Today in Family History ~ The Anniversary of the Birth of Christian Gungerich – Religious Prisoner

On December 14, 1595, my ninth great grand uncle Christian Gungerich was born in Oberdiessbach, Canton Bern, Switzerland to Hans Gungerich and Anna Schindler. Christian was the brother of my 9th great grandnmother Barbara Gungerich.

Christian is notable because he was an Anabaptist teacher and was imprisoned twice for preaching, eventually dying in prison. If he was executed, I do not have that information.

Christian’s family’s surname was originally Gundrich and appeared in records as early as 1389, in Konolfingen, near Oberdiessbach. By the late 1500s there were several Gungerich families living near Oberdiessbach. In 1669, Christian had been captured and imprisoned in Schwarzenegg Prison. He managed to escape. So he was hunted again and taken to Waisenhaus Prison in Bern. Waisenhaus was a former orphanage converted into prison for Anabaptist preachers.

There is not an exact date of death for Christian. As noted above, if he was executed, I don’t have that information. By 1671 his house and lands (inherited) were seized by the government church. Because they kept a case file regarding his property that survived all of these years, and it listed the relations of Christian that came forward to claim the property, we would not know the parentage and siblings of Christian, and he would not be in my tree. He never married and, as such, had no children.

I always wondered who could have been his teacher or “converted” him since the birth of Anabaptism was approximately 70 years before his birth. I read there were several other teachers in his area of Bern already.

His mother, my 10th great grandmother Anna Schindler, shares the surname of an Andres Schindler, an Anabaptist who attended the Anabaptist Debate in Bern in 1538. He was from the area of Oberdiessbach. My theory that she and Andres could be related is just a theory.

Christian’s sister Barbara married Peter Strubel (Rubeli). Remember them? The Rubelis escaped to the German Palatinate and eventually had their farm burned down by Louis XIV when he had the Palatinate scorched. I have written several posts on that branch of the tree.

Barbara also asked after her brother’s estate in April of 1671. These are all ancestors of my Grandmother Leies.

Are we related, or do you have a correction, or addition? Please email me: cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.

Religions of My Family Tree

On today’s date in 1620, one of my Anabaptist refugee ancestors Christen Strubel, also known as Rubeli, was baptized in Langnau im Emmental, in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. He was born in June 1620 to Barbara Gungerich and Peter Strubel. His baptism took place in the Reformed Lutheran Church of Langnau. He was my 8th great grandfather.

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According to the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online, Langnau has a history of Anabaptism going all the way back to March 1525. Today, Langnau has the oldest Mennonite church in the world, dating to 1530.

Christen’s mother Barbara might have also been an Anabaptist influence on her children. She was born in nearby Oberdiessbach, and her younger brother Christian Gungerich was an Anabaptist teacher who was imprisoned in Schwarzenegg Prison and escaped. He was recaptured and died (maybe executed) in the Waisenhaus Prison in the city of Bern. Barbara’s mother was named Anna Schindler. There is a possibility Anna Schindler was a relation of, or a descendant of the Andreas Schindler from Thun who attended the Great Debate (on the Anabaptist Creed) in Bern in 1538. Thun has a close proximity to all of these villages. The relationship to Andreas Schindler is a possibility. It has not been proven!

Christen married Anna Muller in the Reformed Church of Oberdiessbach in 1642. In the winter of 1672, Christen and Anna and their six youngest children left Oberdiessbach for the German Palatinate due to religious persecution. They were no longer permitted to possess property and left with what they could carry.

In 1691 Christen was recorded on the Palatine Mennonite Census list as living near Messerschwanderhof near Otterberg in the German Palatinate.

Christen’s grandson Balthasar Jakob Rubeli was recorded in his lifetime as having been Lutheran and Catholic, but was raised by parents, who were noted in the Catholic Church book of Contwig, Germany, as being common residents of the area but not Catholic. Balthasar’s children were all baptized Catholic. Other Rubeli researchers hypothesize Balthasar was really a Mennonite.

A knitting friend had recently been talking about all of the religions in her tree. She has a lot more than me though. This is the list I came up with for my tree that I have found to date:

Protestant – Martin Heinzen was tried for witchcraft by the Catholic authorities in Switzerland in 1629. He was only labeled as Protestant in the record.

Calvinist

Anabaptist (Taufer)

Mennonite

Old Lutheran

Reformed

Lutheran

Roman Catholic

Folk Catholic

Spiritualist

Of course not to mention the various religions of my cousins of my immigrant ancestors I may have missed.

Do you have any comments, or corrections? Are we related? I would love to hear from you. -cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net

Women’s History Month/52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: #12 ~ A Letter to and from 8th Great Grandmother Anna Mueller Rubeli~

This week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge during Women’ History Month is 12. For my 12th challenge, I am choosing to write a letter to an ancestress.

Dear Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother Anna Mueller – Rubeli,

I am fascinated by your struggles, your family’s migration, and your the time period in which you lived. Because you were born at a time of religious strife in current-day Switzerland, I am keenly aware that had you and your husband not made a life-altering decision for your family, you may have not survived.

I think you may have been born in 1622 in Wattenwil, in the Canton of Bern but am unsure. Therefore, I am unsure of the names of your parents. I know positively that you married my 8th great grandfather Christen Strubel – Rubeli in 1642 in St. Alban’s Reformed Church in Oberdiessbach, Canton Bern.

I know you had 10 children, 8 of which survived to adulthood. My research told me that in the winter of 1672 you took your 6th youngest children with you to the German Palatinate because your Anabaptist faith made it dangerous for you to continue to live in the land of your birth.

Unfortunately, one of your daughters was again made to leave a country because of her faith later in her life. Did you know Madlena was sent to America in 1733 with other Mennonites living in Germany and also died in a foreign country like you? Did you know your son Peter went back to Switzerland after your death and was imprisoned? He was to be sent to America as well.

Thank you for choosing to leave.

What can you tell me about how the choice was made and about your life in the period leading up to your family’s flight before and after 1672, when I discovered that you, my 8th great grandfather, and your children Barbli, young Anna, young Christian, Hans (my 7th great grandfather), Nicholas, and Madlena appeared on a list of refugees kept by the minister of a Mennonite parish near Fischbach bei Dahn, in the German Palatinate?

Sincerely,

One of your thousands of descendants

Dear 8th Great Granddaughter,
Our survival depended on our flight.
From the time of my childhood, believers had been practicing in secret. Authorities were always coming down from Bern to make sure we were attending THEIR church and having children baptized THEIR way. My father would say it was only because the military companies of the nobles they rented to foreign countries were in such disarray did the authorities actually care.
Your 8th great grandfather Christen was a very independent-minded man. His uncle was an Anabaptist preacher named Christian Gungerich who was imprisoned twice for practicing what wasn’t the approved religion. He had been executed in prison the year before we fled. My mother-in-law was not even allowed to keep one piece of furniture from his house. The town officials took all his property with plans to sell it and keep all of the proceeds.
Then, a few months before we left our homeland, men from Bern came to Oberdiessbach and demanded all believing men in the town swear an oath as to their faith – or recant. When your 8th great grandfather refused we feared they would take my mother-in-law or one of your 7th great grandfather’s sisters to prison in Bern as ransom until the men of the family took that false oath. We knew then we could not stay in the canton and thought of perhaps going to Holland.
We were hearing the stories from brethren that if you were able- bodied, the authorities in Bern were taking believers out of the prisons and selling them like livestock to Italian merchants as galley slaves. Leaders like Christian Gungerich, instead of being executed, were being whipped or branded to then be taken away on carts and left at the border with their wounds.
We believed our sons would suffer the fate of being sold to Italy. When winter came our house had already been seized by the authorities. We were given a choice to leave or face branding or slavery. We were homeless. It was not much of a choice. Our survival depended on it.
We hid for a short period of time in the Oberland, and left with the clothes we were wearing following another group of believers. On our way we were given help and encountered others suffering our fate. Most were very young, very old, or lame. Those that traveled with horses did so with the slow, old animals because the authorities had taken their faster valuable livestock. Some men and women traveled without their families. Of the very old, most traveled alone. Would I have the courage at their age I asked myself?
It took us about 4 weeks to make the trip to the Palatinate during the winter.
After we arrived at Fischbach, your 8th great grandfather, and your 7th great grandfather Hans worked daily as laborers on a farm. When we saved enough money, your 8th great grandfather, your many times uncle Peter, and many times uncle Nicholas purchased farmable land and built a small house near Otterberg, Germany and gave it the name Messerschwanderhof.
In 1689, a cruel king in France sent armies to burn the lands of the Palatinate. Before your 8th great grandfather and I could re-unite with our children and grandchildren, who were hiding on an island in the Rhine until the French left the valley, I died in that foreign land – hiding as I did when we left my homeland.
Your 8th great grandfather wandered a bit before he made it home where his sons were beginning the rebuilding of their farm. My grandson Balthasar Rubeli, your 6th great grandfather, was born shortly before the firing of the farm. He became an important man in the village when he grew. He was a Gerichtsschoffe.
I hope my daughter Madlena and son Peter were sent to a welcoming place.
As we received kindness in our flight, please remember it. Tell of how our children could have been ransomed by a corrupt government, and will you, as my descendants, show the same strength and sense of humanity to those like us in your time.
Keep up your hunt for more like me in our branches. They too are waiting for their stories to be remembered.
Sincerely,
Your Ahnfrau

–cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net

Women’s History Month and the ABCs of My Genealogy 2019

 

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March is Women’s History Month, and for this entire month, all of my blog posts will focus on the females in my tree.  This is the second year in a row I am listing alphabetically women from my ancestry.  I will not be using any names from last year.  This is a link to last year’s exercise.

Here we go:

A is for Anna Giuseppa Antonacci, 4th great grandmother, Farindola, Italy, a lacemaker

B is for Barbara Frattarola, 7th great grandmother, Farindola, Italy, unknown

C is for Maria Giovanna Arcangela Cervo, 5th great grandmother, Farindola, Italy, unknown

D is for Anna Elisabetha Dorre, 4th great grandmother, Grossmehlra, Germany, laborer’s wife

E is for Emilia Bold, 2nd great grandmother, Nunschweiler, Germany/Chicago, immigrant and schoolmaster’s daughter

F is for Filomena Napolitano, 2nd great grandmother, Nola, Italy/Columbus, smith’s daughter and immigrant

G is for Johanne Carolina Christine Wilhemine Julianne Geselle, 5th great grandmother, Sankt Andreasberg, Germany, silver miner’s wife

H is for Anna Elisabetha Hinse, 5th great grandmother, Grossmehlra, Germany, unkown

I is for Giovanna Iaderosa, Talanico, Italy, 7th great grandmother, unknown

J is for Johanna Champion, 10th great grandmother, Urbach, France, wife of soldier

K is for Katharina Schuttler, 3rd great grandmother, Chicago, butcher’s wife and daughter of German immigrants

L is for Marie Anne Lauwiner, 5th great grandmother, Ried, Switzerland, unkown

M is for Maria Grazia Marrone, 6th great grandmother, Penne, Italy, unknown

N is for Martha Nicolai, 4th great grandmother, Niederzimmern, Germany/Chicago, mason’s wife and immigrant

O is for Anna Ottilia Schwartz, 6th great grandmother, Zweibrucken, Germany, gerichtschoffe’s daughter

P  is Prudenza Criscuolo, 5th great grandmother, Nola, Italy, Romani/Zingara

Q is for Maria Crocesfissa Marzola, 4th great grandmother, died in San Quirico, Farindola, Italy, midwife’s daughter

R is for Elisabetta Rossi, 2nd great grandmother, Arsita/Farindola, contadina

S is for Maria Giuseppa Salvitti, 4th great grandmother, Farindola, contadina

T is for Maria Giovanna Trignani, 4th great grandmother, Penne, Italy, lacemaker

U is for Anna Ursula Kempf, 7th great grand aunt, Hornbach, Germany, farmer

V is for Vittoria Letieri, 9th great grandmother, Sant’Agnese/San Felice a Cancello, Italy, unknown

X is for Lucrezia X and all of the other women in my tree only listed by first name in records in France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany

Y is for Anna Margaretha Rubly, 5th great grandmother, Oberhausen, Germany, farmer’s wife.  Her father’s family’s name was Rubeli when they emigrated, and was changed to several new spellings when they were forced out of Switzerland.  Rubly is how I found her name spelled in church records.

Z is for Katherine Ziegler, 8th great grandmother, Volmunster, France, miller’s wife and daughter

Can you name one woman from your ancestry for every letter of the alphabet?

Next: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #10 Bachelorette Aunt

 

 

 

My Anabaptist/Mennonite/Canton Bern, Switzerland Surname List

 

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I was recently asked by another researcher what Swiss surnames in my tree I was researching in Canton Bern, Switzerland that belonged to the early Anabaptist followers there.  Below is an updated list of surnames and place names:

Oberdiessbach: 

Gungerich/Gungery*, Schindler, Vogel, Muller, Rubeli*.  See GAMEO.  Christian Gungerich was an Anabaptist preacher that was imprisoned in Schwarzenegg prison when he escaped in 1669.  He was re-captured and imprisoned in Waisenhaus Prison in the Canton’s capital Bern.  He died there in 1671.  He is my 10th great grand uncle.  See Der Tauferlehrer Christian Gungerich (1591-1671) und der Streit um Seinen Nachlass for more on his relations.  Also see Oberdiessbach Kirchenbuchen via Canton Bern archives, Mennosearch.com and the book Bernese Anabaptists and their American Descendants.  

 

Langnau:

Vogt, Strubel known as Rubeli* in Oberdiessbach.  See Langnau Kirchenbuchen via Canton Bern archives.  Part of the Rubeli family emigrated to the German Palatinate in 1672 as religious refugees. See Mennosearch.com.

 

Related links:

Link to Christian Gungerich on Ancestry.com

My German Palatinate, Saarland, Lorraine, France, and Swiss Anabaptist Surname and Place Lists

Immigrants #11 to 20 ~ The Anabaptist Strubel/Rubeli of Aeschlen bei Oberdiessbach, Switzerland

*Gungerich and Rubeli are known Anabaptist surnames.  Christian Gungerich is believed to be the first of the Anabaptist faith in his family.

cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net