A favorite Friedhof (cemetery) of mine is at Rödgen. The village Rödgen hardly exists, as it is perched on the ridge of a hill to the southeast of Siegen. During the early eighteenth century, it appears the Protestant residents of Eisern went to Rödgen or to Siegen, as the church in Eisern was Catholic. The church building in Rödgen is most unusual. Two churches, one Protestant and one Catholic, share the same steeple. (It gives a new meaning to "union" church.)
The Friedhof was interesting to me because of the names on the stones. I really felt that I was in a Germanna community. But even more, there were suggestions in the names that others might want to follow up on. Let’s look at some of them. Gerhard is one. That was a name in Orange County about 1740. (The Rödgen Gerhard was a Doctor of Engineering and he put that piece of information on his stone.) The name Heide was no surprise. Another name in the Germanna community was Becker, which appears also in the Rödgen Friedhof.
Another name which was not a surprise was Weidemann. We had our Waymans in Virginia. Some of the names are accidentals, that is, they have no connection but still the appearance makes one pause. The names Jäger, Schneider, and Weber are in this category.
Of course, the Hoffman name was there. There are known communicants at Rödgen. The Jung family is no surprise. A name that was a surprise was Diehl. Another name that I noted was Bülow. It is conceivable to me that this spelling could be a source of the name Barlow in the Germanna community, though I am not saying the Germanna Barlows came from Rödgen. Probably they did not.
One of the reasons that I mention all of these names is that the Germanna literature has not recognized the origins of some people. For example, John Railsback is not identified as being from the Siegen area yet he was.
The Rödgen community is very small and gives the appearance of being well placed on the economic scale. One house had a Rolls-Royce parked in front.
Overall, in the Siegen area I had not been prepared for the hills and their influence on the organization of civilization there. They have shaped the emergence of villages and limited their growth. Cities such as Siegen have been hard pressed to find room for the limited number of expressways that they do have. From Siegen, one can drive two miles over a hill or through a valley and find a village which looks and feels as if it were in another world. These were my favorite places. They were also the places from whence our ancestors came.
(08 Jun 00)
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.