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On the Lee Pound and Sheri
Long ancestral pages I have listed the immigrant or earliest known
ancestor of each line which I am currently researching. The table shows
the name, dates of birth and death where known and town with which they
are associated. They are separated by state so the reader will not waste
time looking for a name in a state they are not researching.
The pages in the
center contain the ancestors of my four German immigrants to the United States between 1845 and
1853 and settled in the Peoria, Illinois area.
For many years I was unable to
locate any of these ancestors in Germany with the exception of Fredericka
Schelling, whose birthplace (from her death certificate) was known to be
Neckarbischofsheim, Baden, a small town in the hills of northern Baden near the
university town of Heidelberg.
In 1969, after extensive visits with
and correspondence with other members of the family, I published a book
containing the descendants of Jacob Glabe and Katherine Stein. At that
time I knew only that they were from the German State of Hesse-Kassel.
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In 1973, I traveled to
Germany after discovering that most of the families named Glabe (Glebe in Germany) lived in a
small valley between Niederaula and Bad Hersfeld. I arrived in Niederaula,
checked into my hotel and parked in front of the local church. The next
day, after a fruitless visit to Bad Hersfelt, I met the minister of that
church. She checked the records and found the marriage of Jacob Glebe and
Katherine Stein and the birth of their first son Henry. I copied out data
on their ancestors for hours, then over the next few days visited churches in
neighboring towns and added even more ancestral data.
A year or so later I discovered the
birthplace of Frederick Goller on the death certificate of the brother of my
ancestor. Using a combination of professional researchers in Germany and
microfilm available in the United States, I was able to extend the Goller and
Schelling lines back over two centuries in some cases.
Some of these files are extensive
and will take a few moments to load. The results are worth the wait.
The source for this material is almost exclusively the parish church records in
the town where the birth, marriage or death took place. Early generations
of the Meckbach and Weiffenbach families are taken from a history of Niederaula
by Trautgott Classen published in Germany in 1979. |
