What do we know due to J.S. Bach’s own genealogical research?
In his 50s, J.S. Bach was already a well-known musician who had just had his 18th child born, when his inner voice became too insisting on him doing something to preserve the family history. From the genealogical notes the composer made, it goes that he studied the family tree up to his great-great-grandpa (four generations back).
It’s from that work and a few extra sources we know that:
- the earliest ancestor J.S. Bach reached in his exploration was a German baker who lived in what now is Slovakia and once was the Kingdom of Hungary.
- his father Johann Ambrosius Bach had a twin brother, and J.S. Bach’s third and fourth children were also twin brother and sister (unfortunately,both died as newborns).
- when Johannn Sebastian was 10 years old, his eldest brother who was just 14 took the boy for further upbringing as they had lost both parents in less than a year.
- both J.S.Bach’s wives were professional singers, while the first wife Maria Barbara was also his distant relative.
- J.S. Bach was a composer in the third generation, all his uncles and two of his brothers became musicians, and he had at least five children who followed the same career path (very little is known about some of Bach’s children, and while composing was not viewed as a job for girls, they could become singers or assistants to professional male musicians).
- J.S. Bach had 20 children and lived through the experience of half of them passing away as babies or infants.
- four sons and a grandson of J.S. Bach who became recognised composers also becameknown by the cities of their residence or first performances: "Dresden Bach", "Hamburg Bach" or "Berlin Bach", "Bückeburg Bach", "Milan Bach" or "London Bach", "Minden Bach".
- J.S. Bach was born in the second half of the 17th century, and the youngest daughter was his only child who witnessed the beginning of the 19th century and even got to know Ludwig van Beethoven.
Morning hymn at Sebastian Bachs' or J. S. Bach and His Family at Morning Prayers by Toby Edward Rosenthal (1870)
Surprisingly, there is no clear evidence of any direct descendants of J.S. Bach living nowadays (there might be no, or might be some, but all claims are now speculations only), while there are certainly great...great-grandsons and -granddaughters of the Bach family who are our contemporaries and who do continue the musical tradition of the generations!