Urban TANNER, Part 11:
The search for Urban Tanner has taken an entirely different direction thanks to information from Barry Schinnerer whose name was given to me by the "Gesellschaft fuer Familienforschung". Barry lives in New York, but more importantly, he has informed me that he descends from several Urban Tanners though not our Urban Tanner.
Geographically, he informs me that the location of Argersheim in the Tanner Baptismal Record was probably, not Ergersheim, but Argersheim as it was given, though it now called Oggersheim. Oggersheim is now a part of Ludwigshafen and is not far (an easy day’s walk) from Westhofen. There are Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic records for Oggersheim. Unfortunately, they start only in the last decade of the sixteen hundreds (reflecting the French invasions).
Barry sent me a short monograph on the descendants of Urban Tanner. To condense the information, Urban Tanner (#1) was born 1540 in Siblingen Schaffhausen (in Switzerland). A son of the previous was Urban Tanner (#2) who by his second wife was the father of another Urban Tanner. Urban Tanner (#3) was born in Oberhallou, a nearby village, in 1630. A nephew of this Urban was another Urban Tanner. Urban Tanner (#4) was born about April 1662 in Oberhallou. This man would seem to be a little old to have been our Urban Tanner. I cite this line of Urban Tanners though to show the name is familiar. I certainly will concentrate on the records of Oggersheim for my next direction.
Schaffhausen is in the northern-most neck of Switzerland. Oberhallou is only a few miles from Germany. Apparently the churches in this area are Lutheran. I can’t find that the LDS has filmed this church but apparently the records are available, since Barry has family group sheets from the area.
Possibly our Urban Tanner moved from Switzerland to Germany where he married a Catholic lady, which accounts for the baptism in the Catholic church. I shall search all faiths in the Oggersheim. A few centuries before this the name used to be Danner but it has been Tanner since the 1500's.
I will continue to explore some in Bavaria but I have less hope now than I did earlier. (I did order the film of family group sheets which should cover the name Kaefer (Käfer) since that Germanna family said they were from Ansbach.)
(26 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.