There were interesting items in the Diefenbach Church Register. In the baptismal report for Eva Magdalena, daughter of Caspar Fischer and his wife Eva Magdalena, there was a note appended which said, "Left for Pennsylvania." The dates were very hard to fathom as the years were written at the very edge where the page had blackened, but I believe the baptism may have occurred about 1741. The departure for Pennsylvania could have occurred at any time after this. I no longer have a list of immigrants such as Rupp or Strassburger so I could not check whether they made it to Pennsylvania. Other families are listed as going to Pennsylvania also.
If ever it turns out that my Fishers are from this village, than I am probably related to the Faber family. In several Fisher baptisms, one of the sponsors would be named Faber. In this church, they usually had three sponsors, and to judge by the duplication of the father's surname, the sponsors were probably related. A given name in some of the Fischer families was Bur(c)khardt which reminded me of Bernhardt Fisher in Virginia.
This church also adopted the practice of keeping Communion Lists, the names of people who partook of communion. They did not want to waste any expensive paper doing this so they wrote very small and used techniques such as spread sheets to record the information. Many times they did not list the wives separately, but just appended a letter or two to the husband's name. When a W was added, I judged they were saying widow or widower.
I mentioned yesterday the name Schwindel. I will not attempt to work that family from the Church Register. I have the Ortssippenbuch coming from Germany for Diefenbach, and I would expect it to be worked out there.
One family was named Blichenstirster or something similar to this. I would be tempted to simplify a name like this if I had it.
Right now, my theory is that Ludwig Fisher lived in Tiefenbach, the village I reported on in the last note. It could be that he was Protestant and went to a church in a nearby village. There was an instance of this or a similar case with the Blankenbakers. They lived in Catholic Neuenbuerg but went to church in Oberoewisheim which was within walking distance and had a Protestant Church.
(26 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.