Springville Connection

The Wiesental Ð Springville Connection A Genealogy of Families Who Left Wiesental, Baden, Germany And Settled Near Springville, New York, USA In the 2nd Half of the 19th Century Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................... 2 How To Use This Book ............................................. 3 Acknowledgments ........................................................ 3 Beyond This Book ........................................................ 3 Wiesental,Baden-Württemberg,Germany..............4 Springville, New York, USA ........................................... 5 The Immigrants ................................................................... 6 Family Listings ...................................................................... 9 Sources .................................................................................. 132 Name Index ....................................................................... 141 Sep 27, 2001 Don Gentner: The WiesentalÐSpringville Connection 1 Introduction This book describes a group of families who left the village of Wiesental, Baden in Germany in the second half of the 19th century, migrated to America, and settled in the area around Springville. The 19th century was a difficult period for most people in Germany. Good farming land was in short supply and wars continually ravaged the land. For most of the century, Germany was not yet a united country but a loose collection of small independent states formed after the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire. Baden was a grand duchy ruled by a grand duke, and was caught in the middle of power struggles between France, Prussia, and Austria. There were revolutions in 1848, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Many people wanted to escape the troubles in Germany and thought of America as a place with more opportunity. There was a major emigration from Germany to America between about 1850 and 1900. But when the new immigrants settled in America, they did not cut off all contact with their families back in Germany. Many letters were exchanged and there were occasional visits across the ocean. If the immigrants found favorable conditions in America, they encouraged their friends and relatives to join them and the new immigrants often settled in the same areas. Thus over the years, many people from one village or area in Germany would end up partially reconstructing their family and village in America. One such concentration occurred when families from Wiesental, Baden settled around Springville and the neighboring village of West Valley, New York. Between 1850 and 1900, over 100 people from Wiesental made the journey. The familynamesarefamiliareventodayinbothWiesentalandSpringville–Brühmüller(Bremiller),Gentner,Heiler, Knebel, Mahl, Reuter (Rider), Salzler, Scharf, Schuhmacher (Schumacher), Schweickert, Seider, and others. This book is dedicated to the memory of these families. How To Use This Book Some of the conventions used in this book may be unfamiliar. This introduction explains how the book is organized and how to use the different sections. ThemainpartofthisbookistheFamilyListingssection.Eachfamilyhasanidentifier–“F”followedbyanumber,for example“F123”,andthefamiliesarelistedinnumericalorder.Tofindsomeone’sfamily,lookuptheirfamilyidentifier in the Index at the back of the book and then find their family in the Family Listings section. Next,let’stakealookathowanameisshown.Hereisatypicalfullname: HelenJosephine“Josie”Brooks{Gamel}(1879-1946)[209]:667,p38 Thiswoman’smaidennamewasHelenJosephineBrooks.Nicknamesorcommonlyusednames,suchasJosie,are surrounded by quotation marks. Adopted names, such as Gamel, are shown in curly brackets. A woman's married name is the most common type of adopted name, but there are other types of adopted names, for example when a person adopts a new name upon entering a religious order or changes the spelling of their family name. The name is normally followed by the life span in parentheses. In this case Helen was born in 1879 and died in 1946. Sometimes, instead of a death date you will see the letter D (for example, 1853-D), meaning that the person is dead but thedateisunknown.Peoplewhoarenotknowntobedeadarejustlistedasmaleorfemale,forexample“Female (Livingin1999)”.Inordertoprotecttheirprivacy,familiesarelistedinthisbookonlyifbothparentshavedied. Inaddition,thereissometimesapersonalnumbershowninsquarebracketsafterthelifespan.Helen’spersonal number is 209. This personal number is like a social security number, and uniquely identifies a person within the family tree, even if they have the same name as someone else. For example, we have a lot of men named John Winter in my family, but you can tell them apart because they all have different personal numbers. Sources The family listings include references to the sources for each piece of information. These source references are at the end of a line and always begin with a colon (:). In the example with Helen Brooks {Gamel} above, the information came frompage38ofsource667(thebaptismrecordsofSt.Mary’schurchinNewOregon,NY).Occasionallytwoormore sources are listed for a fact. For example :43:503,p22 indicates that the information came from source 43 and page 22 of source 503. The main source for a family is shown at the beginning of the listing, after the identifier. The main source for an individual is shown after their name. Any information that does not come from the main source has a separate source number, shown right after that information. Look up the source number in the Sources section to see where the information came from. Sep 27, 2001 Don Gentner: The WiesentalÐSpringville Connection 2 Acknowledgments One of the great pleasures of genealogy is its social nature. Genealogists are naturally interested in people and usually generous in sharing their research with others. Literally hundreds of people have contributed to this book and they are listed in the sources at the end of the book. However, I particularly want to thank some people who were especially helpful with the genealogies in this book. Mabel Wineford Leibinger compiled several genealogy booklets on the American branches of the families who came from Wiesental. Her Amann Family Tree, published in 1966, was the book that originally inspired me and others to get involved with genealogy and family history. She also published the Mahl Family Tree in 1965 and the Salzler Family Tree in 1981. JohnEmerlingupdatedtheAmannFamilyTreein1994,tochroniclethefamilytree’sexpansion. Dorothy Willover wrote the Schweickert Family Tree, published in 1982 and revised in 1997. Mike McNally provided a lot of information and some great photos of the Seider family. The many other people who contributed to this genealogy are listed in the Sources section. Beyond This Book You are welcome to copy any information in this book for your own personal, noncommercial purposes. However, you must secure permission of the author before using any of this information for commercial purposes. Although I have tried to make this material as accurate as possible, there are undoubtedly errors remaining. Try to independently verify any crucial facts before using them as the basis for your own genealogical research. I would be very grateful for any help or comments on this book. Copies of photographs of these people would be especially welcome and I am happy to share the photographs I have. Please send any additions, corrections, questions or comments to me at the following address: Don Gentner 1124 Byron Street Palo Alto, CA 94301 USA e-mail: [email protected] This material is only a small portion of my family tree. The current version of my family tree is available on the Internet at http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~gentner/ Sep 27, 2001 Don Gentner: The WiesentalÐSpringville Connection 3 Wiesental, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Wiesental is a small village of 8500 people in southwestern Germany, in the state of Baden- Württemberg,about20milesnorthof Karlsruhe. The map on the left gives a general sense of where Wiesental is located within Germany. In 1975, the neighboring villagesofWaghäusel,Kirrlach,and Wiesental banded together into the communityofWaghäusel,soWiesentalisnow properlycalledWaghäusel-Wiesental.The crest of Wiesental is shown to the right. In the 1800s, Wiesental was part of the Grand Duchy of Baden. This was a difficult time and wars raged across central Europe almost continually. Many people decided to leave their ancestral home and emigrate to South America, Australia, and especially to the United States. In the 1850s, several families left Wiesental and settled in the area around Springville, my home town. They must have liked what they found there, because they were followed by many others. I know of over 100 people who emigrated from Wiesental and settled near Springville and the neighboring village of West Valley between 1850 and 1900. These families are described in this genealogy. The emigrants from Wiesental to the Springville area include the Amann, Bremiller, Dahm, Eichenberger, Gentner, Heft, Heiler, Knebel, Mahl, Metzger, Reuter (Rider), Salzler, Scharf, Schumacher, Schweickert, and Seider families. After the Reformation, German villages tended to be either Catholic or Protestant (Lutheran). Wiesental was a Catholic village. Most of my genealogical research on the families of Wiesental has been based on the records from St. Jodokus Roman Catholic church in Wiesental, shown above. This was the parish church for the people who emigrated

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