NOTE: Birth locations for many of these earliest Zimmermans remain unknown but suspected. Some Zimmermans left Steffisburg as early as 1688 or so; others left by 1710. They resided in Alsace from 1688 until they came to America UNLESS they moved somewhere else in the meantime. For example if our Hans was the son of Peter of Alsace, he would have been born in Alsace; if he was the son of Hans and Madle Blanck Zimmerman he would have been born in Steffisburg. Per Robert C. Carpenter May 2014.
GROUP 5NAME:
Niclaus, according to other Group 5 lineages. Then again,
it should probably be Nicholaus or Niklaus, but spelling is always allowed
a great deal of freedom.
John Chandler
Group 5
ARTICLE: images
Memmonite Family History - October 2020 - Vol. 39, No. 4 - Page 160 to 179.
Hans in der Weid and the Making of a Swiss Anabaptist Family at Steffisburg, Switzerland - By Larry Zimmerman *
*Dr. Larry Zimmerman may be contacted at larry-zimmerman@att.net or 3022 James St., San Diego, CA 92106.
He is a retired professor and the author of Ancestral Traces: Zimmerman and Beer Family Journeys from Switzerland to America.
He authored “Hunting Our Common Zimmermann Ancestor, Combining 21st-Century Genetics with 16th and 17th- Century Church Records,” published in two parts in the July 2017 and Jan. 2018 issues of MFH. Larry grew up on the Zimmerman family farm in Woodford Co., Ill.Partial extract of the article:
Family trees for many Mennonite Family History readers are rooted in Switzerland. We trace personal family histories back to Swiss ancestors who lived in what is today Canton Bern. It was there, especially in the Emmental, but also in the Oberland, the areas near Thun, and in Schwarzenburg that the Anabaptist movement gathered followers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and it was from there that our Anabaptist ancestors migrated. Some left by choice. Many departed under duress, victims of intense religious persecution.
Over time, thousands of Swiss Mennonites crossed the Atlantic Ocean to begin a new life in North America. That narrative of relocation and renewal is my family story. Countless other Americans and Canadians, also descendants of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Swiss Mennonite immigrants, share stories similar to mine.1In the 1957 GAMEO article on “Migrations,” Harold Bender wrote that possibly 8,000 Swiss-South German Anabaptists crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the 200 years between 1683 and 1883. (https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Migrations). There may be approximately 600,000 descendants of Swiss Anabaptist immigrants living in North America today.
My Amish Mennonite Zimmermann2 ancestors departed Steffisburg, Switzerland, the family’s place of origin (Heimat), in the 1690s, a decade during which the rulers of Bern ordered a fresh wave of Anabaptist banishment.
I know that the Zimmermanns who fled to Alsace and Baden were Anabaptists—Amish Mennonites. However, Zimmermanns may have been living at Steffisburg as early as 1400, more than a hundred years before Bernese Anabaptism first arose.3 If I were to go back far enough, I would find there were no Anabaptists in the Zimmermann family. Rather, there came a time when individuals within the Zimmermann family of Steffisburg chose to become Anabaptist. In this essay, I will explore how and when that happened.2 In this article, as in others I have written for Mennonite Family History, I use Zimmermann (double n), the standard German spelling of the family name, for those individuals who lived their entire lives in Europe. The name became Zimmerman (single n) in America.
3 Darvin L. Martin has identified a Martin/Yoder/Zimmerman family cluster based on very close similarities in paternal DNA among those three families, a tight genetic grouping strongly suggesting that they share a common ancestor who lived about a thousand years ago near Winterthur, northeast of Zürich. The Martin/Yoder/Zimmerman family ancestors apparently moved into the Steffisburg area in the early to mid-1200s, part of the Kyberg expansion out of the Winterthur region.
Martin’s analysis of yDNA testing has led him to hypothesize that “The Zimmerman[n] surname in Steffisburg emerged as a subset of the Joders. Potentially a Joder woodworker established the surname Zimmerman[n] around 1400 in Steffisburg.” (The German word for woodworker is “Zimmermann.”) Darvin Martin’s article, “Before the Paper Trail: Using DNA to Construct the Martin/Yoder/Zimmerman Family Cluster,” can be found in the Jan. 2013 Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage.The Emergence and Growth of Bernese Anabaptism
Swiss Anabaptism emerged in Zürich in 1525 and spread quickly into the neighboring state of Bern. Bernese authorities acted almost immediately to ferret out and punish Anabaptists in their midst. The first death sentences were imposed in 1529. Other Anabaptists were driven out of Bern, the beginning of a policy of forced exile that was to continue for the next two centuries.4
In spite of this fierce determination to eradicate Anabaptism from the land, the number of Bernese Anabaptists continued to grow.5
Anabaptist beliefs and practices attracted many adherents in the Bernese countryside, and members of the Zimmermann family were among those persuaded to join the Anabaptist movement. Whether it was a single individual now and then, one or two or three couples making the decision this year and a few more the following year, or perhaps a sizeable family group making the decision en masse, it is evident that such decisions were made.
Obviously, this process of becoming Anabaptist was not limited to the Zimmermann family. Whether your ancestor was Augspurger, Bachman, Yoder, or Zook, or a member of any of the Swiss Mennonite immigrant families, the story would be much the same. Somewhere along the way, we each had ancestors who freely chose to become Anabaptist.6
While there were those who declared themselves Anabaptist, others hesitated to make that choice. It was, after all, a decision that entailed some risk. Families were divided. Even as certain members of a family joined the Anabaptist movement, others—perhaps parents or ...4 It is important to recognize that Swiss Anabaptism was forming during the same historical moment as the larger Protestant Reformation was upending Western Christianity and creating wrenching change in the structures of religious and political power. The state of Bern opted to join the Protestant transformation in 1528. Bernese authorities sought to suppress Anabaptism and thereby strengthen the newly established Swiss Reformed Church. They failed to eliminate Anabaptism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; nonetheless, the official state-church accrued great authority and came to dominate much of Bernese life in that time.
5 The late Delbert Gratz, an authority on Anabaptist history, emphasized the continual growth of Bernese Anabaptism up until 1670, when banishment was sharply escalated. By the end of 1671, the number of Anabaptists living in the state of Bern was greatly reduced, and growth of the movement had been curtailed.
Notwithstanding that diminution, Gratz wrote: Anabaptists “were far from being exterminated.” Bernese government and state-church officials were determined to eradicate the remnants, and another round of forced removals in the 1690s further lowered the number of Anabaptists in Bernese territory. However, even at the beginning of the 1700s, the Bernese government had not ended the Anabaptist presence. [Delbert L. Gratz, Bernese Anabaptists and Their American Descendants (Morgantown, Pa: Masthof Press, 2010; original work published 1953.]6 Why was the Anabaptist movement so successful in attracting followers? Delbert Gratz suggested that many decided to join because of wide-spread admiration for the Anabaptists whom they observed in their community. He wrote: “[T]he daily conduct of the Bernese Anabaptists was on a far higher plane than that of their state-church neighbors . . . Much of the rural populace thought of the Anabaptists as saints and persons who had experienced true salvation. Since it was a common belief that to join the Anabaptists was the most certain way to attain salvation, their ranks ever increased despite severe persecution.” (p. 50)
... siblings or cousins—elected to remain within the Swiss Reformed Church, at least officially. The hesitant ones may have quietly supported their Anabaptist neighbors and family members, perhaps even attending Anabaptist meetings. But they held back from fully committing themselves to Anabaptism. These were the so-called Halbtäufer, the “half-Anabaptists.”
The making of our Anabaptist families took place within a relatively brief period. The Zimmermanns of Steffisburg who affiliated themselves with Anabaptism made their decisions sometime between 1525 (when Swiss Anabaptism was born) and the 1690s, or thereabouts, (when my ancestors left Bern). That is approximately 175 years, a lengthy span of time relative to a human lifetime, but measuring only five or six generations. At some point during the unfolding of those half-dozen generations, individuals named Zimmermann chose to become Anabaptist.End of partial quote.
See the article: AnthoniZimmermannFamily-RIN215668-MFH202010.pdfThe Anthoni Zimmermann Family of Steffisburg, four generations (by Larry Zimmerman)
ZM Anthoni Zimmermann (b. abt. 1560-64), m. 1) Christina Räber, 2) Anni Kapfer
ZM1 Hans Zimmermann (bpt. Feb 23, 1584)
ZM2 Hans Zimmermann (bpt. Jul 27, 1590)
ZM3 Peter Zimmermann (bpt. Jul 29, 1593)
ZM4 Adelheit Zimmermann (bpt. Jul 12, 1595)
ZM5 Christen Zimmermann (bpt. Feb 13, 1597) m. 1?) unknown, 2) Anna Gross
ZM51 Christen Zimmermann (b. abt. 1617-22), probable son, m. Madlen Hilfiker
ZM52 Hans Zimmermann (bpt. Dec 7, 1634), m. Lucia Wertmüller
ZM521 Christen Zimmermann (bpt. Feb 1, 1657)
ZM522 Hans Zimmermann (bpt. Dec 19, 1658)
ZM523 Anni Zimmermann (bpt. Mar 24, 1661)
ZM524 Madle Zimmermann (bpt. Sep 6, 1663)
ZM525 Niclaus Zimmermann (bpt. Mar 17, 1667)
ZM526 Babi Zimmermann (bpt. May 29, 1670)
ZM527 Peter Zimmermann (bpt. Mar 9, 1673)
ZM53 Anna Zimmermann (bpt. Nov 21, 1641)
ZM54 Niclaus Zimmermann (bpt. Aug 27, 1643)—probable son, see footnote #13
ZM55 Madle Zimmermann (bpt. Aug 3, 1645)
ZM56 Christen Zimmermann (bpt. Mar. 31, 1650)
ZM6 Anthoni Zimmermann (bpt. Jan 20, 1600)
ZM7 Stephan Zimmermann (bpt. Oct 17, 1602)
ZM8 Niclaus Zimmermann (b. abt. 1605)