The prize for the smallest village from where our Germanna people came must go to Wagenbach. It has no churches. It isn't even a village in the true sense of the word. More exactly, it is an estate farm with a few houses, bunched together, for the workers. The people who came from Wagenbach were members of the extended Utz family. This was a complex family, which started with Johann Michael Volck, who was married to Anna Maria. They had children, perhaps as many as seven. Anna Maria died and Johann Michael married Anna Barbara Majer (or Maier or Mayer). They had three children, the oldest of which was Maria Sabina Charlotta Barbara, who was born 19 Mar 1710. Johann Michael Volck died in 1714, and Anna Barbara married Johann Georg Utz, whom we know as George Utz of the Second Colony.
Maria Sabina was the second wife of John Hoffman of the First Colony who moved to the Robinson River Valley. When John Hoffman wrote the information about the christening of his children by Maria Sabina in his Bible, he described one of the sponsors as, "the mother of my wife." We were left in the dark as to who she was until Margaret James Squires found the church records in Germany.
Because Wagenbach has no church, these church records were in the nearby village of Hüffenhardt, which is less than two miles away. Johann Michael Volck and Johann Georg Utz seem to have been workers on the farm. Anna Barbara Mayer seems to have been from another place yet to be identified. After she married Johann Michael Volck, it is presumed that she lived on the farm also.
Georg Utz had his origins in yet another locality, some distance to the east.
The Volck name was written by John Hoffman as Folg which is a sound alike name.
Wagenbach is almost due east of Heidelberg, and a little bit to the south, almost to the Neckar River. A slightly larger town, not too far away, is Mosbach. For the moment, I will say that Wagenbach is the northernmost location from where Second Colony members came. Neuenbürg, which we had earlier, was the westernmost village of those on the east side of the Rhine River.
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.