Urban TANNER, Part 9:
In seeking Urban Tanner in Bavaria where Ergersheim is situated, I had to find where the church records for Ergersheim are kept. An email to the pastor of the church in Ergersheim was not answered. An email to the "Gesellschaft fuer Familienforschung in Nuernberg" [Society for Family Research] in Nuermberg got a response in which they asked for my postal address. I have just received an answer from them that settles one question but leaves the larger questions unanswered.
The Gesellschaft does have a copy of the church records [Lutheran] for Ergersheim which run from 1619 to 1969. The existence and location of the original book are not known to me. There may be other locations with a copy of the records. Apparently the Society looked through the records and they found only one Tanner/Dhanner on page 473. This record says that the child Johannes of Conrad Tanner died 2 August 1626 at the age of 12 years from pestilence. Since the Thirty Years’ War started in 1618, he may have been the victim of the ravages of this war. This area, Mittelfranken, was very hard hit by the war.
That Urban Tanner was not found is a disappointment, but remember that his child we found in Westhofen was baptized in a Catholic church. It may be that Urban Tanner was more Catholic than we have realized and that he avoided the Lutheran church in Ergersheim.
The Society sent me more information about Tanners which I will report later. One thing that they sent me was the name of a man here in the States who is registered with them as having an interest in the Tanner family. I have written to him.
To show my thanks and to encourage the people at the Society, I am sending a [gratis] copy of the Beyond Germanna CD in which I will highlight Tanner information and Blankenbaker information. The reason for the latter is that the Blankenbakers were “exiles” from Austria and one of the main reasons for the existence of the Society is the study of these Austrian exiles. In the past, one of the workers in the Society has been my ninth cousin, Richard Plankenbuehler, and I believe that it might be helpful to emphasize my connections to the Society.
It costs the Society money to mail a letter, slightly more than two dollars, so in my thank you note I will enclose five Euros. I deliberately brought Euros home from my last visit to Germany and they have been very useful. I bought one book from Germany with some of these excess Euros. The best use of them is to reimburse correspondents for their postal costs.
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.