Feist Family

Ludwig Feist has been such a huge help to John Schweickart and to me in getting started with the original records found on the internet for the area in which John's and my mutual Schweickart ancestors lived in the early to mid 1800's and before,  I wanted to think if there was anything that I could do in return to help Ludwig with his own research.

Ludwig's Feist family are found in the Alsace Lorraine area of what is now France as early as 1729. The family lived-in Kaidenbourg, Siegen in what is now France, but has been part of Germany in some periods of history.  I am guessing that the district is Wissembourg which is the same district as that for Lembach where my own ancestors lived in this same time period

Ludwig's part of the family moved to Russia 1808 when they disappear from the records in Kaidenbourg.  They remain in Russian until they disappear from the records c. 1892 and perhaps a bit later.

 His comment:

The Feist family members from whom I descend immigrated to russia in 1808.  I had uncles and cousins who then immigrated to the US and Canada as early as the 1880's.  My direct line began in the US with my grandpa and his brothers who moved to these shores in 1903.  They were soon followed by his parents and his sisters in 1905.

Ludwig has other lines of grandparents who also lived in the area who are connected to his surname of Feist that he finds in records as early as the 1650's.  Those surnames are:

Flick
Wolff
Griesbach
Hauser
Walter
Schneider
Bartle
Barthle
Seiler

And this is very fun from Ludwig:

My grandfather married a Lauinger girl who was also from Russia her family was in the area of Wintzenbach from 1730-1808 also left kin behind into 1892+ who continued to live in the Alsace Lorraine area that is now in France.  Through her line I am a cousin of Lawrence Welk.

Ludwig's own family moved from the Kaidenbourg area to Russia in ,,,,date.....and then on to American shores in......

One of the puzzles that Ludwig has not yet solved is involves relatives of his ancestors who moved directly from Kaidenbourg to the United States.  Because his own ancestors had moved to Russia 50 years before, they may not have even known of the existence  of these Feist relatives .......fill in 

Here is a puzzle that Ludwig is working on at this time:

The year is 1869 in the month of April

Marguerithe and Catharine Feist (sisters and 3rd cousins 3 times removed from me) left Kaidenbourg, France boarded the SS Hammonia and disappeared into New York.  I found their passenger manifest on family search I am attaching an image of the page I found them on #'s 521 and 522.   The Behm, Schnepf and Thomas names near theirs are also from Kaidenbourg area, may have been their travel companions.

Marguerithe was born 22 jul 1845 her sister Catherine was born 18 nov 1849. They were unmarried at time of their arrival in New York in 1869.

Just a note I do have some Feist kin in the College point, NY area about the same time they are from the members of my family that went to russia. I do not think they knew of the French side as their ancestors had left france some 50 years earlier.  They may show up in your searches as well.

I poked around on ancestry just a bit for Ludwig and found a Maggie Feist in the household of George and Katie Fritz.  Could this be the two young ladies on the boat?  Do the ages work?  Could George Fritz also have been on the boat?

Marriage of Barbara Schweickart and George Hornberger

I had planned to put a copy of the marriage certificate of this couple in this spot over the weekend.  Ludwig has told me that it will be found in the records of Obersteinbach in the Alsace Lorraine region of France.  For a map see the post from earlier this week.  (just scroll down)  I wanted a place to put the following image  of the Protestant Church in Obersteinbach which is the most likely place for the wedding to have taken place  However I haven't done that research yet.  I do know from Ludwig that my gr-grandfather, Fred Hornberger,  was born in this town from records that can be found on-line.  So even if this is not the place of the wedding, it is probably where the family attended church.  Fred remained a faithful attendee at the Lutheran church in Ironton, Ohio.  It is said that he walked to church every Sunday when he was in his 90's.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Obersteinbach_evangelische_Kirche.JPG

However, Found the entire document to be quite difficult to read.  So instead I am going to put portions of the document in the below with my comments interspersed.  If you want to see the entire document, scroll down to the next post and follow the directions to look at the marriage book for Obersteinbach for 1863.

This is found on the far left margin and serves to be the title to help find the right document.  Now the document itself:

City Hall of Obersteinbach .....District of Wissenbourg....
Ludwig tells me that the date is 2nd Feb  I can read the 1863 with the help of Google Translate.
I did not try to read the hour.
Act of Marriage celebrated publicly in the house of Georges Hornberger.  I can not read the age of Georges Hornberger

Here is Ludwig's translation:


Marie d Obersteinbach Arrondisement of Wissembourg
the 2nd of february 1863 7 o'clock pm

Georges Hornberger 35 yrs old born in Obersteinbach 28 jun 1827
profession Journalier (day laborer) living in Obersteinbach
legitimate child of deceased Frederic Hornberger age and profession not stated,  domicile Obersteinbach died 21 mar 1852 and deceased Anne Marie Weissgerber age and profession not stated domicile Obersteinbach died 5 jan 1848.

Barbe Schweickart 31 yrs old born in Lembach 14 feb 1831
profession neant (none) living in Lembach
legitimate child of deceased Frederick Schweickart age and profession not stated,  domicile Lembach died 18 jan 1858 and Dorothee Koehlhoeffer 60 yrs old no profession living in Lembach present and consenting to the marriage.

Intention of marriage document for Barbara Schweickart who married George Hornberger

While I was working on the blog post about Barbara Schweickart Hornberger Unger, I did a bit of googling.  Some of what I found is included in blog post dated September 6, 2014.  But the story that I am going to tell in this blog post is so much fun that it deserves a blog post of its own!  John Schweickart had included a church obit for his ancestor, Frederick Schweickart in John's book about his Schweickart family.  In this obituary it says that Frederick Schweickart was born Dec 13 1832 in Lembach, Canton Weissembourg.....Frederick is the proven brother of my ancestress, Barbara Schweickart Hornberger Unger.

So my googling was to figure out just exactly where Lembach was located.  As I stated in the Sept 6 post, I found a thread on the Alsace Lorraine roots web mail list archives explaining just what I needed.  When I subscribed to the mail list and wrote to the researchers who had been chatting about Lembach back in 1999, I received wonderful help.  But the absolutely most wonderful information came from Ludwig Feist.  Ludwig has been using primary documents for his research that can be found on-line for the area in which Lembach is found.   Ludwig has been so generous with his time in helping me to obtain documents that I never expected to find without hiring a German/French professional or making a trip to the area myself.

Here are Ludwig's instructions to find the documents for oneself:

to get to records

http://etat-civil.bas-rhin.fr/adeloch/index.php

check the box at bottom of above page

click on Accéder à la version graphique

takes you to a page with white box above the alphabet

choose L and Lembach from page that pops up

with 1830's timefraame being area you are interested check boxes at right  are

Births

Marriages

Deaths

Choose one and hit reserche below alphabet

page through till you find year of records you wish to view

most years have an index on first or last pages

Center area of page with alphabet is check box to explore decennial indexes which are basicly 10 year indexes of records on right.

And below is the first very important document that Ludwig sent to me:  I think that I understand this correctly.  This is NOT a marriage certificate for George Hornberger and Barbara Schweickart.  This is an intention of marriage between the two people.  It was required that each file such a document in their own town.  Ludwig has explained to me that the couple actually married in George's place of residence and that the marriage document is there.

Ludwig tells me that this certificate comes from the 1863 Lembach Marriage Acts Book and his explanation is as follows:

I believe she is your Barbara due to attached image which comes from 1863 Lembach marriage acts book. Under french law up to 1870's bride and groom were required to register their intent to marry with their towns records office.

Barbe born 1831 to Frederic Schweickart  (deceased at time of record) and Dorothee Koehlhoffer registered her intent to marry Georges Hornberger of Obersteinbach, Bas-Rhin, France.

[Ludwig explained: on the line where it mentions her father he is denoted as Feu (deceased)
her mother was alive living in Lembach and consented to the marriage from details after her name.]
The actual marriage occurred 2 Feb 1863 in Obersteinbach

Georges Hornberger and Barbe also had a child named Frederic born Aug 22 1865 in Obersteinbach.

So where is Obersteinbach?  

Note that it is a wide place in the road and that it is not far from Lembach  Also note how close it is to the German/France border.  There are some wonderful photos of the town on the internet.  I chose one.  Hopefully one of these days I can put photos of my own on this site.

And I can't stop for the night without putting a hint for a place to stay when I visit

 and

Trip to Alsace Lorraine in 1997--Hornberger

I went down to the basement to bring up my photo album from the trip that Jack and I made to Germany and France in 1997.  The album makes me happy just to look at!  This was the trip on which we purchased our cuckoo clock at the Hous der 1000 Clocks Factory Outlet.....It was probably the most touristy shop in the Black Forest.  But my notes say that I recommend it because the saleswoman was great and made the purchase very simple.  I remember that we bought our particular clock VERY quickly as we told her about how much we wanted to spend and just what we wanted our clock to do....and voila!  Clock was bought.  I need to get my clock repaired.  I think that I will do some research to see if there is somewhere to take it in Columbus or Cinn.....The kids are all big enough to not do the kind of yanking on the long lines that almost all of them did at one time or another until I just removed them for fear of their pulling the clock off the wall.  It is so sad that I didn't get it working for these little children.

I am going to add some photos in this spot from the album.  But for this morning I am just moving the next post down so that Fred Hornberger's naturalization record can be viewed without the side information bleeding through.

Right after our Cuckoo Clock purchase we came across by chance the town of Hornberg.  This town is right in the middle of the lumber area of Germany near Strasburg.

OH,,,Phooey.....my scanner just quite working.....Let's see if this is enough to move the post down....I'll add maps from Google instead and get around to editing this another time.  Hornberg, Germany is on this map marked with an orange marker.

From Hornberg we drove to Strasbourg, France.  See below map to see how close we were to Lembach if only I had done more research before the trip:

Ok....all I am going to do on this post until I either get my scanner working or purchase another scanner

Fred Hornberger's Naturalization

Charlotte and I compared notes on our family folklore.  Charlotte's family folklore says that Fred Hornberger came to the United States alone.  I had always assumed that Fred and his sister, Lena, came with their mother (Barbara Schweickart Hornberger Unger) and their step-father (George Unger).  We know from the Naturalization papers of George that he said that he was German and that he had left from port of Havre and arrived in New York, 15 July 1880.  I will put a copy of his Naturalization papers on this site.  However, I have temporarily lost the USB drive on which I copied them.  So I either need to make another trip to Ironton or find the USB drive

However, here is a copy of the Naturalization of Fred Hornberger:

I believe the date to have been 2 September 1886.  He says that he came to the US about the date of July 1880.  OK....that truly makes me think that he was traveling with his mother and step-father!  It would not have made sense for them to have arrived the same month via different ships.

Frederick Hornberger was born in 1865, so he would have been 21 at the time of his Naturalization.  I do not know why the document says Naturalization of minor....I would have thought that he was an adult at this time.  Perhaps he had started the process before he turned 21 in July of that year.

Barbara Schweikart Hornberger Unger

I had a very exciting day today!  If only genealogy was always this easy.  I had left my zip drive at the Briggs library when Charlotte and I visited.  So I wanted to visit again.  And I knew that I wanted to find at least one more piece to the puzzle.  I walked in and asked for a bit of help.  After listening to me, the librarian walked to the shelf and found two Lawrence County history books that had information about the Schweickart family.  But the HUGE find was two volumes written by John Schweickart about his family that included Fred Schweickart.  My gut feeling is that this is indeed my family, too.

Next I looked for an obit for my 2-gr-grandmother, Barbara Schweickart Hornberger Unger.  There was nothing in the index file which was disappointing.  BUT when I pulled out the microfilm for The Ironton Register I found it!  The Register was a weekly paper in that time period.  There was a obit for Mrs. George Unger in the Thursday, March 16 issue.  And the obit not only called her Mrs. George Unger, but it named her son, Fred Hornberger and mentioned that she left two brothers to mourn her:  Fred Schweickart "of this city" and Lewis Schweickart of Cincinatti.  Exactly what I had hoped to find!  I have  checked the census on ancestry and there is only ONE Fred Schweickart in Ironton, Ohio in the 1900 census and one Lewis Schweickart of Cinn in the 1900 census.  By 1910, there is no Fred Schweickart in Ironton in the census.  This is not a surprise.  My information from others tells me that her brother died the year after she did:  in 1906.

I have now e-mailed John Schweickart to see if it is possible to buy his book.  There is no doubt in my mind that his Schweickart family is also my Schweickart family!  Hurrah!

Here is my transcription of the above:  Mrs. George Unger a well known and highly respected citizen of the South Side passed away Monday morning....with pneumonia.  Mrs. Unger lived on Walnut near Seventh up to a week ago had been at the home of her son, Fred Hornberger, where she was receiving attention.  The deceased was 71 years of age and leaves a husband, one son, Fred Hornberger, two brothers, Fred Schweickart of this city and Lewis Schweikart of Cincinatti and several grandchildren to mourn her loss.  The Funeral service took place Wednesday afternoon.....Lutheran Church....Interment at Woodland Cemetery.

Charlotte and I had found the graves of Barbara and her husband, George, on our last trip to Ironton at the Woodland Cemetery.

Interesting to note that Barbara was 11 years older than George Unger.  Also interesting to see that when Barbara died George's last name was spelled Ungerer.  But the stones are side by side and there is no doubt in my mind that they are husband and wife.

One more piece of evidence that this connection is correct:  The death certificate for Fred Hornberger says that his mother's maiden name is Barbara Schweickart.  The information is given by Fred's daughter, Emma Hornberger.  Emma is very likely to have known her grandmother and to have given correct information.  She lived with her father until his death.

I am adding information to this post a week later.  I was able to get in touch with A. John Schweickart at his e-mail address:  ajschweickart@comcast.net

John is wonderful to work with and shared his information about the Schweickart family.  He had never before been aware of the fact that his ancestor, Fred Schweickart, had a sister Barbara.  There is no way that he could have tripped over this obit that spells out the relationship without having read every Ironton paper for many years.

One of the most interesting pieces of information in John's work is the inclusion of a Church obit for Frederick Schweickart.  The Obituary was dated July22, 1906 and must have been printed by the Emanuel M.E. Church when N.R. Bornemann was pastor.  I have a copy of this in my filed information from John.  The first paragraph says:  Mr. Frederick Schweickart was born Dec. 13, 1832 in Lembach, Canton Weissembourg near Alsace Lorraine, which at the time was French Territory.  He was baptized when only four days old and in 1847 by confirmation was admitted to the Holy sacrament of the Lord's Supper under Reverent Noeffner, then the Pastor at that place.  Barbara is not mentioned in his obituary which is not a surprise as she had died the year before.  His brother Lewis of Cincinnatti is mentioned without naming wife or children.  

Here are my thoughts about the above:

1) Barbara was born c. 1831 and Fred was born c. 1832.  Barbara's birth date is taken from her tomb stone.  John is a very thorough researcher and probably has very good supporting evidence for the date of 1832 which is where I obtained that date of birth for Fred.  So it is quite likely that I can assume all of the above that would have applied for a female in that time period in that geographical region.  It is likely that the family did not move in a two year period in which their were two births in the family.  So I conclude it likely that Barbara was born in the same location and was also baptized soon after her birth in the same church. 

Of course, the first thing I do is Google the place of birth and I found in the archives of the Alsace Lorraine mail list:

Lembach is in the département du Bas-Rhin, France (northern

Alsace), in the arrondissement and canton of Wissembourg, about
11 km west-southwest of Wissembourg. In 1807 it had a
mixed population of Catholics, Lutherans, Jews, Anabaptists
and Calvinists. 

And from Wikipedia:

Lembach lies in the Sauer valley, surrounded by the woods and sandstone cliffs of the Palatinate Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve. It is positioned on the local road RD3 which connects Wissembourg, fifteen kilometres (nine miles) to the east with the north western tip of the département, and the road to Bitche. The German frontier is approximately six kilometres (four miles) to the north, but motorists wishing to visit Germany would be well advised to use a less direct route.

At the heart of the Lembach is a Protestant church from 1750 (but incorporating a tower from the late Medieval period) as well as a nineteenth-century Catholic church.

The commune, which embraces an extensive land area, much of it uninhabitable due to the topography, also includes the small village of Mattstall and the hamlet of Pfaffenbronn.

And here is a picture of Lembach taken from Wikipedia as well:

There is a great photo and information about the Lutheran church in Lembach that is most likely the place where both Fred and Barbara were baptized:

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~geiger/webpages/lem.html

This URL takes the reader to a home page maintained by Joan Young.  Joan has been very helpful in giving me a feeling for the area.

Go to blog post dated September 16, 2014 for a continuation of this story.  I will add a URL at a later date.

George McKinsey's parents

Bruce Lockin and I and others have often guessed at possible parents of our mutual George McKinsey.  We first find George in Newberry County, SC during the Revolutionary War with a family.  You can find more information about George and his family by using McKinsey as a search term in the search box in the top left hand corner.

One clue that we have looked at is that George had one surviving child when the census of 1880 was taken.  That was Naomi who married Mordecai Spray and said that she was 77 when the census taker asked her age.  Naomi said that her father was born in Virginia.  I have at least one other blog post about the possibility that George's parents were in the area of Virginia in what was old Frederick County, Virginia in the northern part of the state.

However I have a few other thoughts that I would like to add until I find proof of "for sure" parents for George.  This is just a list of misc ideas that I do not want to loose.

One is that there was an Alexander McKenzie transported because of his involvement in the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion.  The transportation of this Alexander McKenzie can be found on the transcription of the prisoners aboard the ship Elizabeth & Ann at:

http://www.immigrantships.net/v2/1700v2/elizabeth&ann17160114.html

The home page for the guild that does these transcriptions is:

http://www.immigrantships.net/index.html

A researcher who is no longer alive, Martha McKinsey Wallace,  put forth the information in a book that George McKinsey was born in Scotland in 1752 and came to the Colonies the following year with his parents.  This would, of course, rule out the possibility that George descended from this Alexander McKenzie.  However, no one has ever found documentation to support Ms. Wallace's information.  The 1830 census of Warren County Ohio indicates that George was born between 1760 and 1770 as he is said to be older than 60 but younger than 70.  George died in 1840 before the census was taken, so we do not have a later census to corroborate those dates.  This would not support Ms. Wallace's date for his birth.  

If George was the ancestor of Alexander who was transported, he would likely have been grandson rather than son as Alexander must have been at least 18 in 1715.  If he married on these shores in the next ten years.....likely to have been married c. 1725.  Sons born in the next 20 years would have had children in years from 1745 to 1765....well these are just guesses.  But if I look at this man, I will not expect him to be father to George.  There is an Alexander McKenzie 

When I was at the Handley Library in Fall 2005 I looked at Wilmer Kern's 

book:  Frederick County, Virginia:  Settlement and Some First Families 

of Back Creek Valley 1730-1830.

On page 16, there is a list of men whose signatures indicated that they 

had participated in the communion (Eucharist) during 1761-1763.  This 

area would have been in Orange County before 1738 when Old Frederick was 

formed from land that had been part of Orange County.  These men were 

protestant.  Among the names is that of John McKensie. 

I have added a document to the multimedia spot that shows a George McKinney in a list just under an Edward Thomas in Frederick County, Va in 1761

Also, in Hinshaw there is mention of an Alexander McKinsey:

 p. 198 Hinshaw's Va Volume

 Makensey    Henrico Monthly Meeting (Henrico seems to be in the
 Richmond, VA area--but covering a larger area along the James River
 and up into what is now Louisa County....really there seems to be a
 fairly large area)
 
 1699,6, 17  Alexander com (complained, complained of)
 1700, 2, 25  Alex signed cert of a m. at Curles MH
 1710,5,15  Alexd still a mbr as proven when his vote was recorded
 1711,2,6  Alexander dis (dismissed)
 
 I looked to see if there were any family names that I recognize from
 Newberry among the members of Henrico MM.  It would seem that the family names in Newberry were more likely on the Opequon area than the Henrico area.

Also note that this Alex Makensy was on these shores BEFORE the Alex McKenzie who was transported.

Harriet Imrey sent us information that shores up the Old Frederick County theory:

This voting list will probably interest you.  Men named Edward Thomas and George McKenny cast their oral votes for Col. George Washington in adjacent order.  They were also adjacent for their second candidate, Col. Adam Stephen.  Candidate Col. George Mercer was the one they skipped.  Winners were Washington (505 votes) and Mercer (399 votes); Stephen got 294.

 

Marsha and I share the opinion that this was the "same Edward Thomas" who appeared together with Nehemiah Thomas on 7 Apr 1767 to petition for land on the Bush River (Newberry Co).  Nehemiah had wife Abigail with him, Edward had 3 dependents.  They had previously lived in Orange Co NC, where Abigail Moore was disowned by the Cane Creek MM for marrying non-Quaker Nehemiah Thomas.  Abigail managed to get her membership restored by correspondence from SC.  Her husband Nehemiah was buried at the Bush River Quaker cemetery, although never an active member of the MM.

 

If Abigail's niece Sarah Moore and Sarah's husband George McKinsey were practicing-anything, it was most likely the local Dunker church, only a few miles distant from Bush River MM.  Col. Daniel Clary and his family were Dunkers.  Clary's sister Cassandra Summers had one of the earliest still-legible gravestones there.  Another gravestone was for Timothy Thomas, some kind of cousin to Nehemiah and with a migration from Frederick Co VA (Hopewell MM) through Orange Co NC (Cane Creek MM).  Abel Thomas, brother of Timothy, was a charter member of Bush River MM.  All those Thomas-folks had Quaker origins, but several dropped out along the way, usually became one sort of Baptist or another (including Dunker Baptist).  The second pastor of the Bush River Dunker church was Giles Chapman Jr., also from Frederick Co VA via Orange Co NC.  The Rev. Giles had enlisted in a Loyalist regiment in 1779, a Whig militia company in 1781.  Definitely not a practicing-Quaker, although a number of his family members joined Bush River MM, were disowned when they enlisted or married-out.

 

Harriet