Today in Family History

On today’s date (September 9), the following happened in my family tree:

In 1830, my 4th great grandparents Domenicantonio Rossi and Maria Domenica Della Bricciosa married in San Giovanni, Penne, Abruzzo. Domenicantonio was the son of Giovanni Rossi and Anna Saveria Barbacone. Maria Domenica was the daughter of Blasio Della Bricciosa and Vittoria Gambacorta. They were the great grandparents of Cesidio Marcella. (His mother was named Elisabetta Rossi.)

We have the signature of Domenicantonio Rossi and the signature of Maria Domenica’s father Blasio. I don’t know if this meant they were literate, but they were able to sign their names legibly on the marriage document as you can see. This couple, and other members of their families, moved around this area of Abruzzo to multiple villages during their lifetimes. I don’t know what that means or why. I would love to hear your ideas.

On my maternal side the following happened:

In 1594, my 9th great grandmother Vittoria Litieri was baptized in Sant’ Agnese Parish, in San Felice a Cancello, Caserta. I know almost nothing about her, except her parents’ names, Cesare Litieri and Tommasina Secondina, and that she was the mother of my ancestor Pietro Capobianco. A Portia d’Adamo is noted on the baptism and may have been the midwife or the godmother. What is your guess? What do you see?

In 1834, my 3rd great grandfather Joseph Anton Heinzen was baptised in the Catholic parish of Glis near the Swiss border with Italy in Valais. He was born the day before in the tiny hamlet of Lingwurm. The godparents noted in the church record were Felix Nillen and Maria Josepha Nillin. His parents were Johann Joseph Heinzen and Anna Maria Vollmar. They were farmers.

Coincidentally, his daughter, on September 9, 1886, my immigrant second great grandmother Anne Aloisia (Anna) Heinzen and Ludwig (Louis) Fritz Kirsch got married before a Justice of the Peace in Chicago. She was Catholic and he was Lutheran.

In 1864, during a cholera epidemic in Chicago, 10 month old Loretta Schuttler, my second great grandmother Katharina Schuttler’s baby sister died.

Finally, on the other side of the Atlantic, in 1886, in Montecalvario, Naples, Italy, Carmen Ferraro’s sister Elena Ferraro was born. In America she married Angelo Scarnecchia.

Do you have any additions or corrections, or are we related? Please email me, because WordPress does not notify you if I comment on your comment on my blog. cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.

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Today in Family History in 1837 ~ Regina Anna Maria Catarina Giuseppa Filomena Gentinetta was born

On today’s date in 1837, my third great grandmother Regina Anna Maria Catarina Giuseppa Filomena Gentinetta was born in Brig, Switzerland. She was the daughter of Francesco Giuseppe Gentinetta and Anna Maria Regina Theresia Mutter. Anna Maria Regina Theresia Mutter was from the village of Niederwald – birthplace of Cesar Ritz.

Who was Regina? She was the mother of my immigrant second great grandmother Anna Heinzen (Kirsch) and immigrant Leo Heinzen. In 1858, Regina married Joseph Anton Heinzen, a farmer. Their wedding record stated that her father was from Italy, specifically Valle Bognanco. However, the 1870 Cenus for Ried, Brig, which I had to comb through one by one, stated he was born in Ried. I do not know which is correct.

Also according to that census, Regina, husband Joseph Anton, and their children, including Anna, were residing with her father Francesco Gentinetta. Please see the image below. He is at the top of the page – indicated as Franz.

Earlier census records for Ried are online as well at the Archives of Valais in Sion. Unfortunately, there are so many Franz Gentinettas and misspellings of the surname I do not know which is ours. Adding to the confusion is the fact that his father was also named Franz!

Regina passed away on October 1, 1911 in Brig, Switzerland. Some day I hope I get to see a photo of her.

Are we related? Do you have a correction or addition? Please email me at cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net.

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.

Today in Family History …the Witchcraft Trial of my 10th Great Grandfather Martin Heinzen Began (Re-Post)

On today’s date in 1629, the witchcraft trial of my 10th great grandfather Martin Heinzen started at Freigericht Ganter, near Glis, Valais, Switzerland because someone in the local populace had sick livestock and other executed witches had implicated him as their accomplice.  Martin ended up being tortured for nearly a week in hopes of extracting confessions of sorcery.

Mayor Kaspar Stockaler was the man responsible for routing out witches in the local population.  Thirty witnesses had sworn statements against my 10th great grandfather.

Because Ganter didn’t have a torture device, they borrowed one from nearby Brig.

Through his long torture, Martin confessed every sin, and in an article in French on the subject of witchcraft trials in Valais, he confessed every “pecadillo” BUT sorcery.  On the 12th of October 1629, friends and relatives of Martin demanded his release.   So he was released and ordered to pay one third of the costs of his trial!

When I found this sensational fact about my ancestor, I discovered that the witch trial madness had actually started in Valais, Switzerland in 1428 before it spread to the rest of Europe.  It started there! You can find headings about this sad phenomena under such headings as “Valais witch trials” and “Swiss werewolf witch trials.”  I am still searching for a book in English on the subject.

Martin went on to marry and have my 9th great grandfather Kaspar Heinzen.  Of note is the fact that Martin’s wife and Kaspar’s mother – Barbara Andamatten, shared a surname with one of Ganter’s witchcraft judges.

Martin Heinzen’s tale appears in “Das Freigerecht Ganter” and “Notes sur les procès d’hérésie et de sorcellerie en Valais” because he was an accused sorcerer that walked away from one of these terrible trials with his life.

I suspect Martin may be my 10th great grandfather two times over.  I need to do some more digging.  Martin is the ancestor of my immigrant second great grandmother Anne Marie Aloisia Heinzen.

Do you have Swiss ancestors accused of sorcery? Have you found European ancestors accused of witchcraft?

Sources:

Dionys Imesch, “Das Freigericht Ganter”, dans Blätter aus der Walliser Geschichte, Bd 3, 1902-1906, S. 70-100, surtout p. 82-83 (http://doc.rero.ch/record/200661) 

Kirchegemeinde Glis

“Hexerei im Oberwallis” um 1600 von Hans Steffen

Jules-Bernard Bertrand, “Notes sur les procès d’hérésie et de sorcellerie en Valais”, dans Annales valaisannes, 1921, vol. 3, n° 2-3, p. 151-194, surtout p. 189-191 (en ligne: http://doc.rero.ch/record/6753)

Thank you to the great people in Genealogie Familienforschung Ahnenforschung Schweiz and Genealogy Translations…  

This post was originally shared 4 years ago on this date.

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

31 Day Genealogy Challenge – Day 25: Share a Record from a Book

This was a wide open choice. Since I have many civil and church records from foreign countries, they were all recorded in books! Today I went to a book in my physical possession. It is a translation of the Palatine Mennonite Census Lists 1664-1793 by Herman and Gertrud Guth and J. Lemar and Lois Ann Mast printed in 1987. The Rubeli family (mentioned yesterday) is listed on several pages in this book. In 1717 they appeared as below. This was approximately 45 years after they had to leave Switzerland.

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Please site the above-mentioned book if you add this to your tree. Thanks!

-cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net

31 Day Genealogy Challenge – Day 24: Share the Oldest Record Found

Today I share the oldest record I found by myself in my direct lines and it is from Langnau, Bern, Switzerland dated October 18, 1579. It is the marriage record of my 10th great grandparents Ueli Strubel and Barbli Vogel from the Langnau Reformed Church – ancestors of Anne Leies Ferraro’s German immigrants. At least part of this record is in Latin, even though it is from a Protestant church. I strained my eyes and found this record online through the Archives of Bern, Switzerland. Their church books are all online. Ueli and Barbli are grandparents of Christen (church spelling) Strubel/Rubeli who was forced to leave Switzerland with his family in the winter of 1672 because he was an Anabaptist.

I have an unproven theory that Christen’s wife Barbara Gungerich’s mother Anna Schindler (my 10th great grandmother), from Oberdiessbach, was the descendant of Andres Schindler, a man born around 1500 near Thun, Switzerland. He attended an Anabaptist debate in Bern in 1538 to discuss ecclesiastical subjects and to request imprisoned believers (Anabaptists) be released. Unfortunately, the church books don’t go back that far to prove my hypothesis.

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-cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #37: Mistake

This week’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks theme is Mistake.

Everyone makes mistakes in genealogy.  When I started studying my family history I took all of the family tales literally and allowed them to take me down rabbit holes and waste my time.  I also accepted hints on Ancestry.com for my ancestors living in Germany without actually having access to the original church records.  That took some deleting.  Through Ancestry.com’s screwy algorithms, I still get hints for people that I deleted from my tree.  Thanks Ancestry.com for the reminder to never trust your hints unless I can see the record myself.

My ancestors are fairly recent immigrants to America, and show no connection to royal lines period.  Since I heard stories from other family researchers about mistake horror stories in other online trees for their ancestors, I thought that would cut down on errors for my ancestors in other trees as well.  Sadly, the further back I go or the more I dig in a foreign country in the language of my foremothers and forefathers, the more mistakes I come across in online trees.

Ancestry.com has a new feature called MyTreeTags.  If people used tags like “Unverified” on their ancestors or use a custom tag they created like “Not Sourced” perhaps mistakes wouldn’t be so common.  It isn’t just Ancestry.com either.  A My Heritage user claimed my 11th great grandfather (on my maternal side) that lived in Alsace was a “council prive” to Louis XIII of France.  HAHAHAHAHA!  Good one!  When I messaged the user to ask where she got that information I was informed it was not her tree and she did it for her husband and she didn’t have any sources.  He was actually a forester!

On my paternal side a user on Ancestry.com claimed one of my fourth great grandfather’s named Domenico Cirone living in Farindola in the first half of the 19th Century, was their Domenico Cerone from Sicily and had children 47 years after his death.  I messaged the user about this and left a note on his tree explaining how the surname is definitely Abruzzese and was not even the same surname.  What did they do?  They changed their ancestor’s birthplace to Farindola, attached my fourth great grandmother to their tree, copied the names of my Domenico’s parents and didn’t correct anything.  Said user has been inactive for about two years.  Oh well!  See for yourself.  My tree is on the right.

Luckily, that’s the extent of silliness on my paternal side, because records for that side are online, and there really isn’t a reason to collect errors.

Whoooaaaaa Nellie for the Mennonites on my mother’s side!  The one thing you discover about Swiss Anabaptists when you find them in your tree is that they are well-documented and chronicled and they are many sources and publications out there to  aid you.  What is the excuse then?!  There are so many errors on my 7th-10th great grandparents I won’t bother going through all of them.

I found about 17 trees listing my 9th great grandmother Barbara Gungerich, a possible Anabaptist living in Oberdiessbach, Switzerland, simply named Elisabetha Catharina.  These trees must have all copied each other.  My 8th great grandparents Christen Rubeli and Anna Muller, who are listed on a refugee list in Fischbach, Germany in 1672 as having newly arrived from Switzerland and later listed on the Palatine Mennonite Census Lists in Germany as having been living and died in Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany on at least 10 different trees.  Again, these trees must’ve all copied each other.

To tie some of these errors together, let me just show you this tree hint for my 9th great grandparents Peter Strubel/Rubeli and Barbara Gungerich and their children.  The correct is mine on the right.  The mistakes are in the tree hint on the left.  Spouse and parents are incorrect.  Just take a look at that list of children.

They must’ve had twins and gave them the same first names huh?

I am sure there are others out there that have seen worse mistakes than me.  What have you found in other online trees?

Do you have any comments, additions, corrections, or questions on my Strubel/Rubeli sources?  Please email me @ 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 Switzerland (Canton Valais and Canton Bern) and Northern Italian Surnames and Places Lists

 

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Canton Valais/Wallis, Switzerland

• Ried-Brig: Heinzen, Vollmar, Bieler, Imhoff, Holzer, Pfaffen, Andamatten
• Brig: Gentinetta
• Niederwald: Mutter
• Bodmen: Mutter, Nellen
• Lingwurm: Lauwiner
• Unknown: Blatter, Zum-Kami

Piemonte, Italy

• Bognanco: Gentinetta

Canton Bern, Switzerland

• Wattenwil: Muller, Stauffer
• Oberdiessbach: Muller, Rubeli/Strubel, Gungerich, Schindler
• Langnau: Strubel/Rubeli, Vogel

 

Thank you for visiting.

-cinziarosagenealogy@comcast.net