The May issue of Beyond Germanna has been in the mail for a few days. The lead article by Lynnea Dickinson features the Jesse Berry and Anna Miller family of Culpeper Co., Virginia . The names, Berry and Miller, may not suggest a German family, but let’s take a look at their ancestry. Anna Miller was the daughter of Henry Miller and Susanna Sibler, emigrants from Germany about 1750. So Anna was 100% German. Jesse Berry was the son of John Berry, Jr., and Susanna Smith. Susanna was the daughter of John Michael Smith, Jr., and Anna Magdalena Thomas. John Michael Smith and Anna Magdalena Thomas were German all the way back to the old country. John Berry, Jr., was the son of the senior and his wife, Jemima, whose surname is unknown. In spite of their excellent credentials for membership in the Germanna community, the family has not received much attention, either by Germanna researchers or genealogists in general. Lynnea Dickinson carries the research in the article into the second generation beyond Jesse and Anna. Actually, several of the lines have been carried down to the present for several hundred known and researched descendants; however, there are still areas to be researched.
A short note discusses differences between the English and the Germans in the methods used for cooking and heating.
Much of the material in the May issue was prepared with an eye on the Blankenbeckler Reunion to be held Memorial Day weekend in Willow Springs, Missouri. Though the Reunion organizers have a special interest in the Blankenbeckler family, all Germanna descendants are invited. The editor wrote an article on " Tracing the Blankenbühlers or Plankenbichlers through Europe" . The story starts in Austria, probably proceeds through Mittelfranken, in Germany, and goes on to Neuenbürg, in Germany. Much research work remains to be done on this and allied families, but the general picture is clear. The families survived the Farmer’s War in the late sixteenth century and the Thirty Years’ War in the first half of the seventeenth century, and chose to leave Austria about 1652 for religious reasons. Some of the people stayed in Mittelfranken, while some went farther west, almost to the Rhine River. The Blankenbühlers, or Plankenbichlers, along with the Scheibles, were surely in this latter migration. Probably the Käfers, Thomases, and Waylands were members of this movement also. It is harder to judge the last three names since these names are fairly common.
Another short note discusses the spelling of the name Blankenbühler which is apparently the modern German spelling. In Austria, the two endings ....bühl and bichl.... both mean "hill". The leading syllable, Planck or Plank, means the empty space or clearing. Thus, the name of the farm in Austria probably means the
farm on the hill with the clearing
. The name of the other farm, Pletzenberg, where there were also Blankenbühlers, would mean the "
place on the hill
". With the sound shift that interchanged the "p" and the "b" sounds, the opportunity for different spellings is immense. (Eva May contributed material to this paragraph.)
(30 Apr 01)
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.