Anna Barbara Schön Fleischmann, my Great Grandmother Research in the German church records is a good source of information and often very rewarding for the information which it tells. The records are not easy to use, being handwritten in a script which was peculiar to the Germans; however, it can be learned, as several descendants have proved. The following information is due to Mrs. Margaret James Squires who found many of the Second Colony Germanna families in Germany. The story centers around the small village of Neuenbürg in the Kraichtal. Today the village is in Baden. To confuse the issues, Baden has two Neuenbürgs which are only about twenty miles apart. This has come about because the Neuenbürg in which we are especially interested was originally on ecclesiastic lands belonging of the Catholic Church as represented by the Bishops of Speyer. Early in the 1800s these lands were ceded to the civil state of Baden which gave it two Neuenbürgs. If we regard Baden as a state (it is now Baden-Württemberg), then we can add the district or county name of Kraichtal to distinguish the Neuenbürg we want. It is the smaller of the two, having perhaps a few hundred inhabitants. The only church in town is Catholic and it is not clear where the Lutherans met. The following information is from the Lutheran records. Anna Barbara Schön was born there on 29 Sept 1664. Her father was Quirin(us) Schön(e) and her mother was Maria Barbara, maiden name unknown. The letters in the parenthesis indicate spelling variations sometimes found in the records. Besides Anna Barbara, we know of three other children for a total of four: Anna Barbara Schön, b. 29 Sept 1664 Peter Matthaeus Schön, b. 31 Aug 1667 Maria Barbara Schön, b. 17 July 1671, d. 3 March 1679 Jerg Martin Schön, b. 10 Jan 1682 The father died 17 May 1683 not long after the birth of the last child. Anna Barbara Schön, barely past her sixteenth birthday, married Johann Thomas Blanckenbühler on 2 Nov 1680 in Neuenbürg. He was the son of Matthias and Margaretha ( ? ) Blanckenbühler. This Matthias, a weaver, died 11 Aug 1691 at age 70 in Neuenbürg. Four children of Anna Barbara (Schön) and Johann Thomas Blanckenbühler were baptized in Neuenbürg: Hans Niclas Blanckenbühler, b. 2 Jan 1682 Hans Balthasar Blanckenbühler, b. April 1683 Hans Matthias Blanckenbühler, b. 29 Dec 1684 Anna Maria Blanckenbühler, b. 5 May 1687 When the fourth child was born, Anna Barbara was only twenty-two and a-half years old. As we will see, she certainly had a full life. Three of the four children above are immediately recognized as Germanna 1717 immigrants. One of the surprises in the church records is that they showed that the fourth child, Anna Maria, was also a Germanna immigrant. But there were lots of other surprises also. The name Blanckenbühler became many names in the colonies. Citing a few of them, there are: Blankenbaker, Blankenbeker, Blankenbeckler, Blankenbecler, Pickler, Bickler, Blank, Blanken and Baker. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nr.60: After the birth of Anna Maria Blanckenbühler in 1687, there is a gap in the church records of a few years. The mostly likely cause was war, probably due to an invasion by the French. During such periods, the pastors often took the church books to a more remote location (and perhaps took himself also). When the church books resume, we find that Anna Barbara (Schön) Blanckenbühler married Johann Jacob Schluchter on 2 Nov 1691. Herr Schluchter acquired a ready made family of four step-children aged four to nine years. Johann Jacob Schluchter was born about 1652 and some records indicate he was from Hollsultz. He died 13 Feb 1698 so Anna Barbara was left as a widow for the second time when she was 34 years old. Her family had grown by the addition of Henerich Schluchter, born 7 May 1697. Four years later, Anna Barbara married her third husband, Cyriacus Fleischmann on 5 Mar 1701 in Neuenbürg. Cyriacus is noted as of Klings and his father was Weltin Fleischmann. Three children were born to Anna Barbara and Cyriacus in Neuenbürg: Maria Catharina Fleischmann, b. 8 Mar 1702 (presumably she died young) Maria Catharina Fleischmann, b. 26 Jan 1704 Hans Peter Fleischmann, b. 10 April 1708 At the birth of Hans Peter, Anna Barbara has seven living children with a spread of 26 years in their ages. Anna Maria Blanckenbühler was the first child to marry. On 18 Nov 1711 in Neuenbürg, at the age of 24, she married Johann Thomas, the son of Albrecht Thomas. They had three children born in Neuenbürg: Hans Wendel Thomas, b. 17 April 1712 Ursula Thomas, b. 8 May 1714, d. same day Anna Magdalena Thomas, b. 24 Nov 1715 Johann Nicholas Blanckenbühler married Apollonia Käffer in Neuenbürg on 6 May 1714. Two children were born in Neuenbürg: Maria Barbara Blanckenbühler, b. 22 Dec 1714, d. the next day Zacharias Blanckenbühler, b. 21 Oct 1715 The father of Apollonia was Wolfgang Käffer who seems to have originated in the region of Ansbach, some distance to the east. Apparently he lived in Zaberfeld, Kreis Heilbronn, Württemburg for a brother of Apollonia, Jerg Niclas Käffer was born there 20 Jul 1701. Wolfgang died on 8 Aug 1728 in Zaberfeld. His wife was Elisabetha. The day after Johann Nicholas Blanckenbühler married, Johann Mattheus Blankenbühler, tailor, married Anna Maria Mercklin on 7 May 1714 in Oberderdingen, Württemburg. Anna Maria was born 12 March 1693 in Oberderdingen to Hannes Jacob Mercklin and Königunda ( ? ). Mattheus and Anna Maria may have lived in Oberderdinger for that is where the birth of one child is recorded: Hannes Jerg Blanckenbühler, b. --Feb 1715. [Some of the details of this paragraph are courtesy of Mrs Jean Strand.] No marriage has been found in Germany for Hans Balthasar Blanckenbühler though when he stepped off the ship in Virginia he had a wife but no children
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 16:50:58 +0000
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