In the last note I presented the argument that the 1713 emigration was a continuation of the emigration which had begun in 1709. I gave the names of several people and towns to show that the people in 1713 would have been well acquainted with the people in the 1709 emigration. In addition to the names that I gave, there were 107 people who emigrated from the Nassau-Dillenburg region in 1709, and several families from Burbach. Dillenburg is about 15 miles southeast of Siegen, and Burbach is about 10 miles south of Siegen. All together, Hank Jones recognized about 200 people who went from the Siegen area to New York.
Besides the people who went to New York, there were Germans who went to Ireland (about as many as went to New York), some who were distributed throughout England, some who went to North Carolina, and even some who went to Bermuda. Jones made no attempt to classify these people by origin.
Reading the lists of names, especially the fifth list from Rotterdam going to London (I believe this was the list), one sees many names of many people who would be familiar to anyone who has studied the families in the Siegen area. In fact, one would see a name which is usually associated with the 1713 emigration. (The Häger name occurs in both emigrations but this is not the name that I speak of.)
The church records of some of these people establish they were friends and relatives of the 1713 group.
Did they have similar reasons for going? The article by Heinz Prinz in Beyond Germanna , on page 855, just about a year ago, states:
"At the time of the emigration of the Germanna families from the Siegerland in the Eighteenth Century, the region that we know as modern-day Germany was not a unified nation, but was many small territories which were governed by princes, counts, and dukes. In contrast to France and Great Britain which were ruled by strong monarchs, Germany was not unified and had no centralized government. The Thirty Years' War, which pitted the Catholic and Protestant principalities against each other, had destroyed many areas in Germany fifty years earlier and the hard living conditions created by this conflict were still to be seen in the Siegerland."
Mr. Prinz went on to say that there was an especially bad situation in Siegen where two princes both used the city as their seat. On occasion there was armed conflict, but perhaps even worse was the refusal of the Catholic Prince to allow wood from his region to be used to make charcoal which was needed in the Protestant region. This limited the mines and smelters and processing plants because of the lack of charcoal. So both in 1709 and 1713, the Siegen area was economically depressed.
Beyond Germanna
was fortunate to have the comments of Heinz Prinz a year ago, as he has died since that time. He had written similar comments for the Germanna Foundation newsletter but his comments were so important that I asked him to submit his ideas to
Beyond Germanna
which he did. (Herr Prinz was a native of Germany and a Trustee of the Germanna Foundation.)
(24 Mar 04)
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.