Who is the father of Wilhelm Brand?

I know I cannot be the only one who, when researching, finds a rabbit hole and completely forgets what they originally started looking for. This happened to me recently. I was searching for baptism records in Wehlheiden, Kassel, Germany, and stumbled upon a record for Wilhelm Brand, son of Anna Brand. He was someone I had not known about and felt compelled to learn more immediately. To this day, I still don’t remember who I was initially researching!

A while ago, I wrote a blog about my second great grandparents, Wilhelm Gossmann and Anna Elisabeth Brand. You can read that blog here: Wilhelm Gossmann and Anna Elisabeth Brand and Their 16 Children. When I wrote this blog, I had copies of their family book from my grandmother and assumed it listed all their children. However, the discovery of Wilhelm Brand intrigued me. I wondered if Wilhelm Gossmann was his father, and if so, why was Wilhelm Brand not included in the family book?

Here’s what I found that day: I discovered a baptism record for Wilhelm Brand, born on 14 July 1885. He was the illegitimate son of Anna Brand, daughter of Heinrich Brand and Katherina Schnieder. This raised a significant question because Anna Elisabeth Brand married Wilhelm Gossmann, and they had 16 children, all documented in the family book. Wilhelm and Anna had one child out of wedlock, Martha Catherina, born on 4 February 1884. They married on 28 October 1886, just before the birth of their second daughter, Lisa, on 6 November 1886. Both Martha and Lisa lived into adulthood, married, and had children.

The baptism record for Wilhelm Brand, born on 14 July 1885 and baptized on 2 August 1885, indicated he was an illegitimate child of Anna Brand. So, what happened to Wilhelm Brand, and why was he not included in the family book? The baptism record gave us a clue: a cross next to his name, indicating that Wilhelm had died. I searched for burial records and found that Wilhelm Brand had indeed passed away just a year later, on 13 February 1886. His death record confirmed he was the son of Anna Brand, daughter of Heinrich Brand and Katherina Schneider. While the records do not explicitly state that Wilhelm Gossmann was his father, given that Wilhelm and Anna had one child out of wedlock, it is plausible to assume Wilhelm Brand was also a child of Wilhelm Gossmann and Anna Brand.

This discovery adds another layer to our family history, reminding us that genealogy is often full of surprises and untold stories waiting to be uncovered.