Urban TANNER, Part 10:
The "Gesellschaft fuer Familienforschung" sent me information from the work of Pastor Kuhr who did so much in locating the Austrians who left for Germany. He was the one who photographed the private records in Castle Stiebar in Gresten, Austria, which included so much vital information on the Blankenbaker family.
Pfarrer Kuhr had comments on about six Tanners, though some of these have impossible times for Urban Tanner. Let me quote his comments about one individual in which I have interspersed English translations. What I am quoting is the German text:
“[in] Pfarrei [church] Wernsbach b. [near] AN. [Ansbach] +1680 [died in 1680] Michel Thanner, ein kathol. webersgesell [a Catholic weaver’s journeyman] aus [from] Oberoesterreich [Upper Austria, i.e., southern Austria].”
There are three Wernsbachs in Bavaria. One of them is less than four miles from Ansbach. It is about 17 miles from Ergersheim. This record is of special interest for its closeness to Ergersheim, for the statement that the individual is a Catholic, and for the connection to Austria. Michel Thanner could be a relative of Urban Tanner.
Perhaps the search for Urban should be made in Catholic churches. Ergersheim has only a Lutheran church. Pastor Kuhr gave a reference to a book whose title seems to be, in translation, “ Austrian and Salzburger Emigrants in the Ansbach and Gunzenhauser Regions .” The author seems to be Hermann Clauss. For those who can read the details (I can’t) the call letters or identity of the book seem to be 64.Jber.d.Vist.Ver.f.Mfr., 1927, page 65.
Wernsbach led me to do a search in the LDS Catalog of place names and they have information pertaining to the Wernsbach above as a part of a much larger collection. The collection is alphabetical sets of family group sheets compiled from the parish records and other sources in and around the district of Ansbach, Mittelfranken, Bavaria. Ninety-seven localities are covered for the period of about 1550 to 1920. One of the 97 parishes is Wernsbach. There are 764 rolls of microfilm in the collection!
The best approach is to select a family name. For example, one roll has families from Johann Georg BLANK to Johann Fried. BLEICHER. Several rolls might be necessary to cover all of the spellings of Tanner but it seems as though this could be a profitable approach.
(22 Jul 07)
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.