For the record, there is no known evidence at the present time that the UHL family of Sulzfeld came from, or had, Swiss ancestors. Christopher Uhl left Sulzfeld in 1717, but he was one of those who was delayed in London and he did not arrive in Virginia until 1719. Whether he is a member of the Second Colony is a moot point.
That our Germanna history in Germany may be more complex that we had thought was certainly brought home to me when Eleanor and I visited the cemetery in Lonnerstadt. Lonnerstadt is a small village northwest of Nuernberg in Bavaria. Our attention had been drawn to it in 2000 because of the fifteen Blankenbuehlers in Germany, five of them live in Lonnerstadt. The village is not far, by our standards, from Dietenhofen, to where so many people emigrated from Gresten, Austria.
As we walked around the cemetery, I was struck by the number of Germanna names. In no other cemetery in Germany had I seen so many. The names that I saw included Blankenbuehler (Blankenbaker), Hieronymus, Lang, Marr, Motz, Thoma (Thomas), and Wieland (Wayland). We know that the Blankenbuehlers originated in Austria. The Hieronymus family also claims an origin in Austria.
It may be a coincidence to find all of these names in one cemetery. Some of the names are common, but I continue to be amazed. And I believe that more research in Austria might be profitable. Unfortunately, it is difficult to do so because of the upheaval in the churches there in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Many church records have been lost and the civil records seem to be in the hands of private parties.
I later found out that in addition to the fifteen Blankenbuehlers in the phone book, there are a few Plankenbuehlers who have adopted the original Austrian initial letter spelling. It is also interesting that the majority of the Blankenbuehlers have not moved from the points where they first settled in Germany after emigrating from Austria.
Some names in Germany are widely distributed but others show a strong regional bias. The Steinseifer family, for example, seems to be centered, even today, around Siegen with only a limited distribution in other parts of Germany. The Gaar/Garr/Gar/Gahr family is centered in the southeastern corner of Bavaria (and Germany).
So our origins are not simple. Someday, with the benefit of DNA studies, we may be able to make broader assertions. (09 Nov 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.