I am convinced that the Blankenbühlers did come from Austria, and, in particular, from the village of Gresten, or Gresten-Land. I also believe that some other Germanna families came from Austria, and at least one of them, the Scheible family, was from Gresten. Here is why I think so.
When one stands on the farm Plankenbichl (where there were Plankenbühlers), one can see the farm Scheiblau about one-quarter mile away. When Margaret James Squires was researching the Blankenbühlers in Neuenbürg from the church records there, she told me that she thought the Blankenbühlers and the Scheibles were related, but she could not prove it. Both of these families came to Virginia in 1717. The Scheible land patent was in the midst of the patents to people from Neuenbürg. Very probably, we have two families who were traveling together from Gresten to the Robinson River Valley, and they were probably related by marriage.
Why would someone want to leave Austria about 1652? Apparently, in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, the rulers in Austria were determined to make Austria Catholic once again. They sent out a ruling that anyone who was a Protestant would have to convert to Catholicism or leave the country. Quite a large number decided to leave, and, from the Gresten area, there were apparently about seven hundred who decided to leave. They were aware that farms were available in Mittelfranken around Dietenhofen. Even larger numbers left from other regions of Austria, for other regions. More people were leaving than the authorities had anticipated. The people were needed in Austria, so bureaucratic measures were put in place to discourage leaving. Some people decided that it would be easier to abandon their farms and to steal away quietly.
In Dietenhofen, the church was too small for this large influx, so the roof was raised and a balcony was built in the nave. In the following few years, Blankenbühlers start appearing in the churches to the north of Dietenhofen. So far, though, none have been found in the Dietenhofen books, but that may be because the church books have never been microfilmed.
There have been other dark periods in the history of Lower Austria, the state in Austria in which Gresten is located. Approximately fifty years before the exodus from Austria, there was a Farmer’s War, roughly the equivalent of the Peasant’s War in Germany, at an earlier period. Several of the leaders of this war were from Gresten, and some were executed after the forces of the emperor were victorious. The factors behind this war were many, and only a few were religious in nature, but one of them was that the majority of the people were Protestants and they wanted the right to name their own pastors.
In short, there was an emerging and aroused citizenry in the hundred years before the 1652 exodus. The exodus in 1652 was perhaps predictable after a century of trouble followed by renewed oppression.
(02 May 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.