Franco-Prussian War and Hornberger

On my third week of treatment for lymphedema in my right arm, I began cleaning out my bottomless pit of an inbox to pass the morning hours with right arm bound.  One e-mail piqued my curiosity, and I began to read an article about JK Rowlings "Who Do You Think You Are" episodes:


http://www.jkrowling.com/uploads/documents/en_GB-press-wdytya-1373364821.pdf

The link had been sent via one of my favorite mail lists:

alsace-lorraine@rootsweb.com

and from reading that I decided it is a good time to read more about what was happening in the Alsace-Lorraine area just before my grandmother's Hornberger/Schweikart family moved to Ironton OH from that area.  It is quite possible that Jack and I drove through this town on our way to Strasburg.  No looking at map we probably drove on the larger highway shown in blue.  Brumath is the area outlined  with A4 marked going through the town just south of Haguenau.

The family folklore says that Fred Hornberger's father, George, had fought under Napoleon.  Well after my reading today, it definitely was NOT Napoleon Bonaparte!

Summer 2014 Charlotte Erickson and I went to library in Ironton.  At this visit, I made a copy of the Naturalization of Fred.  It is stored in Hornberger file on computer and can be viewed in multimedia in Reunion.  It states that Frederick Hornberger is a native of Germany and that he came to the US about July 1880 and was under the age of 18 when he arrived.  He is now (2Nov 1886 in probate court) over the age of 21.


[Naturalization records have been filed in the U.S. District and Circuit Courts and in the local courts in Ohio counties, especially in the courts of common pleas and the probate courts (after 1851). No centralized files exist before 1906.]

Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence during the French Revolution (1789-1799). The Napoleonic Wars took place from 1803-1815.  Napoleon died in 1821.  Much too early for George Hornberger to have been a part of.  Perhaps an earlier generation?  Or perhaps Napoleon III.....Napoleon II ruled for a VERY brief amount of time.  He was the son of Napoleon Bonaparte,  However, Napoleon III was in power

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the only President (1848–52) of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor (1852–70) of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. He was the first President of France to be elected by a direct popular vote. When he was blocked by the Constitution and Parliament from running for a second term, he organized a coup d'état in 1851, and then took the throne as Napoleon III on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution.

So it would have been this man under whom George Hornberger would have served.  He would have probably taken part in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.  The german victory led to 

The people of the area were allowed to choose to become German and stay where they lived or to move.