ROOTS & BRANCHES

“But that’s a story for another column!” was what I enthused at the end of last week’s “Roots & Branches” column.

That edition talked about my first foray into the reprint of Topographia Germaniae, the mid-1600s compilation of illustrations and descriptions of German towns, that I’ve recently bought.

 I had used as an example of the reach of Topographia the town of Sinsheim, which the late Annette K. Burgert had pinpointed as the parish in which records of the Gruber family of Berks County were found as early as the birth of immigrant Heinrich Gruber in 1700.

Burgert found hundreds of villages of origin for German-speaking immigrants and—since finding those villages is usually the toughest task!—generally did not extend the lines of the immigrants further back in time.

Which is where I thought that leaving the Grubers on the cusp of the 17^th century wasn’t as far back as this line could go.

At first blush, though, it seemed like I was wrong: The Sinsheim records only begin in 1685, making the documentation of another generation less likely.

But then I noted that though the Gruber baptisms were recorded in Sinsheim, the family was actually residing in the nearby village of Steinsfurt.

And Steinsfurt has parish records going all the way back to 1650.

So, I fired up both FamilySearch.org and Archion.de, both of which had digitized copies of the Steinsfurt registers, and without too much effort found the Nov. 22, 1694, marriage of the immigrant’s father (also Heinrich Gruber) to Elisabetha, daughter of Jacob Huber.

And, oh yes, the elder Heinrich’s father was identified as a deceased Gericht (town official) named Barthol Gruber.

Based on the information that Barthol was already dead by the time of his son’s marriage in 1694, I started working backward in the burial records from that year and found that he’d conveniently died in 1693 at the age of 48 years (identified more formally as Bartolomeus).

With a likely birth year of 1645, I wasn’t going to be able to find him in the baptismal records of Steinsfurt, but a marriage record did seem to be a possibility.

Before going back to the marriages, I took a detour to the baptisms and found the elder Heinrich’s baptism in December 1671 (with his mother identified as Anna Maria Rittenbacher).

So, I moved back to the marriages and found their marriage in early 1671, with Anna Maria’s father identified as Mattheis Rittenbacher.

If you’re keeping score, that’s information on three generations added, with a suggested year in the first half of the 17^th century (Barthol’s circa 1645 birth).

Checking out FamilySearch’s Family Tree for these folks showed some clean up is needed, but that’s a task for another day … right now I want to see if there are more to find in the Gruber maternal lines of Huber and Rittenbacher!