Have your ancestors ever suddenly disappear from church records, even though they didn’t relocate? I’ve seen it happen a few times, and here’s one example involving a group of families who lived in Bavaria in the 1600s.

The MEILLER, PAUSCH and SOMMER families were Evangelical families who lived in a part of Bavaria known as Oberpfalz (Upper Palatinate). Following the devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), there was a subsequent rise of Catholicism in the Upper Palatinate, reflecting a movement that best is known as the Counter-Reformation. I descend of these families, and that’s exactly what happened for them – they disappeared from Protestant church records and started to appear in Catholic church records.

Why did they make the switch? Was it their choice? We may never know for sure. But we know the factors that would have been involved in such a decision:

• Stability
• Social mobility
• Economic opportunities
• Availability of basic religious services

One interesting thing from the Bischöfliches Zentralarchiv Regensburg (the Archives of the Diocese of Regensburg), an archive for where they were from, some church buildings at the time held both Catholic and Protestant ceremonies. That was true for Floß Parish in its early days (also known as St. Johannes der Täufer, St. John the Baptist) and Wilchenreuth Parish.

My ancestors Adam MEILLER and Dorothea PRESSL married in a Protestant ceremony in November 1640 at Wilchenreuth, their children were baptized Evangelical, including their daughter Walburga, my direct ancestor. But their burials were Catholic. So some time between 1644 (child baptism) and 1658 (Dorothea’s death), they ‘converted.’ Adam died in 1674.

There’s a nearly identical situation for the PAUSCH family. My ancestors Johannes (Hans) PAUSCH and Anna WISSBERGER also married in November 1640 in a Protestant ceremony at Wilchenreuth. Their sons were born Protestant but then show up in Catholic records as adults. Anna’s burial is recorded in the Catholic church records in 1675, and it’s clear that she is wife of Johannes PAUSCH of Edeldorf. But Johannes has an Evangelical burial in 1677, perhaps not converting.

For my SOMMER family, Egid SOMMER appears to have converted himself when he married Walburga MEILLER (mentioned previously, a daughter of Adam and Dorothea) on 17 January 1668 at the Floss Catholic church. Egid’s parents Georg SOMMER and Barbara MEISSNER married in an Evangelical ceremony at Wilchenreuth in 1641. Barbara passed away in 1697 in a Catholic ceremony.

A few generations later, a SOMMER married a PAUSCH, and their daughter Barbara PAUSCH married a HILBURGER of Schirmitz – he was most definitely Catholic. (That’s the line that traces down to me, via my great-grandma Margaret (HILBURGER) ROMANE.)

It wasn’t just a few families making the conversion. It was a wave of families. But not all of them made the switch, as the Evangelical parish still had a healthy amount of events for decades and many years to come.

For example, my RÜBEL (RIEBEL) family, they appear to have remained Evangelical for many generations, outside of my Dorothea RÜBEL, born in 1676 in Edeldorf, marrying in a Catholic ceremony to Johannes SOMMER. Her father Georg RÜBEL‘s 1721 burial record at the Evangelical church had a special notation in the margin, as he lived to 95 years old:

Proverbs 16:31: “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life”

So there you have it, Protestant families – sometimes only Protestant in the first place because the leader was Protestant – converting “back” to Catholicism. A part of my roots and family history.