[I apologize for interrupting one thread to report on another thread.]
Christopher Zimmerman in Sulzfeld, when having a child baptized, asked Ludwig Fischer, "a citizen of Tiefenbach", to be a sponsor. Since Ludwig Fischer is a good Germanna name, I picked up on this. My problem was that a few miles south of Sulzfeld there is a Diefenbach, and a few miles north of Sulzfeld there is Tiefenbach. I have to assume that either of these places could be the village to which reference was made.
I now believe that the correct reading in the record is Tiefenbach. I have received the church records (microfilm) for this Catholic Church, the only game in town. The priests wrote in Latin letters, which made the search easier, and, furthermore, someone provided an index of names. It did not take long to see that hardly any Fischers were in town, at least, any that went to the Catholic Church. Nor were there any Zimmermans to speak of. There were interesting names in town, including many Debolts, perhaps Kercher, Kabber, Mayer, Motz, Frey, Ziegler, and Walk (or Walck). There was one Zimmerman in a marriage. There was one Fischer as a sponsor.
On 5 May 1666, Christian Walck and wife Maria had Matthias baptized with sponsors Matthias Sieber and Elisabetha Fischer. (Since the names are in Latin, I have translated them into German.)
Most of all, I sat up when I read that Johannes Martin Walk was baptized on 20 Dec 1728. His parents were Johann Georg Walck and Catherine. (The presence or absence of a " c " is sometimes guess work.)
Other than encountering a few Germanna names, there was nothing very encouraging in the search for Ludwig Fischer.
Today, I went down to Diefenbach via microfilm. There were not so many Germanna names there but there were quite a few Fischers; however, none of them seem to have the given name Ludwig. I will be getting the Ortssippenbuch for Diefenbach as I have ordered it and the author has sent it along. He has already told me there are no Ludwigs.
Again, there were interesting items in the records which go back to the middle of the Sixteenth Century, quite far for the typical church. Besides the name Fischer, there were Langs and Schwindels. The people who feel the Schwindels in the Robinson River Valley community were English had perhaps better get out their worksheets and check their proof of this.
(25 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.