ROOTS & BRANCHES

A couple of months ago, I was invited to be a special guest on Doug Madenford’s “PA Dutch LIVE!” YouTube program.

Madenford’s a German teacher in Centre County and one of the leading lights trying to preserve Pennsylvania Dutch culture and dialect.

My appearance went live a little over a week ago. I mentioned I was a descendant of the Hiester family in Berks County, and that led to a wonderful contact after the program.

Desiree Helmick, an active-duty member of the U.S. military, emailed me to note she is also a Hiester descendant. She wrote that she had gone back with certainty to Daniel Hiester born 1761 and died 1827. “I think his father was Johann or Joseph and mother Elizabeth Strunk,” she wrote. “But I am still working on that.”

Well, as serendipity would have it, I’m descended from this Daniel’s parents—who were indeed Johann Jost Hiester and Anna Elisabetha Strunck.

As in many cases with genealogy, the paper trail is not complete but suggestive. The Daniel born 1761 is buried at Zion Blue Mountain United Church of Christ in Upper Tulpehocken Township, Berks County. One of the pieces of evidence tying him to Johann Jost (usually known as Joseph or Yost) is that the father’s will bequeaths to his son Daniel his land that now lies in Upper Tulpehocken—the only Hiester in that area.

Likewise, the identification of Anna Elisabetha Strunck’s parentage comes indirectly. It was obvious from the birth dates of Yost and Anna Elisabetha’s children (born between 1754 and 1770) that she was considerably younger than her husband, who was born 1710.

Nearly 20 years ago a client commissioned me to investigate her Strunck family and by doing research using the “whole family” methodology, I concluded that Anna Elisabetha was born in 1731 in the Rhineland town of Sprendlingen, daughter of Johann Weymar Strunck and Anna Katharina Schnell.

The crucial record in this evidence trail was that Yost and Anna Elisabetha had a son named Lorentz, sponsored in baptism by a Lorentz Strunck, who appeared to be Anna Elisabetha’s brother.

The Strunck family of Sprendlingen had a child named Lorentz. This connection opened the door to previous generations stretching back to the 1500s.

Emailing with Helmick also allowed me to give her fair warning that a lot of erroneous information exists about the Hiester family in Germany due to a misreading of documents by a Hiester descendant who visited Elsoff in the early 1900s.

Yost and his two immigrant brothers, Johannes (father of the first Pennsylvania Dutch governor, Joseph Hiester) and Daniel, were sons of Johannes Hiester and Catharina Marburger and evidence of their further ancestry can be found through the Elsoff church registers as well as residential listings.