John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1882

In the Church Books for Diefenbach (Dfb), there are 102 mentions of “Amerika”.  In one of these cases, the country is Paraguay.  In some of the cases, specific mention of a town or state is made, such as Louisville, New York, and, especially, Pennsylvania.  Of these 102 mentions, seven are in the Eighteen Century, mostly centered around the year 1750.  The majority of the immigrations are in the Nineteenth Century and a few are in the Twentieth Century.  Of those in the Eighteenth Century, they should be found in the ship’s list for Philadelphia.

The emigrants often came as a family, perhaps as a not-yet-complete family.  Younger members of a family might come alone, often as unmarried individuals.  Unmarried males outnumber unmarried females.  The heads of the emigrant families in the Eighteenth Century were:

  1. Jerg Margin Fatzler, * 1716, came after 1750.
  2. Hanss Caspar Fischer, * 1714, came in 1749.
  3. Johann Caspar Heinrich, came after 1751.
  4. Hanss Jerg Luz (probably Lutz here), * 1707, came after 1747.
  5. Hanss Jerg Rein * 1703 ( ¥ Maria Sara Hirsch), came after 1750.
  6. Jerg Heinrich Sättelin, * 1721, came after 1752.
  7. Adam Schazmann, * ca 1715, came after 1751.

For most of these, I say they came after a certain date which is the last recorded baptism of a child in the family.  Often there would be only a few children by the departure date.  In one case above, for Fischer, the date seems to be given explicitly as 1749.

This is by no means a complete list, because it all depends on whether the pastor made an entry in the book.  Some people, who left without permission, might not appear in the records.

Two emigrations, later than the ones above are interesting.  Christian Scholl was born in Dfb in 1843.  He immigrated to "Amerika" and died in Louisville in 1864.  One wonders if he had been in our Civil War.

Johann Hildebrandt was a Mennonite who was born in the Ukraine in 1919.  He survived the war and lived in Dfb from 1946 to 1948, when he emigrated to Paraguay.

I don’t have an immediate list of the Philadelphia immigrants.  Eventually though I may make a visit to the local library where I might see if I can find any of the people above on the lists.
(06 May 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.