John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 1997

I continue with the index to the Eighteenth Century names in the Gemmingen Church Registers.  The initial letters are “ O ” and “ P ” in this note.  Again, I give the names in the order of their first appearance from 1694 to 1813.

  1. Oberbachner (Never appears again.)
  2. Obeist (Never appears again.)
  3. Oheschatz (Never appears again, and my feeling is that a letter is missing here.)
  4. Obergruber
  5. Öhler (First in 1719, and then only one more time.)
    [ Öhler is the name which became Aylor in the Germanna community.]
  6. Ödenhaufer (One time only.)
  7. Ohnmacht (This first appears in 1774, and until 1813 this is about the only name starting with an “ O ”.)

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Oberbachner (Never appears again.) Obeist (Never appears again.) Oheschatz (Never appears again, and my feeling is that a letter is missing here.)
Obergruber Öhler (First in 1719, and then only one more time.)  [Öhler is the name which became Aylor in the Germanna community.] Ödenhaufer (One time only.)
Ohnmacht (This first appears in 1774, and until 1813 this is about the only name starting with an “ O ”.)

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The name Öhler is not unusual, as the villages associated with the Öhlers are not far from Gemmingen.

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The letter “ P ” is more popular than “ O ”.

  1. The first name is Preisner and I am left wondering whether the name might not be Preissner or Preistner .  [We have a Preiss in the Germanna community but this is probably not the origin.]
  2. There are many members of the family Pfaff/Pfäffle .  This is the only name after 1696 until 1783.
  3. Then in 1783 the name Pfenninger/Pfanninger starts appearing.
  4. In 1799 another family starts appearing, the Prieler/Pailer family, and is present until 1813.  The first spelling here occurs only once and after that the name is always spelled Pailer .  [Since we do not know how the German name which became Barlow was spelled, the idea occurred that this ( Prieler/Pailer ) might be the spelling.  In Gemmingen, the appearance in 1799 is much too late for the Barlow family to have an origin there.  Still, it suggests that an adjoining village might be the locale from which the family originated.  If I can get the chance to see how the name first occurs in Gemmingen, it might identify the village from which the family came.  In turn this might be explored more.  Please note that I am NOT saying the spelling of Barlow in German was Pailer .  We do know that early spellings of Barlow seem to give the last syllable the sound of “ lar ” or “ lur ”.]

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Preisner Preiss Pfaff/Pfäffle
Pfenninger/Pfanninger Prieler/Pailer

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I have many of my difficulties in reading the German script with the double “ s ” and the “ st ”.  I am often in the dark whether the letter combination which I have read as “ s ” might not be a “ ss ” or “ st ”.  This is a very bad problem in the next letter, “ R ”, to be reported. (09 Oct 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.