able to locate at this point. In addition, my birthdate, death date, and locations of birth and death also lack appropriate verification, and I have found no marriage record for Maria and her husband Friedrich Hoffman. I suspect that I need some professional help to search German genealogical materials to find any actual records that would confirm her parentage, birth and death.

Sources:

"Pedigree Resource File," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:2:W3MF-MQT : accessed 23 April 2026), entry for Johann Heinrich Christoph Uepkendanz; "manning family tree" file (2:2:2:MMK2-5WY), submitted 8 November 2025 by LisaOslund [identity withheld for privacy].