The upcoming trip to Germany sponsored by the Germanna Foundation will visit Neuenbuerg, now in Baden-Wuerttemberg. In 1717, this village lay in the lands belonging to the Bishops of Speyer. This meant that the village was under the control of the Catholic Church and there was no Protestant Church in the village; however, less than two miles away, there was a Protestant Church at Oberoewisheim. The residents of Neuenbuerg walked to the latter church to attend church. The Church Book there is identified as Oberoewisheim-Neuenbuerg and the records for both villages were kept there.
There is an Ortssippenbuch for the two villages (a report was given in Beyond Germanna on page 825). I thought it would be of interest to mention some of the names to be found in the book. They include:
| Bender | Blanck | Blanckenbuehler | Christler |
| Debelt/Debold/Debolt | Diehl | Finck/Fink | Fischer |
| Fleischmann | Gerhard | Hepp | Hirsch |
| Jaeger | Kaefer | Kappeler | Kiefer |
| Klar | Kreiger | Lang | Lederer |
| Lepp/Lipp | Mack | Maier/Mayer/Meier/Meyer | Motz |
| Ostreicher | Rauch | Rausch | Reiser |
| Ruecker | Sauter | Schad | Schailbe/Schaiblin/Scheiblin |
| Schluechter | Schneider | Schoen | Schueck |
| Sieber | Silber | Thoma/Thomas | Uhl |
| Vogt/Voigt | Weidmann | Weingard | Zimmerman |
Never have I seen so many Germanna names in one locality. Some of the names above are common enough to be found in almost every village. Still, if one compares this list of names to the names from Gemmingen that I reported here last fall, one sees a much higher concentration of Germanna names in Oberoewisheim-Neuenbuerg than in Gemmingen. Some other nearby villages show many similar names. For example, Sulzfeld has Lang, Uhl, Kabler, and Zimmerman, who were all immigrants to Virginia.
The Ortssippenbuch says that America is given more than 150 times as the place of that people intended to emigrate to. It is not mentioned even once for the 1717 emigrants, so the 150 is a low number. The villages were a hotbed of emigration, especially in the Nineteenth Century. One specific place that is mentioned is Jefferson, USA.
In the list above, one name is Ostreicher. This could mean "Resident of Austria". The Blankenbakers were from Austria and I am betting, for a variety of reasons, that there were several other families from Austria that moved from there at the same time as the Blankenbakers did (i.e., about 1655). There is a lot of Germanna history to be found in Neuenbuerg and Oberoewisheim.
(23 Feb 05)
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.