Charles Frederick Schrafft - Not a Brother of W.F. Schrafft, Boston Confectioner

W.F. Schrafft may also have had a brother named Carl Friederich Schraft (circa 1824-1825), who died in infancy. See https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/GZGD-6SM

Debbie, there is precious little about me that is definitive, I admit. However, I happen to be a great great grandson of W.F. Schrafft a/k/a William Frederick Schrafft, the Boston confectioner. William Frederick Schrafft is said here to have been the brother of a Charles Frederick Schrafft who was born in Stuttgart, Germany and emigrated to New Zealand in, I guess, the 1840s. The W.F. Schrafft family had no connection to Stuttgart. The point I was trying to make is that the family knows that W.F. in fact had a brother named Adam and a sister named Sophia, all three of whom emigrated from Bad Wildbad in the Schwarzwald to the United States after the death of their father. There are also public sources for W.F.'s connection to Adam and Sophia. On the other hand there is no known sibling named Charles Frederick Schrafft, said to have been born a year or two after the death of the father, and no known family connection to New Zealand, and I don't believe there are any public sources for the assertion here that Charles Frederick and William Frederick were brothers..

I only meant to mention in passing that there might have been one or two additional siblings of W.F. who died in infancy. FamilySearch trees, and in some cases public sources cited in those trees, refer to, among others, a Carl Friederich Schraft (circa 1824-1825) and another Carl Friederich Schraft (circa 1831-1831) as brothers of W.F. See, e.g., https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/GZGD-62R. I don't necessarily buy into the notion that W.F. had half a dozen additional siblings, but there is a certain logic in assuming that there might have been siblings born or baptized in Bad Wildbad before the death of the father who spelled their last name with one "f" -- the preferred family spelling -- and who died shortly after birth. Families were big in nineteenth century Europe, and death was common.

I don't encourage you to add any siblings of W.F. Schrafft to your tree. I only encourage you to delete any family connection of W.F. Schrafft to the Charles Frederick Schrafft described here.

Thanks, and best wishes.

Debbie, well, we will have to agree to disagree. As it happens, I have been having an extended discussion with the manager of a tree on Ancestry about her contention that one of her Schraft relatives was a sister of W.F. Schrafft. She says she got the information from a paid genealogist -- he charged her $300 -- so she is unpersuaded by the obvious fact that her Schraft relative became a Schraft by marriage. So much for "Smart Matches" with other trees. I would suggest that you focus on the town of Bad Wildbad in the Schwarzwald, a good long drive even today from Stuttgart. In the early 1800s, people were born in Bad Wildbad and never left there. It is particularly unlikely that W.F., Adam, and Sophia would have had siblings born in Stuttgart or other distant towns and cities. I believe you previously indicated that Stuttgart was Charles's birthplace. I have also found that the baptism records are pretty good in Baden-Württemberg during that period. In any case, have a good day, and I look forward to communicating with you in the future.

Debbie, one further bit of evidence -- besides the lack of any confirming primary source -- why Charles Frederick Schrafft of New Zealand was in all likelihood not the brother of W.F., Adam, and Sophia Schrafft (or Schraft) of the United States: If Charles was born in 1846 or 1847 to Louise Franziska "Frances" Schraft (born Kurz), she would have had to be 51 or 52 years of age when she became pregnant. The chances of a woman becoming pregnant at that age, today, are far less than 1% each menstrual cycle. Best wishes.