With a lack of church records in Gresten in the early 1600's, it is difficult to reconstruct families. Besides the church records, there is another source of information, namely the civil, or estate, records. These civil records were maintained by the "lord" of the district, in this case at the Schloss (Castle) Stiebar. Pastor Georg Kuhr of Mittelfranken in Germany worked with these records for many years. He photographed them at the Schloss Stiebar and typed up the data. Richard Plankenbuehler with his wife Gisela worked with Pastor Kuhr and obtained information which answers many questions. This useful and much appreciated work of Georg Kuhr ended with his death.
Pastor Kuhr once remarked that it was a hardship to work with the family because of the many spellings that were used. For simplicity, the name will be reported as Planckenbuehler to avoid the confusion by the different spellings.
The estate records at Stiebar are an important source of information that tells how the assets were to be divided after the death of a person. Even without any certain knowledge of Austrian Seventeenth Century estate law, the main points are easy to understand. On the death of a mother with the father surviving and with the father keeping a farm, he had to pay to the children their share of the mother’s estate. Sons and daughters were not treated equally, but they were all entitled to a share. When the father died, the farm would go to one of the sons, probably the oldest son. This son had to pay the other children their share of the father’s estate. These statements are points which seem to be implied by the nature of the records.
On 24 September 1620, Martha Planckenbuehler died. She and her husband Kilian (his name is also given as Colman and other variations) were the parents of seven children, namely, Jacob, Hannss(I), Paul(I), Thomas, Michael, Maria, and Barbara. Paul(I) and Barbara died before their mother did. (The maiden name of Martha is unknown.) The first child to receive a payment was Jacob. A record of 4 August 1644 identifies Jacob with the farm Ploezenperg (Pletzenberg today), which is distinct from the farm Planckenbichl, where Kilian lived, though only a half mile away.
Kilian Planckenbuehler married again. The second wife was also Martha and her maiden surname is unknown. Before 1640, they were the parents of ten children, Blasius, Matthias, Hannss(II), Paul(II), Adam, Magdalena, Christoph, Elisabetha, Sophia, and Potentiana. Kilian died in 1646 and Martha in 1647.
Blasius assumed the possession of the Plankenpichl farm and paid, over the course of time, his brothers and sister their shares of the estate.
(03 May 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.