John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 2424

I have recently mentioned the village of Gochsheim, which is located not far from Neuenbuerg, where we have been looking at the Baptismal Records just prior to 1717.  There is an Ortssippenbuch for Gochsheim and I will mention a few names that occur in the index to this book:

Becker, Bender, Berler, Buehler, Crueger or Krueger, Fink, Fischer, Gebhard, Hirsch, Jaeger, Kappel or Kepler or Keppel, Kircher or Kirchner, Koch, Lang, Lepp or Lipp, Merkle (from Bahnbruecken), Neudeck, Nonnemacher, Ruecker, Siber, Sieber, Schneider, Schoen, Uhl, Weber, Ziegler, and Zimmerman.

Gochsheim is not a large village.  That so many Germanna names should occur in it seems to me to be remarkable.  Several of the names that are Germanna citizens have a proven origin in another village.  So, it should not be taken that the origin of the Germanna families is in Gochsheim.  Still, there may be some connection.

I will elaborate on one name a bit.  There was a Merkle who was said to be from Bahnbruecken.  Perhaps this is a mistake for Lahnbruecken, especially since the letters B and L as capital letters may be confused.  Now Lahnbruecken is the village where the first Matthaus Blankenbuehler settled after his emigration from Austria.  In Neuenbuerg, we found that a Blankenbuehler descendant and a Merckle were associated in a baptism.  Then the grandson of the original Matthaus, another Matthaus, married a Merckle in Oberderdingen.  Have we got another case of a long family association between the Merckles and the Blankenbuehlers?

These little coincidences keep one interested but the process of examination is slow.  I can’t keep up the research at a pace, which will fill these notes.
(28 Nov 06)