The last note, this one, and some of the following will be taken from the book “ Hopeful Journeys ” by Aaron Spencer Fogleman (University of Pennsylvania Press). Professor Fogleman mentions that 75 knights were joined together by 1599 in a federation which became the Kraichgau. Of the 73 small territories that they represented, Prof. Fogleman discusses only the 53 more northern parishes. These included Eppingen, Schwaigern, Sinsheim, and others almost up to Heidelberg. Of the known villages of the Second Germanna Colony, there were some that were not included in these 53 parishes. This would include Neuenbuerg from where the Blankenbakers, Thomases, Scheibles, and Schlucter came. The political jurisdiction here was somewhat different, as Neuenbuerg was in the land controlled by the Catholic Bishops of Speyer. The 53 parishes did not include anything on the west side of the Rhine River (Nicholas Yager, for example), and probably not Oetisheim to the south (John Broyles). Since Fogleman does not name the parishes which were in the 73 but not in the 53, I cannot say for certain whether the villages such as Sulzfeld were in the Kraichgau.
In the Eighteenth Century, fourteen of the northern Kraichgau parishes came under the control of the Palatine Electorate. Still, in the Eighteenth Century, thirteen of the parishes were still a part of the Kraichgauer Ritterschaftskanton. The remaining twenty-six parishes belonged to a variety of lesser nobles, none of whom possessed more than three parishes each. Three of the parishes maintained the rights of a city, including the right to hold a market. Most of the inhabitants of these market towns were free from serfdom. The remaining forty-seven parishes were villages where the inhabitants practiced subsistence farming.
There was a considerable diversity among the Kraichgau emigrants. Of those who went to Pennsylvania, the usual destination, 74% were Lutheran, 21% were Reformed, 2% were Mennonite, and 1% were Catholic (2% are unknowns). Of 2,000 Kraichgauers who went to Pennsylvania, there were many Swiss names who had previously immigrated to the Kraichgau from Switzerland.
In the Kraichgau, there was one important difference from the surrounding areas. Here, no strong state was developing as in Catholic Austria or Lutheran Brandenburg-Prussia. No regional power controlled the area such as Lutheran Wuerttemberg or Catholic Bavaria. The weaker states such as Baden-Durlach or the Palatine Electorate did not dominate the Kraichgau. Instead, tiny loosely united principalities such as the von Neippergs (Schwaigern) or von Gemmingens (Gemmingen) were the norm. During the rebuilding period of the last half of the Seventeenth Century after the Thirty Years’ War and in the first part of the Eighteenth Century, development in the Kraichgau took a different turn than in the larger areas which adjoined.
(13 Jun 06)
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.