So far we have looked at who emigrated from a series of small villages, not very far apart, just to the west of the modern town of Siegen. The three villages were Trupbach, Seelbach, and Oberfischbach. Just a short walk to the southwest from Oberfischbach, perhaps a stroll before breakfast, is Niederndorf. This was the home of the Kuntze family. Jost Kuntze, the 1714 emigrant, was christened at Oberfischbach. His godfather was the mother's brother from Niederndorf. Jost married Anna Gertrud Reinschmidt of Wilden, which is about six miles southeast of Siegen. Two of their children had godparents from Niederndorf and Wilden. (Niederndorf is not far from Freudenberg, a village I will be mentioning later.)
Another family who had an association with Oberfischbach is the Häger family. Rev. Häger was the pastor for a period at Oberfischbach, where he is listed in the census of 1708. The youngest child in his family, Johann Jacob, was born at Oberfischbach, in 1704. (The boy died less than a year later.) The eleven other children were christened at Siegen. The Rev. Häger, as an infant, was christened at Netphen, a village about four miles to the northeast of Siegen. Rev. Häger's father was a teacher at Anzhausen, a small village about four miles to the east of Siegen.
Another person from the area to the west of Siegen is Johannes Spielmann , whose family is associated with Oberschelden, a village about a mile away from Seelbach. Johannes was living, as a bachelor, at Oberschelden in 1708. In Virginia, he probably married one of the daughters of Philipp Fischbach.
Identifying any locality with Peter Heite is not easy. The most quoted record is the marriage of Peter Heite, son of Jacob Heite of Rehbach, to Maria Liessbeth, daughter of Johann Henrich Freudenberg of Ferndorf. The village of Ferndorf is about six miles north of Siegen. After the marriage in 1707, there are no mentions as parents at either Ferndorf or at Siegen.
In the next note I will go slightly farther afield from Siegen, though not by much, to identify the homes of others of the 1714 emigrants. At some later time, I will discuss the later immigrants, many of whom came from the same villages as we have mentioned. So far we have seen that we could draw a circle of a few miles radius around Seelbach and the net would catch about half of the 1714 immigrants.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.