Dackenheim

Dackenheim is about 3 km northwest of Freinsheim. Appropriately enough, one gets there by following the road that's called Dackenheimer Straße in Freinsheim and Freinsheimer Straße in Dackenheim.

The availability of Dackenheim records at FamilySearch.org is somewhat different than for Freinsheim:

Note that as far as I can tell, the Protestant records ceased soon after the Palatinate became part of the French Republic in 1795. That's similar to what happened in Freinsheim. However, in Freinsheim the Protestant records resumed in 1816, when the Palatinate was handed over to Bavaria. In Dackenheim they apparently never resumed at all. Instead, in 1839 there's a set of records that appears that don't specify religion. These "unspecified" Dackenheim records often duplicate Protestant Freinsheim records. And confusingly, the unspecified Dackenheim christening records give the residence of the newborn as Freinsheim.

The obvious question is, were Protestant records created in Dackenheim and then, at some later date, destroyed? Or were Protestants simply not being christened, married or buried in Dackenheim between the late 1790s and 1839? I think it's the latter. Up until the French Republic years, the populations of Dackenheim and Freinsheim seem to be pretty distinct. When the records resume in Freinsheim in 1816, however, I see people marrying there and having their children christened there who seem to be based in Dackenheim. Some of them have names found in Dackenheim but not Freinsheim in the previous century, such as Martin Engel.

As an example, I looked at "religion unspecified" records for christenings in Dackenheim in 1839, I found ten records. Nine of these were duplicated by Protestant records in Freinsheim. Of the ten pairs of parents, six had been married in Protestant ceremonies in Freinsheim during the years 1827-1837. One had been married in Dackenheim in a Catholic ceremony in 1837. One had two marriage records for the same date in 1839, a Protestant record from Freinsheim and an unspecified record from Dackenheim. I couldn't find marriage records at all for two couples. One had children christened as Protestants in Freinsheim prior to 1839. The other couple had no records before 1839 at all; these were the parents of the child whose only christening record was from Dackenheim.

Keep in mind that I'm looking at other people's transcriptions of the records. When I'm seeing duplicates - for example, a child apparently christened on exactly the same day in both Dackenheim and Freinsheim - was the child actually christened twice? Was the christening recorded in two different sets of records, one of which said Dackenheim and one of which said Freinsheim? Or is there just one set of records, but two different transcribers transcribed it differently?

Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-lexikon des deutschen Reichs describes places in the German Empire, 1871-1918. While Freinsheim has both a Protestant parish church and a Catholic parish church, Dackenheim has only a Catholic parish church. Dackenheim also has a population of 301 vs Freinsheim's 2,586.

Even today, the contact address for the Protestant church in Dackenheim is an address in Freinsheim.