Descendants of Group 5 - Zimmermans / Carpenters
Notes
229.
Hans Christoph Zimmerman
Group 14 - Carpenter Cousins Y-DNA Project
http://carpentercousins.com
234.
Zimmerman
Still born.
235.
Christianus Zimmerman
BAPTISM:
Name: Christianus Zimmerman
Event Type: Taufe (Baptism)
Birth Date: 30. Dez 1669 (30 Dec 1669)
Baptism Date: 30. Dez 1669 (30 Dec 1669)
Baptism Place: Sulzfeld, Preußen, Baden
Father: Christian Zimmerman
Mother: Maria Zimmerman
Parish as it Appears: Sulzfeld
Page number: 30
Source Information
Ancestry.com. Baden and Hesse Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1502-1985 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.
Original data:
Mikrofilm Sammlung. Familysearch.org
Originale: Lutherische Kirchenbücher, 1502-1985.
104.
Johannes Caspar "Hans" Zimmermann
ANCESTRY:
http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/39109691/person/19326249317
Parents
Johann Jacob Zimmermann 1668 – 1732
Catharina Magdalena Zimmermann
Spouse & Children
Elisabetha KISTLER 1690 – 1730
Catharina ZIMMERMANN 1733 – 1736
Joh. Paul ZIMMERMANN 1735 – 1735
Joh. Georg ZIMMERMANN 1737 – 1815
Johannes Paul ZIMMERMANN 1738 – 1805
Joh. Caspar ZIMMERMANN 1742 – 1744
Johann Michael ZIMMERMANN 1744 – 1805
Elisabetha Kistler
First spouse, but who is the second who had the children?
254.
Anna Duplicate of 104577 Ruchty
BIRTH: Birth given as 1683
108.
Hans Zimmerman Jr.
He was called Hans Zimmerman the younger of Reutschlibrun at the baptisms of his children. He was married to Anna Neuenschwander. He did not baptise any children at Steffisburg after 1689. He was an Anabaptist living at Alsace with Niclaus Zimmerman in 1703 and 1708. He may have been the Anabaptist Hans Zimmerman who was living at Montbeliard in 1732.
109.
Christian "SEE NOTES" Zimmerman
Christian Zimmerman and his wife Barbli Bachman were Anabaptists and moved out of Steffisburg on 4 April 1695. He was a miller by trade andlived at Reutschlibrun. He was called an Anabaptist in 1695 atSchwarzenegg. He was probably the Christian Zimmerman who was anAnabaptist living at Ohnenheim, Alsace, France in 1700. He was the last Anabaptist living in Ohnenheim in 1713 when he resigned from the mill and turned it over to Hans George Discher.
FSFTID # GZDF-WG7
CAUTION: PLEASE READ
EMAIL:
From: Larry Zimmerman larry-zimmerman@att.net
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2022 12:35 PM
To: jrcrin001@gmail.com; Bobby 00 Carpenter; Robert Carpenter
Subject: Re:
Hello John
Thank you for files 7.pdf and 8.pdf regarding Christian Zimmerman-156374. I regret to say the data is largely incorrect. Some of it comes from the Richard Warren Davis genealogy for the family he called “Zimmerman Family B.” Unfortunately, his work is filled with mistakes. The data about Christian Zimmerman and Ursula Breitenstein-229420 is not from Davis’ work, but it too is wrong.
A Christian Zimmerman was baptized at Steffisburg on 20 Sep 1663, the son of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen. However, there is evidence that he did not survive childhood, based on property transactions involving other known sons of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen who did reach adulthood. Even if Christian lived, he was not the person of that name who married Barbara Bachman on 11 Nov 1681. (Davis has the marriage on 28 Oct 1681. That is just one of numerous errors, large and small, in Davis’ work. But enough bashing Davis—you get the idea that I find his genealogy unreliable.) We have proof that the Christian Zimmerman who married Barbara Bachman was the son of Hans Zimmerman in der Weid, born in 1657. Christian Zimmerman and Barbara Bachman are the Amish couple who left Bern in 1695. Christen was a miller, and he probably was the person who ran the mill at Ohnenheim in Alsace.
As for the Christian Zimmerman who married Ursula Breitenstein-229420, that couple came to my attention in 2018 when Bob Carpenter forwarded an email from an individual claiming Christian and Ursula were related to the Steffisburg Zimmermans, Group 5. There also are genealogies with similar assertions on Ancestry.com. It does not stand up to scrutiny.
Here is what I wrote in a memo at the time this was being checked out:
A genealogy on Ancestry.com shows Christian was born in 1695, that his parents were Christian Zimmermann (1663-1713) and Ursula Breitenstein (1662-1714), and that his paternal grandparents were Hans Zimmerman (1635-1708) and Barbara Gilgen (1640-1700).
The source cited for Christian Zimmermann and Ursula Breitenstein is “Germany, Select Marriages, 1558-1929”, a database on Ancestry. It shows a Christo Zimmermann (as spelled in the database), born at Berlipp, Bern, Switzerland, married Ursula Breitenstein on 30 July 1693 at Auggen, Baden, Germany, and that Christo’s father was Hannss Zimmermann.
The reported marriage location, Auggen in Baden, caught my attention, because there were Anabaptist families, including Zimmermanns, living at Auggen in the early 19th century. That was more than a century after the 1693 marriage, but perhaps there was a Swiss Anabaptist presence at Auggen much earlier. As I detailed above, the community of Denzlingen petitioned the margrave of Baden-Durlach in 1739 on behalf of Christian Zimmermann (who was then the leaseholder at the Zehnhof estate in Denzlingen) for tax relief, arguing that he, Christian, had been “born in the land.” Auggen was, in fact, within Baden-Durlach, so if Christian was born at Auggen, he would have been “born in the land.”
To investigate this possibility, I went to the Auggen church book and located the original primary record referenced in that German marriages database, the marriage record for Christe (as it was actually spelled) Zimmermann and Ursula Breitenstein. It confirms the marriage took place on 30 July 1693, and that Christe Zimmermann, an unmarried farm worker (Dienstknect), a native of Bern, the son of Hannß Zimmermann, a Calvinist from Belp (Canton Bern, Switzerland) married Ursula Breitenstein, daughter of Jerg Breitenstein, citizen of Zeglingen of Basel-Land (Switzerland) and a long-time resident at Auggen.
On 9 February 1697, Christian Zimmermann (as his name was spelled on that occasion) and his wife Ursula Breitenstein presented a son named Christian for baptism at the Lutheran church in Auggen. Christian, who was born four days before the baptism, was the third child of Christian and Ursula, according to that entry. I found the records showing a son Hans Zimmermann was baptized 30 May 1694 and a daughter Maria was baptized on 19 September 1695, thus confirming that Christian was the third child. The names of the witnesses are not typical of the Amish Mennonites. I researched many of them and found they appear to have been residents at Auggen, likely Germans. Breitenstein too is not a Swiss Anabaptist family.
The 1693 marriage record for Christian Zimmermann indicated he was the son of Hannß Zimmermann of Belp. I searched the Belp church registers and found that Hanß Zimmermann of Belpberg and Elisabeth Schlechter had a son named Christen baptized there on 26 December 1669. If that is the Christian who married at Auggen in 1693—and I think it is—then Christian was age 23 at the time of his marriage to Ursula. Note that the 1669 baptism entry done at Belp does not identify the parents of Christian as Hans Zimmermann and Barbara Gilgen of Steffisburg. That couple married at Steffisburg and had a son Christian in 1663, but I see no evidence to support the hypothesis that this person was the grandfather of Christian Zimmermann, born at Auggen, Baden in 1697. On the contrary, the Belp record disproves that idea—Christian’ grandparents were Hanß Zimmermann of Belpberg and Elisabeth Schlechter.
I see nothing to hint an Amish Mennonite affiliation with any of these individuals at Belp or Auggen, and Christian Zimmermann of Sexau/Denzlingen was Amish Mennonite.
Postscript: Christian Zimmermann and Ursula Breitenstein subsequently moved to the Kraichgau region of Germany, 100 miles north of Auggen. I recently discovered the following entry in Schweizer Einwanderer in den Kriachgau (Swiss Immigrants in the Kraichgau) by Diefenbacher, et. al. (1983).
ZIMMERMANN, Christian, von Belp BE, [died] Weingarten [in Kraichgau] 13.11.1713 (50-jährig [age 50]) [married to] Ursula Breitenstein ([died] Weingarten im Febr. 1714, 52-jährig)
Christian Zimmermann and Ursula Breitenstein relocated to Weingarten sometime after the birth of their son Christian, presumably taking their children with them. Christian, born in 1697, would have been about 17 when his parents died. His fate is unknown, but he was not Christian Zimmermann of Sexau and Denzlingen.
Just as there were many Zimmermans living at Wattenwil, there were numerous Zimmermans at Belp, also on the west side of the Aare River. We know from Y-DNA that the Wattenwil clan is not closely related to our Steffisburg clan. I suspect the same is true of the families at Belp and nearby places such as Gerzensee, although I don’t think we have any genetic data from living descendants of those families. It would be nice if we did.
Larry
I recently did extensive research on the family history for William Timmerman, whose Big Y test rsults were posted in June 2022. Very productive research because I was able to use William’s lineage to construct a lineage for Niclaus Zimmerman, the 1733 immigrant on the Hope. Niclaus' descendants Earl Zimmerman and Marvin Zimmerman (Group 5) have long struggled to find information on their ancestor Niclaus. I have attached a PDF with the details. I'm currently drafting an article for Mennonite Family History to report these findings.
Ursula Breitenstein
FSFTID # L8BC-HHN
266.
Johannes "Hans" Zimmerman
This is probably the Amish Hans Zimmerman who arrived in Philadelphiawith the Amish on 8 October 1737 on the ship "Charming Nancy". He maybe the Hans Zimmerman who was taxed in Bern Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania in 1754. There was also a Nicholas Zimmerman living therein 1754, "over the mountains".
FSFTID # GHBL-X7B
267.
Maria Zimmerman
FSFTID # GHBG-CXF
268.
Anna Martha Zimmermann
FSFTID # GZDF-7ZK
NOTE:
Possible speculized child.
270.
Georg Marx Zimmermann
FSFTID # GZ8W-QX7
111.
Peter Zimmerman
NOTE:
Birth info found - but no immigration or death info found in America.
The death date of 1750 Pequea, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA has been removed. See material and questions below.
BAPTISM: Provided by Larry Zimmerman on
Baptism of Peter Zimmerman
Source: LDS Film 2005787
Steffisburg, Switzerland
Kirchenbuch, Evangelisch-Reformierte Kirche
Image 94/564 ------------------------------------------> See image: RIN 143085 Peter Zimmerman Bap.jpg
Sunday, the 23rd of August 16681 Peter was baptized.
Parents: Hans Zimmerman, Barbli [Barbara] Gilgen zu (?) Guggisperg [Guggisberg]2.
Witnesses: Hans Zaggeler3, Michel Garfner (?) im Goldiwil4 [?], Lucia Bächer.
Notes:
1. August 23, 1668 was a Sunday on the Julian calendar.
2. Richard Warren Davis spelled the family name of Hans Zimmerman’s wife as Gilgan, but I read it as Gilgen in this and other records for the same couple. Barbli Gilgen named in this record was indentified with “Guggisperg,” which I take to be a reference to Guggisberg, a Gemeinde in the district of Schwarzenburg. (The Amish Hochstettler family originated in Schwarzenburg.) Delbert Gratz included a “Gilg/Gilgen” in his collection of Swiss names, Was Isch Dini Nahme?, and linked the name to Schwarzenburg, Canton Bern. However, no one of that name is found in Gratz’ Bernese Anabaptists. J. Virgil Miller mentioned three persons named Gilgen in Both Sides of the Ocean. Gilgen also was a given name at the time. Joe Staker wrote about a Gilg or Gilgen Stüker/Staker in early 16th century Hilterfingen records, and Joe had a footnote (Part 1, p. 90) about the 8th century Saint Gilgen as the probable source of the given name.
3. The Zaggeler family name of the first witness is not found in Gratz or Miller or any Anabaptist source I have seen. However, there are some genealogical references online: (1) a listing of a Jakob Zaggeler and children from Frutigen, Canton Bern, http://www.frutigergeschlechter.ch/humo-gen/family.php?database=humo_&id=F15970&main_person=I50466, and (2) references to a Salome Zaggeler on RootsWeb (SKAndersonFamilyTree) at http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=SHOW&db=:2947178&recno=3295. No birthplace is given but she married Ulrich Vogt and had children in Erlenbach im Simmental.
4k. Witness Michel Garfner (?) is named as “im Gold_wyl.” This probably is a reference to the Gemeinde of Goldiwil, which was spelled Goldiwyl in the past. Goldiwil was a separate Gemeinde until it was incorporated into Thun in 1913. Goldiwil, today known as Goldiwil (Thun), lies just to the southeast of Steffisburg and southwest of Homberg. The Steffisburg scribe who wrote this document generally made his letters “i” with a distinct dot, and I do not see that here between “Gold” and “wyl.” Indeed, the letter does not appear to be formed as an “i.” Nevertheless, I think this word likely refers to this witness residing in Goldiwil.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: Robert Carpenter mailto:rcarpenter2@charter.net>
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2012 3:22 PM
To: John R. Carpenter 2 mailto:johnrcarpenter@cox.net> ; Terry Carpenter mailto:diluvius@yahoo.com> ; Bob Carpenter mailto:bobbylc@verizon.net>
Cc: John Chandler mailto:john.chandler@alum.mit.edu> ; ngibson176@comcast.net mailto:ngibson176@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: New DNA Test Results Posted for Kit number 218243 in Group Carpenter Cousins - Group 5
Dear John, Terry, and all,
I thank you for letting me in on the discussions about my book and research! I think I can clear up some of the issues you pose.
First of all, I was incorrect in Carpenters A Plenty that our Zimmermans descended from the Heinrich Z. family of Wattenwil, GROUP 9. All researchers had previously assumed that and failing documentation I also made that assumption. Insert DNA: The DNA test of course proved that the two families are in fact genetically distinct.
Over the past 10 years or maybe longer (? time flies) I have discovered the extensive Zimmerman family in Steffisburg, Canton of Bern. This family village is the location of our Zimmerman family. We are GROUP 5. That is our distinct Zimmerman group. Quite a number of Zimmerman descendants now relate to one another. The problem: Our Zimmermans of Steffisburg were Mennonite and Amish; therefore, they did not get their infants baptized. I have traced numerous Zimmermans from 1590 or so in Steffisburg only to have a gap around 1700. At that time many of these Zimmermans migrated to Alsace. In Alsace a Peter Zimmerman became a fellow preacher with Jakob Ammann and converted to the Amish sect. Which Peter? There are two in Alsace. There were four Hans Zimmermans in Alsace in the 1700-1720 range. Which one is which?
I am copying this to Bob Carpenter of Lompoc, California. He has done a superior job of keeping our Group involved and in following up on the most recent research and information.
Quickly here is what we know: Hans Zimmerman of the 1732 Pink Plaisance is directly related to members of the Zimmerman family of Germana colony in northern Virginia. Early members of that family left Steffisburg and settled in the German States before coming to America. Nicholaus Zimmerman and his two sons, Hans and Christian, arrived in 1733 on the ship Hope. They were from Steffisburg, to Alsace, to America. They also match genetically. Of the North Carolina Zimmermans the following match genetically--Peter, Jacob, Johannes, and Christian. We suspect all are children of Hans of the Pink Plaisance and the DNA seems to indicate that.
Enter Barto Hilton or Helton: Bob notified me of him and the genetic connection. I had been unable to locate him in my book (I think it is too long). I am delighted that you have indicated his ancestry. He apparently was a son of Joshua P. Carpenter; I even wrote in my book that he moved to Asheville but I had no idea he changed his last name. Joshua P. with Barto, Ailey (Alice), Pinckney, and a granddaughter Mamie were living in Burke County in 1880. I lost them there. Joshua P.'s wife was not in that household in 1880.
So I hope I have helped: Carpenters A Plenty Zimmermans are GROUP 5; GROUP 9 is the Wattenwil Zimmermans of Lancaster Co, PA. Everyone in Group 5 are genetically related and most descend from Pink Plaisance, Hope, and Germana immigrants. Let me know if this is too confusing; also, Bob Carpenter, please jump in with your comments.
Let me know if this has helped, Robert Carpenter
Peter Zimmerman was a follower of Jacob Amman in Alsace in 1693. Hewas an Anabaptist living in
Markirch, Alsace in 1703 and 1708. He maybe the father of the Zimmermans who came over in 1732
and 1737. Thiswas as recorded by Richard Davis. The DNA results from EarlZimmerman, FTDNA No.
53199 that match me prove that this Peter Zimmerman was and is the father of Hans Zimmerman
who came to the United States in 1732!
Bob Carpenter writes:
Richard Warren Davis, he is the author of the book, "Emigrants, Refugees and Prisoners - An Aid to Mennonite Family Research". He began his research in 1983 and published his book in 1995. (He met and worked with Robert Baecher in Alsace.) He later upgraded his book with various family reports. In his book, he covers both Peter Zimmermans, the Peter Zimmerman, b. 1668 is shown in his "Family B", and the Peter Zimmerman, b. c1640 is shown in his "Family D". The later one is the Peter who was married to Verena Stahli on 23 Mar 1666 and died in a freak accident in 1697 at Petite Liepvre, Alsace. In addition, he shows Hans Zimmerman, b. 7 Dec 1635 and Barbara Gilgan as the parents of Peter Zimmerman, b. 23 August 1668.
Bob Carpenter writes:
Davis also records in his reconstructed census for 1709 the following: "There is no Mennonite Census for the year 1709, but I have gone through all of my family files and reconstructed a Census" for Markirch (German for Ste. Marie-aux-Mines). Below he shows Peter Zimmerman, b. 1668 and five of his children. However, no wife is shown, which brings up the question, did she die during child birth of Adam? I believe that the Hans Zimmerman shown as being born in 1702 is the same Hans Zimmerman who arrived in Philadelphia on 21 September 1732 at the age of 30. Household 34 (I added this column) Peter Zimmerman, age 41 1709-41 = 1668 wife Niclaus Zimmerman, age 9 1700 Hans Zimmerman, age 7 1702 Peter Zimmerman age 5 1704 Ulrich Zimmerman, age 4 1705 Adam Zimmerman, age new born 1709 Joseph Peter Staker also records a Peter Zimmerman, b. 23 Aug 1668 as an elder with Ammann and as being the son of Hans Zimmerman, b. 7 Dec 1635 in his article "Amish Mennonites in Tazewell County, Illinois - Part One, page 10".
NOTE: No Christian b. abt 1698/1708 listed.
E-MAIL:
From: Larry Zimmerman mailto:larry-zimmerman@att.net>
Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2015 8:59 PM
To: Robert Carpenter mailto:rcarpenter2@charter.net>
Cc: Bobby Carpenter mailto:bobbylc@verizon.net> ; John R Carpenter mailto:jrcrin001@cox.net> ; Richard (Dick) Zimmerman mailto:rhz1415@verizon.net> ; john schmeeckle mailto:jonva325@yahoo.com> ; John 00 Chandler mailto:john.chandler@alum.mit.edu> ; Terry 00 Carpenter mailto:diluvius@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Untangling the Web
Robert
I appreciate your kind words, but I want to be clear that I did not independently uncover the information about Peter Zimmermann, the one who died on the forest slope near Sainte Marie-aux-Mines/Markirch, and who I wrote about in my book. I relied largely on the published work of Robert Baecher, an independent scholar in France who has done groundbreaking research on Anabaptist history in Alsace and Switzerland. Finding and translating land and tax records in the Alsace and Bern archives is beyond my skills. Anyway, Baecher wrote an article in 1996 for an edited book published by the Association française d'histoire anabaptiste-mennonite. His article, “The Patriarche of Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines,” was subsequently translated into English for the Mennonite Quarterly Review, January 2000. Here is an excerpt:
Yet another hint of Jacob Ammann's discreet presence [at La Petite Lièpvre near Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines] emerged around a tragic accident. Following a fatal accident while working in the fields, the Amish community buried a certain Peter Zimmermann, a man who had been part of the original schism and a companion of Ammann when the group of ministers from the Alsace made their fateful visit to Switzerland in 1693. While working in the woods, a woodcutter had unintentionally felled a large tree, which hit Zimmermann on his side, killing him. Several hours after his death, Zimmermann was buried at the edge of a grove of trees at La Petite Lièpvre. This intrigued the police, who then ordered an autopsy. They found that the body had been simply wrapped in a burial cloth. The people who had gathered for the occasion, including family and friends of the deceased, confirmed in Jacob Ammann's presence that the death had truly been accidental, caused in part by the victim's deafness, which prevented him from hearing the falling tree. Thereupon the woodcutter Hans Weiss was declared innocent of any wrongdoing and the authorities noted that all "had forgiven" his unfortunate mistake. [end of quoted passage]
The original source cited by Baecher indicates that the accident happened in 1697.
Remember too that the Peter Zimmermann who participated in the events of 1693 that precipitated the Amish Division was a minister and purportedly a designated elder in the Amish congregation at that time. The Peter born in 1635 would have been about 58 in 1693, perhaps a decade older than Jakob Ammann. The Peter born in 1668 would have been only 25, very young to be an elder.
Robert Baecher also had an excellent article called “From Steffisburg to Ste. Marie-aux-Mines: The Exodus of Those Who Became Amish” in the January 2004 and April 2004 issues of Mennonite Family History. He had more information about Peter Zimmermann (b. abt. 1635) and his family in that article.
Based on the historical record as analyzed by Baecher, I think we can say with certainty that the Peter Zimmermann who supposedly said, “There you have it,” as the contentious meeting between Ammann’s dissident group and the Swiss Mennonite ministers broke up in discord and who tragically died four years later was the older Peter of the two we have been discussing. The Peter born in 1668 was not the close associate of Ammann. But even if that is the case, it still leaves the possibility that the younger Peter was the father of 1832 American immigrant Hans Zimmerman—and, maybe, the father of Christian Zimmermann of Denzlingen.
Regarding the Niclaus Zimmermann who married Verena Spring, I believe he was born in 1669, the son of Hans and Magdalena Blanck Zimmermann. Hans, Niclaus’ father, was the brother of Peter Zimmermann (b. 1635), according to my notes. Therefore Niclaus was Peters’ nephew.
My book, Ancestral Traces: Zimmerman and Beer Family Journeys From Switzerland to America (ISBN 9781312327245) is available through Lulu Press at lulu.com . I describe it as more than a genealogy because I tried to relate some of the social, political, economic, and religious events of the times in which the families lived, beginning in the 16th century and continuing to modern times. I really wanted to learn more about who my ancestors were and what motivated them to leave their ancient homeland for America. I would be happy to send a complimentary copy of the book to you, Bobby, John Carpenter, or anyone in our small group of cousins exchanging emails—I have already sent copies to Dick Zimmerman and John Schmeeckle. Just send me your mailing address if you are interested.
I did not do the original research on Peter Zimmermann, but I may perhaps brag just a little about some of the research I did for Ancestral Traces, particularly in uncovering a trove of civil records from Saint-Valentin in Indre, France, records that illuminated a previously unknown story of an Amish community there in Central France between about 1827 and 1839, including my Zimmerman ancestors. The Amish families were tenants on large estates owned by General Henri-Gatien Bertrand and other high-ranking associates of Napoleon. It is a fascinating tale. That story is told in some detail in the book and summarized in an article that I co-authored with Joe Staker for the January 2015 issue of Mennonite Family History.
Larry
QUESTIONS:
Robert C. Carpenter asked:
Robert wrote this:
I need some help with the Peter Zimmerman listed as a possible ancestor of some of our group. I have not seen information on this Peter Zimmerman. He is clearly not the Peter of the Friendship, whose birth would have been about 1704 per ship passenger list and died 1790 per will and Orphan's Court records.
1. Where was this new Peter born in 1668? What is the source?
2. What is the source for his death record in Pennsylvania in 1750? I have not seen records of a Peter Zimmerman dying in Pennsylvania this early. Where did he die? Lancaster County? What is the record?
3. What is the source for this Peter Zimmerman? Is he listed on Pennsylvania tax lists? Where and which years?
4. How does this Peter Zimmerman relate to Nicholaus Zimmerman of Switzerland and Alsace?
I am very confused about information concerning this new Peter Zimmerman.
Could someone provide some documentation?
Larry Zimmerman responds:
These are some of the same questions I raised in an email on 2/14/15, “Untangling the Web.” I am still very new to the CC/Group 5 material, but I don’t see why the provisional genealogy seems to emphasize Peter Zimmerman (b. 1668) as a direct ancestor. I haven’t seen evidence to support that view, and nor have I seen anything to show that the Peter born in Steffisburg in 1668 immigrated to Pennsylvania.
The primary source for documenting the Steffisburg Zimmerman family is the Kirchenbuch, the registers maintained by the Evangelish Reformierte Kirche at Steffisburg, which are available on microfilm and now online. There is a record for the baptism of Peter Zimmerman on 23 Aug 1668 at the Steffisburg church, the son of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen. We know he existed. But so far, I have not seen anything to show that Peter was directly related to the 18th century Pennsylvania immigrant brothers Hans and Peter Zimmerman. And there is no reason to think that Peter himself immigrated to America as far as I am aware.
I spent time today going through some of the Steffisburg records with the aim of verifying or refuting the information published by Sharman Meck Carroll in the January 2005 issue of MFH. (By the way, I did get an email response from Mr. Carroll, but it was of no help, and I fear he may not be well.) Anyway, here is some of what I discovered today in reviewing FHL Film 2005787. It largely agrees with what Sharman Carroll had, but I have corrected a few details he had wrong.
Children of Hans Zimmerman (b. 1667) and Cathrin Spring (b. 1669) who were married at Steffisburg 25 Nov 1698
Verena, bpt. 17 Nov 1700 (As I suspected her name was Verena, not Verna as was printed in the MFH article.)
2. Barbara, bpt. 2 Apr 1702
3. Hans, bpt. 11 Nov 1703
4. Hans, bpt. 4 Jan 1705 (This son was not included in the Carroll article, and I will have more to say about him later.)
5. Peter, bpt. 6 Aug 1708
I have saved images of each of these christening records.
It seems likely that Sharman Carroll was correct in his claim that Hans born in 1703 in Steffisburg probably was the Hans Zimmerman who lived in Cocalico Twp, Lancaster Co. Hans arrived on the Pink Plaisance on 21 Sep 1732, and his age was recorded as 30, close to the actual age of (almost) 29. I have looked at enough passenger lists to know that the recorded ages were often off, sometimes wildly so. Furthermore, the Peter Zimmerman who arrived on the Friendship on 3 Sep 1739 at recorded age 35 was reasonably close in age to Hans’ brother Peter born in 1708 in Steffisburg—he was actually 31 in 1739 according to the birth record.
Regarding the Hans Zimmerman baptized on 4 Jan 1705, no one as far as I know has noted that person before. As I said, he was not included in the Carroll genealogy. It’s an intriguing discovery, and I have some preliminary thoughts, but I will hold off until I check a few more things in the Steffisburg records. The fact that he was christened with the same name as his older—and still living—brother is not all that surprising. The Amish Mennonites often used the same given name and differentiated the children with another name in the home. Now what might they have called the younger Hans?
Larry
A Tenuous Hypothesis:
From: Larry Zimmerman mailto:larry-zimmerman@att.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2015 6:08 PM
To: Robert C. Carpenter mailto:rcarpenter2@charter.net> ; Bobby Carpenter mailto:bobbylc@verizon.net> ; John R. Carpenter mailto:johnrcarpenter@cox.net> ; John Schmeeckle mailto:jonva325@yahoo.com> ; Richard (Dick) Zimmerman mailto:rhz1415@verizon.net>
Cc: John 00 Chandler mailto:john.chandler@alum.mit.edu> ; Terry 00 Carpenter mailto:diluvius@yahoo.com>
Subject: A Tenuous Hypothesis
Colleagues
After a thorough review of the Steffisburg Kirchenbuch, I have been unable to find anything pertaining to Peter Zimmerman (b. 1668), our purported ancestor, beyond his baptismal record. My file on that entry is attached, but in summary it shows that Peter was baptized at Steffisburg on 23 August 1668, the son of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen. But there is nothing recorded for him after that event.
I see no record that Peter married in Steffisburg. I looked at marriages between 1686 (when Peter would have been only 18) and 1705. Moreover, I find no baptisms of any children for Peter Zimmerman at Steffisburg. I also checked entries in the Schwarzenegg Kirchenbuch: Schwarzenegg—which lies just east of the Steffisburg and Homberg Gemeinden—became a separate parish from Steffisburg in 1693. Richard Warren Davis suggested the possibility that Peter might have been the father of: (1) Nicholas, b. c1700—immigrant on the Pink Plaisance in 1732; (2) Hans, b. 1702—immigrant on the Pink Plaisance in 1732; (3) Peter, b. 1704, immigrant on the Friendship in 1739; (4) Ulrich, b. 1705—immigrant on the Pink Plaisance in 1732; and (5) Adam, b. 1709—immigrant on the Pink Plaisance in 1732.
To be clear, Davis did not make any definitive claims that Peter Zimmerman (1668) was the father of any of the individuals on the list, because there is no documentation, but he offered that hypothesis for the five individuals known to have immigrated. He seems to have calculated all the birthdates from the ages stated at the time of arrival in Philadelphia. And in the case of Nicholas, Davis proposed that the recorded age of 50 on the passenger list was wrong, arguing that Nicholas was probably about 30, therefore born about 1700.
I can think of several explanations as to why there is no record of Peter marrying or having children at Steffisburg/Schwarzenegg.
1. The Anabaptists resisted having children baptized in the Swiss Reformed Protestant Church, so it’s possible Peter had children at Steffisburg who were not recorded. That would not explain why there is no marriage record, although there too, some Anabaptists may not have recorded a marriage at the state church. Still, it is unlikely that Peter could have skipped the church marriage and have hidden the births of up to five children over the span of nearly a decade without the Bern church authorities discovering it. The parish pastors were agents of the state and required to report any breaches of the laws regarding religious practice. Canton Bern threatened to take children away from parents who did not comply with the law requiring baptism, and did so at times; consequently, many Anabaptist families reluctantly allowed their children to receive baptism. Could Peter really have avoided the law for numerous children over an extended period of time?
2. He perhaps left Steffisburg when a young man, presumably going to Alsace. He might have married and had children there. The Catholic parishes in Alsace did not record Anabaptist marriages and births.
3. Peter Zimmerman may have died before marriage. I find no record of his death, but many deaths were not formally recorded.
Until we have better evidence to support the hypothesis that Peter Zimmerman, son of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen, was a direct ancestor of the Zimmerman immigrants of the 1730s, it seems to me the lineage suggested by Davis is extremely tenuous.
There may be alternative theories that better fit the known facts.
Larry
Follow up based on a comment by JS ...
From: Larry Zimmerman mailto:larry-zimmerman@att.net>
Sent: Friday, March 13, 2015 8:08 AM
To: john schmeeckle mailto:jonva325@yahoo.com>
Cc: Robert C. Carpenter mailto:rcarpenter2@charter.net> ; Bobby Carpenter mailto:bobbylc@verizon.net> ; John R. Carpenter mailto:johnrcarpenter@cox.net> ; Richard (Dick) Zimmerman mailto:rhz1415@verizon.net> ; John 00 Chandler mailto:john.chandler@alum.mit.edu> ; Terry 00 Carpenter mailto:diluvius@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: A Tenuous Hypothesis
John
Your idea about a father and son named Christian at Sexau and Denzlingen is intriguing, and coincidently I have something underway that might help us test that hypothesis.
A little background first. One of the happy outcomes of the articles published in the January issue of MFH was that I received several emails from readers. That was the genesis of our wonderful little Carpenter/Zimmerman Cousins correspondence group. I also heard from Helmut Gingerich who read the article in Germany. Helmut is another descendant of Amish Mennonites and an avid genealogical researcher. We have struck up a friendship and are collaborating on some Zimmerman family history. About ten days ago, I asked Helmut if he could obtain copies of the original leases signed by Christian Zimmermann at Sexau and Denzlingen. I referred to those leases in Ancestral Traces, but I never saw the primary documents, relying instead on the accounts of John Hüppi and Michaela Schmölz-Häberlein. Those authors cited specific archival files, and I asked Helmut if he could request copies from the Baden-Württemberg archives. Turns out, Helmut has a friend with access, and that friend is supposed to be getting them for us. I have not received anything yet, but I’m hopeful the leases may shed light on our Christian Zimmermann. My intent was to look for any clues that John Hüppi might have missed regarding Christian’s parentage. Seems unlikely that I would see anything overlooked by Hüppi, but one never knows. Anyway, it’s always better to have primary documents. I trust researchers such as Hüppi, but never 100 percent. With your email, we now have another reason to carefully examine the leases. I assume Christian signed each one, beginning at Sexau in 1728, and continuing with several leases over the years at Denzlingen. Do all signatures match, or is there evidence to support your hypothesis about a father and son—two individuals named Christian Zimmermann with different signatures? Assuming we get our hands on the leases, we can then decide.
You raise a good point about whether Christian was old enough to enter a lease at Sexau in November 1728. I addressed that issue in my book when I tried to estimate Christian’s birth year. I felt he had to be at least 20 when he took the Sexau lease, but more likely a little older. I settled on “born about 1705” and tried to make clear that this was conjectural. But I also recognized that this raised a question about the age of Christian’s wife, who we think was a Rupp, given name unknown. I wrote this: “Based on the birthdates of her children, so far as they are known, she may have been born about 1715. That would make her approximately 10 years younger than her husband. Age differences of that magnitude between husband and wife were common.” But your email is making me question all this again. I took the 1759 birth of son Heinrich (who died in 1761) and by assuming his mother gave birth at 44, the outer limit of fertility, I came up with the 1715 birth date for Christian’s wife. But that resulted in a large difference in an age between husband and wife. I think that is all possible, but your “out-of-the-box” idea has me wondering if there is another explanation.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we get something out of the Karlsruhe archives on those old leases.
Thanks for contributing this thought-provoking idea.
Larry
275.
Adam Zimmerman
He was age 23 in 1732 when he arrived in Philadelphia on the PinkPlaisance.
112.
Niclaus "Claus" Zimmerman
They were Anabaptists and moved out of Steffisburg on 26 May 1695.
He may have been the Nicholas who purchased a house in Fortelbach,Alsace with Peter Joder in 1699.
He was living at Markirch in 1703 and 1708 with the Amish.
He arrived in Philadelphia on 28 August 1733 on the ship Hope with alarge group of Mennonites.
He was listed as age 63 and had his younger children with him, Hans16, Christian, age 14, Barbara, age 20 and Anna, age 18.
He died intestate in Lancaster County in 1739, He probably left his older children in Europe.
BOOK:
Zimmerman, Ezra and Maria, compilers. A Branch of the Zimmerman OFF SPRING of Glause Zimmerman in Europe and His Children Who Came from Europe: Records of 12 Generations, Records of Births of over 325 Years, over 12,000 Families. Second Edition., Printed in 1988 by Gordonville, Penna. Print Shop 17529.
SEE: Page 3, Family No. 1
NOTE: This book propagates the error of using the wife's maiden name as the middle name for each child. This is wrong and without documentation. Where all initials are the same in the family, they should be ignored.
NOTE: The index uses family numbers and not page numbers.
No sources or documentation provided. This is a family listing by family numbers and with minimal location information. It shows DOB & DOD when known.
E-MAIL:
From: Robert Carpenter mailto:rcarpenter2@charter.net>
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2014 11:10 AM
To: John R Carpenter mailto:jrcrin001@cox.net> ; Terry 00 Carpenter mailto:diluvius@yahoo.com>
Cc: Bobby Carpenter mailto:bobbylc@verizon.net> ; John 00 Chandler mailto:john.chandler@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: A Branch of the Zimmerman OFF SPRING of Glause Zimmerman in Europe and His Children Who Came from Europe
John and all,
Kit #53199 and #196674 belong to this Claus Zimmerman. I have seen that book and a more recent book by an Earl Zimmerman. I have another more recent book by Philip Roth about the family, in which he does a marvelous job documented the family's history. This Claus or Glaus is the nickname or shortened form of Nicholaus Zimmerman. Nicholaus was in Steffisburg and moved to Alsace. He came to America as a very old man with sons Christian and Hans on the ship Hope in 1733. Hans and Christian purchased their land from our ancestor, Hans Zimmerman, who went bankrupt in Pennsylvania and subsequently moved to NC. Their homeplaces are well known in Earl Township, Lancaster Co, PA. Many of their descendants remain Mennonite. They are both buried in the Lichty Cemetery which is across the road from the Christian Zimmerman homeplace and behind the family barn. I visited that area many years ago and I hope all is still there that I remember.
Bob has postulated that Nicholaus (Claus/Glaus) was the uncle or I suspect grand-uncle of our Hans Zimmerman. Since both families were Mennonite and later Amish, they failed to have their children baptized and moved away from Steffisburg, Switzerland to Alsace for religious freedom and then to America when the French cracked down on dissenters in Alsace. I was over-joyed when the kits of these descendants were posted on the site. That proved our connection to Steffisburg once again.
By the way very few Zimmermans remained in the Steffisburg area after 1720 or so. I have read the parish records and have a digitized copy of them. Most moved away.
Thanks John for all your hard work!! Robert C.
BOOK: Full cite
https://familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatalog/printing/titledetailsprint.asp?titleno=360575
Title A branch of the Zimmerman offspring of Glause Zimmerman in Europe and his children who came from Europe : records of 12 generations, records of births of over 325 years, over 12,000 families
Stmnt.Resp. compiled by Ezra and Maria Zimmerman ... [et al.]
Authors Zimmerman, Ezra S. (Ezra Sensenig), 1914- (Main Author) Zimmerman, Maria K. (Mary Kurtz), 1917- (Added Author)
Notes To view a digital version of this item - see the following link . NOTE: Protected Book - limited viewing in FHCs only. Cover title: Zimmerman's family history, 1720-1988. Hans Zimmerman (1720-1786) and a brother, Christian Zimmerman (d.1787) were two of the sons of Glause Zimmerman of Europe. They were Mennonites who emigrated from the Palatinate to Philadelphia in 1732, but probably were descendants of Swiss immigrants to the Palatinate. Hans married Anna K. Webber and settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Descendants and relatives lived in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska, California and elsewhere. Some descendants immigrated to Ontario, and progeny lived in Ontario, British Columbia and elsewhere in Canada. Includes index. Includes Brubaker (Brubacker, Brubacher), Burkholder, Good, Hoover, Horst (Hurst), Martin, Nolt, Sensenig, Shirk, Stauffer, Weaver and related families.
ASIN: B0006EVKT0 Call Number - Location - Status - High Density 929.273 Z65ze - FHL FAM HIST Book - Available -
Format Books/Monographs
Language English
Publication Gordonville, Pennsylvania : Gordonville Print Shop, 1988
Physical 1486, [147] p.
Edition 2nd ed
E-MAIL: # 2 is critical
From: Larry Zimmerman
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2021 4:54 PM
To: John R Carpenter
Subject: Fwd: Niclaus Zimmerman the 1733 Immigrant
John
Thank you for your time yesterday. It was a good session, and I learned some things—that’s always a measure of a good meeting.
I’m forwarding this email sent yesterday to members of Group 5. As you will see in reading it, I updated everyone on recent research into Niclaus Zimmerman, the 1733 immigrant on the Hope. I had a French researcher visit the archives in Colmar, where she obtained two documents with signatures by Niclaus Zimmerman (b. 1667), the master cabinetmaker son of Hans Zimmerman in der Weid who married Verena Spring and moved from Steffisburg to Alsace shortly after the birth of their first child in 1694. I discussed Niclaus in the October 2020 MFH article that I shared with you some months ago and added more about him in that update I gave you yesterday, a copy of the short article that appeared in the July 2021 MFH. The signatures offer powerful evidence that Niclaus, the Amish Mennonite cabinet maker, was not the man who immigrated in 1733. That Niclaus apparently could not sign his name and made a crude NZ mark on the ship list. I attached images to the email, which I am including in the forward to you.
I also used the email yesterday to discuss the implications of Earl Zimmerman’s recent Big Y test, emphasizing that his test results show him to be on a separate line of descent from the rest of us. Thus we have both genealogical and genetic evidence to show that Earl Zimmerman is not a descendant of the Niclaus Zimmerman born at Steffisburg in 1667. The genetics also show that he could not be the descendant of another Niclaus Zimmerman, the son of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen, born at Steffisburg in 1670.
After outlining how Guy Zimmerman’s 9th great-grandfather Michel Zimmerman (b. abt. 1616) migrated to Sulzfeld in the Kraichgau region of Germany following the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, as did large numbers of Swiss, I suggested that Niclaus Zimmerman may have been born in Kraichgau to another Zimmerman from Steffisburg—a brother of Michel, perhaps a cousin, maybe an uncle. I was thinking that a male relative of Michel could quite easily have been attracted to the German lands himself.
Today it occurred to me that there might be another possibility, not requiring that brother/cousin/uncle of Michel Zimmerman to have independently emigrated from Steffisburg.
Michel Zimmerman had three sons, still young at the time of the family relocation to Sulzfeld. All three of those sons married and had sons. Group 5 cousin Guy Zimmerman is a descendant of Michel’s son Christian. If Christian was the source of the mutation that formed SNP BY194926, he would have passed it on to his sons and eventually to Guy. Indeed, SNP BY194926 could have formed anywhere with or downstream of Michel’s son Christian and upstream from Guy. (There are 11 generation between Michel and Guy.) But now what if Niclaus Zimmerman the 1733 immigrant was the son of another of Michel’s sons (either Hans or Michel), and there was no mutation anywhere in the father-son chain that has led to Earl. Then Earl would still have A10757 as his terminal SNP, inherited from Michel, who inherited it from a more distant ancestor. Guy, however, inherited the later SNP BY194926 that had formed with one of Michel’s descendants through son Christian—a son, grandson, great-grandson, etc. who was also the first, second, whatever, great-grandfather of Guy.
Is that plausible?
Larry
(#2) On July 29, 2021 at 9:31:12 PM, Larry Zimmerman (larry-zimmerman@att.net) wrote:
Zimmerman and Carpenter Cousins
I am writing to update you on recent research findings regarding Niclaus Zimmerman who landed at Philadelphia on the Ship Hope, August 28, 1733. His name appears on the ship list as Nicholas Timberman. Many immigrants signed their own names on that list. However, Niclaus did not affix his signature, but rather made a mark next to his name, which had been written by one of the officials processing the new arrivals. Below I have attached an image of his mark, an NZ in the space between “Nicholas” and “Timberman.”
Niclaus’ identity has so far been undetermined. We’ve generally assumed he was born at Steffisburg, because his descendants (including Earl and Marvin) have inherited “Steffisburg Zimmerman” Y-DNA markers, as revealed by their genetic tests.
Niclaus was said to be age 63 when he arrived, indicating he was born about 1670, although the ages given on ship lists were often off by a year or three. That led to one hypothesis: Niclaus the 1733 immigrant was the son of Hans Zimmerman in der Weid and his wife Lucia Wertmüller, baptized March 17, 1667. I labeled that particular Niclaus, a known Anabaptist, as ZM525 in my October 2020 article in Mennonite Family History, reported that he was a skilled wood craftsman residing at Thun in 1691, and suggested he was probably the man who married Verena Spring in 1693 about a year before the couple left for Alsace with a new baby daughter. Later I confirmed that the Niclaus Zimmerman living near Ste. Marie-aux-Mines in the late 1690s and early 1700s was an Anabaptist maître-menuisier, a master cabinetmaker, thereby proving to my satisfaction that he was, in fact, the cabinetmaker son of Hans in der Weid. He was the same man who had married Verena Spring and, with her, joined the Amish Mennonite community in Alsace. I included the new information about Niclaus in “Hans in der Weid: An Update,” which was published in the July 2021 issue of MFH.
The question remained: Did that Niclaus Zimmerman, the cabinetmaker, immigrate to America in 1733 on the Hope? I can now say the answer is no. That immigrant was not Niclaus, the son of Hans Zimmerman in der Weid.
As I highlighted above, 1733 immigrant Niclaus Zimmerman was apparently illiterate—at least unable to sign his full name. As we can see on the attached image, he made a rather crude NZ as his mark. I now know that Niclaus the Anabaptist maître-menuisier living at Ste. Marie was quite capable of signing his name. I have attached an image of Niclaus’ signature obtained from a 1698 property transaction certified by a notary. A matching signature was found on a 1700 document in the Alsace archives. In both cases, Claus, as he signed his given name, displayed a confident command of the writing pen.
The NZ mark on the ship manifest was made more than three decades after the notarized signatures of 1698-1700. It’s possible that Niclaus suffered a debilitating disease or injury that left him unable to sign his name, but one assumes such an impairment might also have deterred him from the arduous trans-Atlantic crossing. Relying on signature analysis in genealogy can be tricky, but there is more reason to believe that the 1733 immigrant was not Niclaus Zimmerman from Steffisburg and Alsace, as I will amplify below.
Before leaving Niclaus the cabinetmaker, one more comment. I was not surprised to find proof that he was literate. We have other examples of signatures made by Zimmermans of Steffisburg—many seem to have been educated sufficiently to write. Moreover, I found it hard to believe that a skilled craftsman would be illiterate. Niclaus had to be capable of basic mathematics to measure accurately and perform the calculations needed to make furniture, and if he had numeracy skills, it seems likely he also had literacy skills.
There is at least one more possibility for Niclaus, the man on the Hope, in the Steffisburg birth registers. A Niclaus Zimmerman was baptized on October 23, 1670, the son of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen. I have no signatures or marks made by that Niclaus to be examined. However, there is overwhelming evidence that this man was not the 1733 immigrant. The same evidence eliminates Niclaus the cabinetmaker, so it is more than the signature. That powerful evidence comes from our Y-DNA testing with FTDNA.
Earl Zimmerman, a descendant of Niclaus Zimmerman the 1733 immigrant, received his Big-Y test results this month; they are very interesting and very helpful in illuminating our family history.
FTDNA’s Big-Y test is valuable, because it can help us identify specific lineages using defined and verified SNPs that have emerged in our paternal line over time. Earl’s test delivered a fascinating result. His terminal SNP A10757 is shared by all of us in Group 5. We each have inherited that same SNP from a common genetic ancestor, a great, great . . . grandfather to us all. However, here is the unique thing about Earl: A10757 is Earl’s terminal SNP, meaning that no later mutations occurred in his lineage. The rest of us have different terminal SNPs, markers that were formed when a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) changed the DNA code at a specific point on the Y-chromosome of some forefather in our particular lineages, a marker that then got passed down from father to son. Those SNPs were formed later than A10757.
The Big-Y Block Tree on the FTDNA website is very helpful in seeing how our various lineages compare and differ by terminal SNP. I will use the SNP names, but those alpha-numeric codes are not important here. The important point is to recognize how they formed over time and how they then correlate with different paternal lineages.
Guy Zimmerman, for example, has BY194926 as his terminal SNP. Guy acquired that marker from his father and grandfather, back to some ancestor in his lineage where BY194926 was formed. We don’t know exactly when that mutation took place or with whom, but it was an event that occurred after the older A10757 first emerged in our Zimmerman line. And because Guy alone has that terminal SNP (alone among the small group of us who have Y-DNA test results), we know he is on a lineage separate from Earl.
The remainder of us who have done the Big-Y (Bob, his son Brian, Robert, Dick, and I) picked up SNP BY176350 somewhere along the way with a Zimmerman ancestor that the five of us share. BY176350 is Robert’s terminal SNP, so in his particular lineage there were no further mutations. Bob and Brian are terminal A10758. Dick and I are BY177050, which had to be a relatively recent SNP.
One point that I think is important regarding those of us with the BY176350 SNP; our immigrant ancestors were Amish Mennonites. There is no doubt about that for Dick and me, whose Amish ancestors immigrated in the 19th century. Hans Zimmerman, the common ancestor of Robert, Bob, and Brian who arrived on the Plaisance in 1732, was almost certainly Amish as well.
Our Amish Mennonite ancestry has a corollary: we know the general path our Swiss ancestors followed and the timing of their migrations. The Amish movement developed in the Swiss Oberland, centered in the area of Steffisburg, beginning around 1680. The exodus of Jacob Ammann’s followers, including members of the Zimmerman family, was brief in historical terms. Almost all left for Alsace in the last decade of the 1690s, with perhaps a few stragglers in the early 1700s. They settled for a time in the valley at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines or in a few villages on the nearby Rhine plain. When they were ordered to leave Alsace in 1712, some Amish Mennonites moved across the Rhine to Baden, others went north into secluded valleys deep in the Vosges Mountains or further north into the Palatinate. Some received refuge in Montbéliard. My ancestors and Dick’s were among those who went to Baden, before later drifting back west to Lorraine, and eventually to America in the 1830s. A few Amish came to Pennsylvania a century earlier.
Guy Zimmerman’s ancestral path is different. He is the only one of us who has a paper trail back to a Steffisburg Zimmerman. His direct ancestor was Michel Zimmerman, born at Steffisburg about 1616. Shortly after the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, Michel and his family moved to Sulzfeld in the Kraichgau region of Germany (the nation of Germany did not yet exist at that time). Kraichgau is on the east side of the Rhine. Michel Zimmerman was just one of several thousand Swiss who went to the Kraichgau and the Palatinate west of the Rhine in response to the economic demand for rebuilding—the Kraichgau may have lost more than half its population during the war. Michel Zimmerman’s great-grandson immigrated to Virginia in 1717.
The so-called Palatine ships carried large numbers of German-speaking immigrants to America in the 1700s, boatloads of people, including Swiss, who had been living in Kraichgau and the Palatinate.
And that brings me back to Niclaus Zimmerman who arrived on one of the Palatine ships in 1733. We know that Niclaus was Mennonite. Not Amish Mennonite. My thanks to Marvin who pointed me to a 2019 book by Allan Garber, To God Alone the Honor. Garber names other Mennointes on the Hope. Niclaus Zimmerman and his fellow Mennonite immigrants sailed from Rotterdam, but we can be sure the journey began somewhere in Germany, perhaps in a village near one of the known Mennonite congregations. I have begun searching parish records, which are available online through the Archion portal, but without success so far. It may be a long search for a needle in a rather large haystack.
As to how Niclaus came to be in Germany—assuming that he was in fact born in a German village sometime around 1670—my guess is that his Zimmerman father from Steffisburg migrated to the region after the Thirty Years’ War, just as Michel Zimmerman, Guy’s ancestor, is known to have done.
Much work remains in seeking to identify who that Zimmerman may have been. As always, there is no guarantee that we will uncover him. Obviously, finding a birth record for Niclaus with the name of his father would do it, at least if the father was clearly identified in the German record as having come from Steffisburg. When Michel Zimmerman’s wife died at Sulzfeld, her death record stated that she and Michel had come from Steffisburg.
Verena Spring
E-MAIL: # 2 is critical - dealing with Nicholas Zimmerman, spouse of Verna Spring.
From: Larry Zimmerman
Sent: Friday, July 30, 2021 4:54 PM
To: John R Carpenter
Subject: Fwd: Niclaus Zimmerman the 1733 Immigrant
John
Thank you for your time yesterday. It was a good session, and I learned some things—that’s always a measure of a good meeting.
I’m forwarding this email sent yesterday to members of Group 5. As you will see in reading it, I updated everyone on recent research into Niclaus Zimmerman, the 1733 immigrant on the Hope. I had a French researcher visit the archives in Colmar, where she obtained two documents with signatures by Niclaus Zimmerman (b. 1667), the master cabinetmaker son of Hans Zimmerman in der Weid who married Verena Spring and moved from Steffisburg to Alsace shortly after the birth of their first child in 1694. I discussed Niclaus in the October 2020 MFH article that I shared with you some months ago and added more about him in that update I gave you yesterday, a copy of the short article that appeared in the July 2021 MFH. The signatures offer powerful evidence that Niclaus, the Amish Mennonite cabinet maker, was not the man who immigrated in 1733. That Niclaus apparently could not sign his name and made a crude NZ mark on the ship list. I attached images to the email, which I am including in the forward to you.
I also used the email yesterday to discuss the implications of Earl Zimmerman’s recent Big Y test, emphasizing that his test results show him to be on a separate line of descent from the rest of us. Thus we have both genealogical and genetic evidence to show that Earl Zimmerman is not a descendant of the Niclaus Zimmerman born at Steffisburg in 1667. The genetics also show that he could not be the descendant of another Niclaus Zimmerman, the son of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen, born at Steffisburg in 1670.
After outlining how Guy Zimmerman’s 9th great-grandfather Michel Zimmerman (b. abt. 1616) migrated to Sulzfeld in the Kraichgau region of Germany following the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, as did large numbers of Swiss, I suggested that Niclaus Zimmerman may have been born in Kraichgau to another Zimmerman from Steffisburg—a brother of Michel, perhaps a cousin, maybe an uncle. I was thinking that a male relative of Michel could quite easily have been attracted to the German lands himself.
Today it occurred to me that there might be another possibility, not requiring that brother/cousin/uncle of Michel Zimmerman to have independently emigrated from Steffisburg.
Michel Zimmerman had three sons, still young at the time of the family relocation to Sulzfeld. All three of those sons married and had sons. Group 5 cousin Guy Zimmerman is a descendant of Michel’s son Christian. If Christian was the source of the mutation that formed SNP BY194926, he would have passed it on to his sons and eventually to Guy. Indeed, SNP BY194926 could have formed anywhere with or downstream of Michel’s son Christian and upstream from Guy. (There are 11 generation between Michel and Guy.) But now what if Niclaus Zimmerman the 1733 immigrant was the son of another of Michel’s sons (either Hans or Michel), and there was no mutation anywhere in the father-son chain that has led to Earl. Then Earl would still have A10757 as his terminal SNP, inherited from Michel, who inherited it from a more distant ancestor. Guy, however, inherited the later SNP BY194926 that had formed with one of Michel’s descendants through son Christian—a son, grandson, great-grandson, etc. who was also the first, second, whatever, great-grandfather of Guy.
Is that plausible?
Larry
On July 29, 2021 at 9:31:12 PM, Larry Zimmerman (larry-zimmerman@att.net) wrote:
Zimmerman and Carpenter Cousins
I am writing to update you on recent research findings regarding Niclaus Zimmerman who landed at Philadelphia on the Ship Hope, August 28, 1733. His name appears on the ship list as Nicholas Timberman. Many immigrants signed their own names on that list. However, Niclaus did not affix his signature, but rather made a mark next to his name, which had been written by one of the officials processing the new arrivals. Below I have attached an image of his mark, an NZ in the space between “Nicholas” and “Timberman.”
Niclaus’ identity has so far been undetermined. We’ve generally assumed he was born at Steffisburg, because his descendants (including Earl and Marvin) have inherited “Steffisburg Zimmerman” Y-DNA markers, as revealed by their genetic tests.
Niclaus was said to be age 63 when he arrived, indicating he was born about 1670, although the ages given on ship lists were often off by a year or three. That led to one hypothesis: Niclaus the 1733 immigrant was the son of Hans Zimmerman in der Weid and his wife Lucia Wertmüller, baptized March 17, 1667. I labeled that particular Niclaus, a known Anabaptist, as ZM525 in my October 2020 article in Mennonite Family History, reported that he was a skilled wood craftsman residing at Thun in 1691, and suggested he was probably the man who married Verena Spring in 1693 about a year before the couple left for Alsace with a new baby daughter. Later I confirmed that the Niclaus Zimmerman living near Ste. Marie-aux-Mines in the late 1690s and early 1700s was an Anabaptist maître-menuisier, a master cabinetmaker, thereby proving to my satisfaction that he was, in fact, the cabinetmaker son of Hans in der Weid. He was the same man who had married Verena Spring and, with her, joined the Amish Mennonite community in Alsace. I included the new information about Niclaus in “Hans in der Weid: An Update,” which was published in the July 2021 issue of MFH.
The question remained: Did that Niclaus Zimmerman, the cabinetmaker, immigrate to America in 1733 on the Hope? I can now say the answer is no. That immigrant was not Niclaus, the son of Hans Zimmerman in der Weid.
As I highlighted above, 1733 immigrant Niclaus Zimmerman was apparently illiterate—at least unable to sign his full name. As we can see on the attached image, he made a rather crude NZ as his mark. I now know that Niclaus the Anabaptist maître-menuisier living at Ste. Marie was quite capable of signing his name. I have attached an image of Niclaus’ signature obtained from a 1698 property transaction certified by a notary. A matching signature was found on a 1700 document in the Alsace archives. In both cases, Claus, as he signed his given name, displayed a confident command of the writing pen.
The NZ mark on the ship manifest was made more than three decades after the notarized signatures of 1698-1700. It’s possible that Niclaus suffered a debilitating disease or injury that left him unable to sign his name, but one assumes such an impairment might also have deterred him from the arduous trans-Atlantic crossing. Relying on signature analysis in genealogy can be tricky, but there is more reason to believe that the 1733 immigrant was not Niclaus Zimmerman from Steffisburg and Alsace, as I will amplify below.
Before leaving Niclaus the cabinetmaker, one more comment. I was not surprised to find proof that he was literate. We have other examples of signatures made by Zimmermans of Steffisburg—many seem to have been educated sufficiently to write. Moreover, I found it hard to believe that a skilled craftsman would be illiterate. Niclaus had to be capable of basic mathematics to measure accurately and perform the calculations needed to make furniture, and if he had numeracy skills, it seems likely he also had literacy skills.
There is at least one more possibility for Niclaus, the man on the Hope, in the Steffisburg birth registers. A Niclaus Zimmerman was baptized on October 23, 1670, the son of Hans Zimmerman and Barbara Gilgen. I have no signatures or marks made by that Niclaus to be examined. However, there is overwhelming evidence that this man was not the 1733 immigrant. The same evidence eliminates Niclaus the cabinetmaker, so it is more than the signature. That powerful evidence comes from our Y-DNA testing with FTDNA.
Earl Zimmerman, a descendant of Niclaus Zimmerman the 1733 immigrant, received his Big-Y test results this month; they are very interesting and very helpful in illuminating our family history.
FTDNA’s Big-Y test is valuable, because it can help us identify specific lineages using defined and verified SNPs that have emerged in our paternal line over time. Earl’s test delivered a fascinating result. His terminal SNP A10757 is shared by all of us in Group 5. We each have inherited that same SNP from a common genetic ancestor, a great, great . . . grandfather to us all. However, here is the unique thing about Earl: A10757 is Earl’s terminal SNP, meaning that no later mutations occurred in his lineage. The rest of us have different terminal SNPs, markers that were formed when a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) changed the DNA code at a specific point on the Y-chromosome of some forefather in our particular lineages, a marker that then got passed down from father to son. Those SNPs were formed later than A10757.
The Big-Y Block Tree on the FTDNA website is very helpful in seeing how our various lineages compare and differ by terminal SNP. I will use the SNP names, but those alpha-numeric codes are not important here. The important point is to recognize how they formed over time and how they then correlate with different paternal lineages.
Guy Zimmerman, for example, has BY194926 as his terminal SNP. Guy acquired that marker from his father and grandfather, back to some ancestor in his lineage where BY194926 was formed. We don’t know exactly when that mutation took place or with whom, but it was an event that occurred after the older A10757 first emerged in our Zimmerman line. And because Guy alone has that terminal SNP (alone among the small group of us who have Y-DNA test results), we know he is on a lineage separate from Earl.
The remainder of us who have done the Big-Y (Bob, his son Brian, Robert, Dick, and I) picked up SNP BY176350 somewhere along the way with a Zimmerman ancestor that the five of us share. BY176350 is Robert’s terminal SNP, so in his particular lineage there were no further mutations. Bob and Brian are terminal A10758. Dick and I are BY177050, which had to be a relatively recent SNP.
One point that I think is important regarding those of us with the BY176350 SNP; our immigrant ancestors were Amish Mennonites. There is no doubt about that for Dick and me, whose Amish ancestors immigrated in the 19th century. Hans Zimmerman, the common ancestor of Robert, Bob, and Brian who arrived on the Plaisance in 1732, was almost certainly Amish as well.
Our Amish Mennonite ancestry has a corollary: we know the general path our Swiss ancestors followed and the timing of their migrations. The Amish movement developed in the Swiss Oberland, centered in the area of Steffisburg, beginning around 1680. The exodus of Jacob Ammann’s followers, including members of the Zimmerman family, was brief in historical terms. Almost all left for Alsace in the last decade of the 1690s, with perhaps a few stragglers in the early 1700s. They settled for a time in the valley at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines or in a few villages on the nearby Rhine plain. When they were ordered to leave Alsace in 1712, some Amish Mennonites moved across the Rhine to Baden, others went north into secluded valleys deep in the Vosges Mountains or further north into the Palatinate. Some received refuge in Montbéliard. My ancestors and Dick’s were among those who went to Baden, before later drifting back west to Lorraine, and eventually to America in the 1830s. A few Amish came to Pennsylvania a century earlier.
Guy Zimmerman’s ancestral path is different. He is the only one of us who has a paper trail back to a Steffisburg Zimmerman. His direct ancestor was Michel Zimmerman, born at Steffisburg about 1616. Shortly after the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, Michel and his family moved to Sulzfeld in the Kraichgau region of Germany (the nation of Germany did not yet exist at that time). Kraichgau is on the east side of the Rhine. Michel Zimmerman was just one of several thousand Swiss who went to the Kraichgau and the Palatinate west of the Rhine in response to the economic demand for rebuilding—the Kraichgau may have lost more than half its population during the war. Michel Zimmerman’s great-grandson immigrated to Virginia in 1717.
The so-called Palatine ships carried large numbers of German-speaking immigrants to America in the 1700s, boatloads of people, including Swiss, who had been living in Kraichgau and the Palatinate.
And that brings me back to Niclaus Zimmerman who arrived on one of the Palatine ships in 1733. We know that Niclaus was Mennonite. Not Amish Mennonite. My thanks to Marvin who pointed me to a 2019 book by Allan Garber, To God Alone the Honor. Garber names other Mennointes on the Hope. Niclaus Zimmerman and his fellow Mennonite immigrants sailed from Rotterdam, but we can be sure the journey began somewhere in Germany, perhaps in a village near one of the known Mennonite congregations. I have begun searching parish records, which are available online through the Archion portal, but without success so far. It may be a long search for a needle in a rather large haystack.
As to how Niclaus came to be in Germany—assuming that he was in fact born in a German village sometime around 1670—my guess is that his Zimmerman father from Steffisburg migrated to the region after the Thirty Years’ War, just as Michel Zimmerman, Guy’s ancestor, is known to have done.
Much work remains in seeking to identify who that Zimmerman may have been. As always, there is no guarantee that we will uncover him. Obviously, finding a birth record for Niclaus with the name of his father would do it, at least if the father was clearly identified in the German record as having come from Steffisburg. When Michel Zimmerman’s wife died at Sulzfeld, her death record stated that she and Michel had come from Steffisburg.
118.
Christen Zimmermann
Larry Zimmerman comments:
Christen Zimmermann and Anna Blanck, They had nine children baptized in the years that followed. Here is the complete list, including witnesses.
1) Hans, 30 Sep 1677
Christen Farni, Peter Bichsel, Elsbeth Roth, the wife of Ulrich Gerber of Eritz
2) Christen, 26 Jan 1679
Adam Farni, Christen Blank, Cathrin Farni
3) Barbara, 10 Oct 1680
Hans Stegman, Barbara Bachtold, Anna Ösch
4) Anna, 5 Nov 1682
Christen Müller, Maria Gerber, Cathrin Gyger
5) Peter, 27 Apr 1684
Peter Farni, Christen Schlappach, Barbara Zimmermann
6) Magdalena, 21 Feb 1686
Peter Müller, Magdalena Gerber, Verena Kolb, possibly wife of Daniel Blanck
7) Ulrich, 18 Sep 1687
Ulrich Gerber . . . in Eritz, Christen Reüsser der jüng in Eritz, Barbara Stücker
8) Cathrin, 24 May 1689
Christen Zimmermann, Verena Im Hooff, Barbara Farni
9) Michel, 1 Mar 1691
Michel Tschabold, Michel Erhart, Elsbeth Reüsser
10) Jacob, 24 Sep 1693
Hans Jacob Freudenrych [Freudenreich], Niclaus Weber, Cathrin Rupp.
On the surface, the regular presentation of children for baptism at the Steffisburg Reformed
Church looks perfectly normal, a new baby christened every two years. It may be similar to the
situation described by Robert Baecher in his profile of the Nicolas Blanck and Barbara Imhoof
family in the January 2004 issue of MFH. That couple presented eight children between 1672
and 1690, and Baecher wrote “The baptisms of their children took place over time completely in
accord with the officially accepted norm . . . This family had never once been under suspicion of
Anabaptist sympathies, and they were able to emigrate together to Ste. Marie-aux-Mines.” (p. 9).
Note: Nicolas/Niclaus Blanck became a “notable figure” at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines, to use
Baecher’s words. I am seeking to determine how he was related to Anna Blanck.
Perhaps, Christen Zimmermann and Anna Blanck, too, escaped suspicion of being Anabaptist,
but I wonder? They lived in Eritz, the rugged lands east of Steffisburg, an area notorious for
harboring Anabaptists. And, indeed, the surnames of the baptismal witnesses for Hans and Anna
scream Anabaptism. The Gerber family, the Reüsser family, the Stückers, all deeply embedded
in Eritz and known to have included many, many Anabaptists. I cannot be certain about the
religious views of each witness named, save one, but it would not shock me to learn that 96.67
percent were Anabaptist, 29 of the 30. The exception, and a very interesting one, is the first
witness for the last child, Jacob. That witness was Hans Jacob Freudenreich, the minister of the
Reformed Church at Steffisburg. If he had any suspicions about Anabaptist sympathy, that did
not stop him from serving as godfather for baby Jacob. If he had doubts about Christen or Anna’s
loyalty to the state church, Hans Freudenreich never recorded them in the Taufrodel, or in the
CM.
Several of the individuals who had been witnesses for the Zimmermann/Blanck children over the
years paid an export tax in April and May 1695 and emigrated to Alsace. They included Christen
Farni, Peter Farni, and Christen Müller. Christen Zimmermann and his wife Barbara Bachman
were recorded on the same 1695 document as paying the export tax. So too did Christen’s
brother and sister-in-law, Niclaus Zimmermann and Verena Spring. Christen Zimmermann was a
miller at Aettenbühl in Oberlangenegg, bordering Eritz. I will add here that I do not see Christen
Zimmermann at Oberlangenegg or Christen Zimmermann at Eritz serving as witnesses for the
other’s children, but they did share common witnesses.
Did Christen Zimmermann and Anna Blanck also pay an export tax in 1695 and join the Amish
exodus? My information about the families who paid the tax at that time comes from Herr Peter
Wälti’s transcriptions. He cited StAB B VII 2020 Aemterrechnung 1696 as his source and added
the word Zusammenfassung, indicating that he had summarized the information. He also
included this at the end of his transcription naming the Zimmermanns and others: [und viele
weitere, die alle einen Abzugsbetrag zu bezahlen hatten.], and many others who had need to pay
the tax. It would be good to obtain the complete list of persons who paid the export tax in 1695.
I do not know if Christen Zimmermann and Anna Blanck were among those who departed Eritz
and Steffisburg in late spring or summer 1695. At that point, all ten of the children were still
under age 18—Hans would turn 18 in September. I also do not know if Hans left on his own,
whether as an 18-year-old or a 20-something. It is plausible. He would have been 26 in 1703, so
it’s quite possible he could have been married with property, and thereby eligible to be added to
the 1703 list—and again in 1704. We lack proof, but there is enough circumstantial evidence to
justify a hypothesis, an educated guess: Hans Zimmermann, b. 1677, the son of Christen
Zimmermann and Anna Blanck was the third Hans Zimmermann on the lists of Anabaptists at
Ste. Marie-aux-Mines in 1703 and 1704. Who was the fourth Hans? I don’t know.
Hans Zimmermann, son of Christen Zimmermann and Anna Blanck, may have stayed only
briefly at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines. I suspect he moved on to the principality of Salm, and that he
was later joined by younger brothers Peter and Ulrich, maybe others as well.
119.
Christen Zimmermann
Larry Zimmerman comments:
I did not discuss Christen Zimmermann (ZM521), the oldest of the siblings earlier, because he
did not live in the valley at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines and does not appear on any of the censuses
taken there. However, we know he and his wife Barbli Bachman left Bern in 1695 during the
Amish exodus. He may have been the Christen Zimmermann at the Ohnenheim mill on the
Rhine plain near Ste. Marie. Although unproven, evidence suggests Christian Zimmermann
(ZM521) was the father or grandfather of Christian of Denzlingen, my direct ancestor.
FATHER:
Christen Zimmerman, born in 1657, married Barbara Bachman from Diessbach in 1681, with official
authorization, a requirement if the marriage partners were closely related as first or second cousins.
Christen Zimmermann and Babi Bachman had these children baptized:
Anna 29 July 1683
Hans 19 April 1685
Christen 25 April 1686
Barbara 29 April 1687
Verena 1 May 1687
Johannes 14 April 1695
The baptism of a second Hans in 1695 (just as the parents were preparing to leave Bern)
confirms that the Hans born in 1685 had died. The birth of Christen in April 1686, almost exactly
12 months after the first Hans was born, also suggests Hans had died. A birth so soon after a
previous birth is highly unlikely if the mother breast feeds the previous child for an extended
time of months. She will not regain fertility until the first child is no longer breast feeding.
Similarly, I suspect the Christen born in 1686 died in infancy as well, given the birth almost
exactly 12 months later of twin daughters Barbara and Verena. We do not know if the twins
lived, but the baptism record for Barbara states she was baptized during the night of 29 April
1687, two days before sister Verena, because if her, baby Barbara’s, precarious health.
Childhood mortality was extremely high in the 1600s, under all circumstances, but one wonders
if Babi Bachman had particular difficulties bearing children with Christen Zimmermann if they
were too closely related.
It seems doubtful the Christen born in 1686 lived to become Christian of Sexau/Denzlingen. That
Christian Zimmermann probably was born around 1705. Was he the child of Barbara Bachman,
or had she perhaps died, with Christen Zimmermann (1657) remarrying in Alsace? Barbara
Bachman, born in 1657, could not have had a child in 1705, at age 48.
On 4 April 1695, Christen Zimmermann, a miller, and his wife Babi Bachman of Steffisburg
were credited with payment of a 5% tax on property being taken out of Bern. Other individuals
and couples, Anabaptists all, paid their tax on the same day, including Hans Rupp and his wife
Catryn Joder. Hans Rupp and family settled at Ste. Marie-aux-Mines. (See Baecher, April 2004
MFH, p. 70 for more on this family.) As with so many other Anabaptist families at Steffisburg,
the Zimmermanns and the Rupps have an intertwined history. This Hans Rupp was baptized 7
December 1662, and Hans Zimmermann was one witness—exactly which Hans Zimmermann is
undetermined.
Hans Rupp had a relative named Christen Rupp, born in 1672. He was not a brother, but surely a
cousin. Christen Rupp, too, departed Bern, but he settled on the Rhine plain at Kunheim, where
he remained until the royal eviction notice was issued in 1712. Late that year, he crossed the
Rhine into Baden-Durlach, where he leased the Hochburg agricultural estate near Emmendingen,
just north of Sexau. Refer to my article on the Hochburg estate and Amish Mennonite
congregation in the April 2019 MFH; see pages 50-51 for more on Christen Rupp.
We are uncertain about the destination of Christen Zimmermann, the miller, after he left
Steffisburg in 1695. Baecher wrote: “Did they [Christen and wife Babi Bachman] go to Alsace?
It is quite possible this man is the same Christian Zimmermann who ran the mill at Ohnenheim
from 1699 until 1713.” (Baecher, April 2004 MFH, p. 69). I employed Baecher’s “quite
possible” quote in the heading for this section. I have speculated on an alternate possibility, that
Christen Zimmermann settled in Baden-Durlach, near other Steffisburgers who had migrated
there in the 1680s. However, I think it more likely he joined his siblings, the other children of
Hans Zimmermann in der Weid, to take up residence in Alsace, and Baecher provides evidence
to support that view.
Baecher did an in-depth study of the Ohnenheim mill and its Anabaptist millers, published in
“Les anabaptistes d’Alsace au XVII siècle—Ohnenheim,” SA/MG 8 (1989). That essay delves
into the history of Anabaptists running the mill. We learn:
the mill [at Ohnenheim] was taken over in 1689 by Hans ROHRER [an
Anabaptist] of Buus [Buus is a municipality in the district of Sissach in the canton
of Basel], in accordance with the possibility offered to the Anabaptists of
assigning the owners themselves; the responsibility for this distribution could only
be that of Jacob KLEINER, the "patriarch.” The following year Hans ROHRER
signed a new lease for eight years.
In 1699, Hans MULLER from Lièpvre and a native of Colmar applied for the
position, but the chancellery preferred Christian ZIMMERMANN. With him, a
lease of 18 years was concluded. In this lease we learn that Christian
ZIMMERMANN was already working as a miller [at Ohnenheim] and succeeded
Hans ROHRER with whom he was certainly in partnership. This type of discreet
transfer, without calling upon the arbitration of a notary, is a typical Anabaptist
practice, the arbitration of the litigations being done within the community.
The contract was to expire, "God willing", at the end of the year 1717. The
contract stipulated that the miller could "enjoy it with complete freedom (of
conscience), as is the case with other millers". His rent was fixed at 37 Viertel of
meslin and he had to pay the sum of 200 florins . . . at the beginning of the
contract in order to benefit from such a duration of commitment. Since the miller
was responsible for all maintenance and repair costs, the lordship did not have to
worry about the mill. These arrangements, which bound the two parties very
closely, indicate a strong climate of mutual trust that was to last until 1713, when
Anabaptists were no longer tolerated on French lands . . .
To return to the contract of Christian ZIMMERMANN, we note yet another
curiosity linked to the Amish schism, since among the witnesses who vouched for
the contracting party, appear side by side Jacob KLEINER and Hans
BACHMANN, respectively lord farmers of Jebsheim and Heidolsheim. These
two persons had different sensibilities, for one of them supported the ideas of
Jacob AMAN, while the other defended those of Hans REIST . . . After the
period of rupture which had begun in 1693, the two "camps" had, at least locally,
made amends and reason had prevailed. . .
With the arrival of Christian ZIMMERMANN, the Anabaptist community of
Ohnenheim seems to have switched to the Amish camp; the other tendency
having probably retreated to Heidolsheim around the former Hans BACHMANN.
While not definitive, Baecher’s observation that the Anabaptist community at Ohnenheim
“switched to the Amish camp” under Christian/Christen Zimmermann might suggest he was the
man from Steffisburg, the original “hotbed” of Amish thinking.
In his article, Baecher emphasized the importance of Ohnenheim as a meeting place for
Anabaptists. Christen Zimmermann, the head miller at Ohnenheim, certainly knew all the Swiss
Amish Mennonites living in surrounding villages. He had to be acquainted with Christen Rupp,
living just eight miles away in Kunheim—he probably knew him at Steffisburg before they
decamped to Alsace.
According to Baecher: “In November 1712, there were only two families left in the village [of
Ohnenheim] and Christian ZIMMERMANN was the last to leave in the spring of 1713.”
I have not found documentation for Christen Zimmermann (b. 1657) after 1713. Where did he
go? The most logical destination would have been Baden-Durlach, just a few miles to the east
across the Rhine River. Christian was 56 in the spring of 1713. He had been a miller his entire
adult life, and it’s possible he sought another mill to operate in Baden. But at his age, he may
have joined his friend Christian Rupp, the Swiss farmer who had just left Kunheim to become
the first Amish Mennonite leaseholder at the Hochburg estate near Sexau. Perhaps Christen
secured a job working at that large farming estate.
The elder Christen Zimmermann probably died near the Hochburg within the next 20 years. I
have not found a death record for him, but that is not surprising, because the Lutheran ministers
of Baden-Durlach did not record vital events—marriage, births, deaths—of Anabaptists in the
community. But he may have lived to see son Christian marry. That probably took place about
the time Christian assumed the lease at Sexau in 1728. As stated earlier, Huppi reported that
Christian Zimmermann probably married a Rupp, although her given name is unknown. We lack
documentation (as usual) but it’s plausible that Christian married a daughter of Christian Rupp,
then the sole leaseholder at Hochburg. Descendants of Christian Zimmermann later became coleaseholders of the estate—see my article about the Hochburg, April 2019 MFH, for more on this
history. Why is it plausible that Christian Zimmermann might have married a daughter of
Christian Rupp? If the elder Christian Zimmermann went to the Hochburg after giving up the
Ohnenheim mill in 1713, his son Christian was approximately 8 years old. He would have come
of age at the Hochburg, where he met the young daughter of Christian Rupp. She probably was a
few years younger that Christian Zimmermann, based on the birthdates of her children with
Christian, she may have been born about 1715.
Summing up what we have on Christian Zimmermann of Sexau and Denzlingen, there is
documentation to establish some events in his life. His parentage, unfortunately, is not firmly
established, and we are left with circumstantial evidence. Nevertheless, I am comfortable saying
that he probably was the son of Christen Zimmermann, the grandson of Hans Zimmermann in
der Weid.
297.
Barbara Zimmermann
Barbara and Verna were twins but baptized on different days.
298.
Verena Zimmermann
Barbara and Verna were twins but baptized on different days.
126.
James William "Will" Carpenter
Went to Missouri about 1912 and breaking up with his wife.
302.
Walter Carpenter
Walter had no children, but took care of the Carpenter family, in whatever they needed. Walter is buried at the V.A. cemetery in L.A.
303.
Lewis Carpenter
Lewis married Sarah Boussad abt. 1936 (a former novitiate) and they had 13 children! 12 of those children are still living, and they live mostly in Northern California. Sarah was a renaissance woman. She could do many things, well. All their children are gifted in music or art, or both. Lewis was a master carpenter but also worked as an R.N. at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in L.A. Lewis & Sarah are buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, CA.
136.
Joseph Carpenter
Joseph died of cholera.
CENSUS: 1840 US Census
MARRAIGE: 1843
Name: Joseph Carpenter
Birth Date:
Birthplace:
Age:
Spouse's Name: Nancy Jane Stegall
Spouse's Birth Date:
Spouse's Birthplace:
Spouse's Age:
Event Date: 02 Mar 1843
Event Place: Marshall,Tennessee
Father's Name:
Mother's Name:
Spouse's Father's Name:
Spouse's Mother's Name:
Race:
Marital Status:
Previous Wife's Name:
Spouse's Race:
Spouse's Marital Status:
Spouse's Previous Husband's Name:
Indexing Project (Batch) Number: M51950-1
System Origin: Tennessee-ODM
GS Film number: 976385
Reference ID:
Citing this Record:
"Tennessee, Marriages, 1796-1950," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XDQJ-D45 : accessed 3 May 2015), Joseph Carpenter and Nancy Jane Stegall, 02 Mar 1843; citing Marshall,Tennessee, reference ; FHL microfilm 976,385.
SEE ALSO:
Name: Nancy Jane Stegace (Unknown)
Also Known As Name:
Name Suffix:
Event Type: Marriage
Event Date: 02 Mar 1843
Event Place: Marshall, Tennessee, United States
Gender: Female
Spouse's Name: Joseph Carpenter
Spouse's Also Known As Name:
Spouse's Name Prefix:
Spouse's Name Suffix:
Page: 68
Citing this Record:
"Tennessee, State Marriage Index, 1780-2002," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VN6F-J3Z : accessed 3 May 2015), Joseph Carpenter and Nancy Jane Stegace (Unknown), 02 Mar 1843; from "Tennessee State Marriages, 1780-2002," database and images, Ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com : 2008); citing p. 68, Marshall, Tennessee, United States, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee.
CENSUS: 1850 US Census
Name: Joseph Carpenter
Event Type: Census
Event Year: 1850
Event Place: Marshall county, Marshall, Tennessee, United States
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Race: White
Race (Original):
Birth Year (Estimated): 1825
Birthplace: Tennessee
Household ID: 781
House Number: 781
Line Number: 30
Affiliate Name: The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Affiliate Publication Number: M432
Affiliate Film Number: 890
GS Film Number: 444846
Digital Folder Number: 004206048
Image Number: 00163
Household Role Gender Age Birthplace
Joseph Carpenter M 25 Tennessee
Nancy Carpenter F 23 Tennessee
Margrett Carpenter F 6 Tennessee
Leonandos L Carpenter M 4 Tennessee
John W Carpenter M 1 Tennessee
Elizabeth Carpenter F 20 Tennessee
Citing this Record:
"United States Census, 1850," index and images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MCDR-Z8Q : accessed 3 May 2015), Joseph Carpenter, Marshall county, Marshall, Tennessee, United States; citing family 781, NARA microfilm publication M432 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).
CENSUS: 1860 US Census
Name: Jo Carpenter
Event Type: Census
Event Year: 1860
Event Place: Western Division District 7, Bedford, Tennessee, United States
Gender: Male
Age: 36
Race: White
Race (Original): [Blank]
Birth Year (Estimated): 1824
Birthplace: Tennessee
Page: 6
Household ID: 44
Affiliate Name: The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Affiliate Publication Number: M653
GS Film Number: 805239
Digital Folder Number: 004296179
Image Number: 00401
Household Role Gender Age Birthplace
Jo Carpenter M 36 Tennessee
P C Carpenter F 33 Tennessee
M A E Carpenter F 16 Tennessee
L L Carpenter M 14 [Blank]
W S Carpenter M 12 Tennessee
Ellen Harding F 13 England
Allice Harding F 11 England
Citing this Record:
"United States Census, 1860," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:M8T7-96N : accessed 3 May 2015), Jo Carpenter, Western Division District 7, Bedford, Tennessee, United States; from "1860 U.S. Federal Census - Population," database, Fold3.com (http://www.fold3.com : n.d.); citing p. 6, household ID 44, NARA microfilm publication M653 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.); FHL microfilm 805,239.
Nancy Jane "Nannie" Stegall
NAME:
List as Mary Stegall then as Nancy Jane Stegace and Nancy Jane Stegall. Also listed as Nannie.