John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1827

The January 2002 issue of Beyond Germanna was entirely devoted to the Andreas Gaar family and its history (in all of the ninety issues of BG this was the only time that this was done).  A lot is known about the Gaar family thanks to the work of the Garrs in their book of 1894 on the genealogy of the family.  This was a starting point for the research which was sponsored by the Theodore Walker family starting shortly after World War II.

The family hired a German-speaking researcher, who actually visited (or his agents did) the churches and looked at the books.  All together, a total of just less than fifty ancestors of Andreas Gaar and his wife Eva Seidelmann (the parents in the American immigrant family) were found.  For Eva, this went back to some of her great-great-great-great-grandparents who were born in pre-reformation times.  Most of her ancestors were Bavarians from the western part of Bavaria; however, she did have some ancestors from Austria.

Andreas' ancestors cannot be traced as far back as Eva's can.  This, in part, may be attributed to movement of the Gaar family in a westward direction across Bavaria.  Some of the Gaars in Bavaria today say that the family came from Austria originally, and this too may account for some of the difficulty in tracing them.

The oldest Gaar known, Hans Gahr was born about 1545 on the farm "Kolnpach", which is only about fifteen miles from the Austrian border today.

I digress now a little from the main story to recount our finding of Kolnpach.  What was recorded in the Gaar history seems to be an error, since we could find no Kolnpach.  But, as in most church records, the recording person probably just took a stab at spelling it as he heard it.  The obvious thing to do was to change the "p into a "b" but this still yielded no finds.  Substituting an "m" for the "n" yields to a well-known town, Kolmbach, but its location is inconsistent with the general movement of the Gaars and does not support Hans Gahr's vocation of farmer.  I finally found a gazetteer which showed the existence of a small Kolmbach in a location consistent with the history.  It was not all that specific but we figured that with a little on-the-spot searching we could find it.  In the day just before starting the search, our friend Jost Gudelius, using an ordinance map, plotted us a map showing its location.  Sure enough, when we got to within a mile or so of the farm, there were road signs pointing out the direction to take.  And so we were led to the farm, still named Kolmbach even after 450 years have passed by (it may have been an ancient name in 1545).  Our reception there was less than enthusiastic since only "grossmutter" was home and she did not speak English.  Furthermore, she did not trust anyone who came to the door, especially crazy Americans.
(23 Dec 03)