My Big Fat Family Tree: A Genealogical Quest Through Europe: The Schwarzwald and the Alsace

The Schwarzwald, or Black Forest, isn't as ominous as it sounds. The Grimm brothers could really have capitalized on the name and set some of their stories there but they didn't, although I am sure the locals have some equally scary folk takes! The Schwarzwald gets it's name from the color of the trees. The firs are so thick and numerous that it does seem like they are black. I could just picture Hansel and Gretl walking through the forest and coming upon the witch's house. It is a bit creepy. However, when we drove through, it happened to be quite snowy, so it was rather pretty. The reason we went to the Black Forest region was to locate a rather elusive branch of the family, the Grofts. We really don't know much about them. Their name keeps changing which makes it difficult to track them. I have seen "Groft" as Kraft, Croft, Graf, Graff and Groff. They are flexible. The Grofts came to America in the 1850s: George (Gregorius) and Elizabeth (Felicitas) with their three surviving children, Cunigunde, Elias (my great great grandfather) and Michael. They had six other children who died: Margretha, Philomena, Eva, Egidius, Lorenz, and Leo. Until recently we only knew they came from the German state of Baden-Wurttemburg, which is huge. After some looking I discovered they may have come from the small village of Sulzbach in the Black Forest. So off we went. Considering all of the other places we have been, it is unsurprising that Sulzbach is so small it doesn't even have a town center. It is also up in the hills. It is very clear farming is not a major livelihood. The hills are too steep and the forest is too thick. Another interesting thing about this area is that unlike the other places we have visited that were Evangelische (Protestant), this region is Katholische (Catholic). It was so neat because normally church bells ring every hour anyway, but on March 25, they started ringing almost constantly beginning around 7am. It was the feast of the Annunciation, at least for the Eastern Orthodox. I have no idea if the western church acknowledges the annunciation on the same day but regardless, it was awesome to wake up to the bells ringing because it did sound like the announcement of something big. We went to St. Anna's, the Catholic Church in Sulzbach. The current church dates back to the 1800s although there has been a church there since the 1200s. The bell tower on the current church dates back to the 1600s and several parts inside the church date back to the 1500s. Just like the other churches we have come across, the priest is a circuit rider and operates out of the bigger town of Gaggenau. We went to the cemetery and found several Krafts so while that may be somewhat good news, we won't know anything until we see records. However, it is positive that this area is Catholic and we know the Grofts were Catholic as well. We went to Gaggenau during the church office hours but it was locked so I will send an email to the priest and will hopefully receive a positive response. I do not know what happened to Cunigunde as she disappears off census records but it is likely she died in Indiana since that is where the rest of her family is buried. At some point, Elias and Michael had a disagreement around the time of an accident. They were building a well and the dynamite exploded prematurely, causing Michael to lose an eye and Elias to lose his hearing. Whether this accident was the catalyst or not, the brothers never spoke to each other again. I was able to find out what happened to Michael. He changed his name to Croft and married a woman of German descent named Josephine. He died in 1923 at the age of 74, four years before Elias died. Elias married Julia Lang, a woman of English and Quaker descent. She will be discussed more later when we get to England. One final comment about the Grofts....while driving towards Sulzbach we came across a sign that mentioned this area was involved in the 1849 Badischer Revolution. Revolutions were popping up all over during this time period but it seems now perhaps especially significant as there was one very close to where the Grofts lived and the family immigrated to America just a few short years later. Perhaps a cause and effect? To get a better idea of the area we drove on the Schwarzwald Hochstrasse, which goes straight through the Black Forest. It also goes high enough that we experienced a good bit of snow! Many of the people who live in this area are carpenters or other woodworkers (like cuckoo clock makers) and herders of cattle, sheep or goats, but that is it. This is telling since Elias' choice of occupation in America was a sawyer, someone who operated a sawmill. He probably did some farming on the side in the form of a vegetable garden, like his Black Forest ancestors.

St. Anna's Katholische Kirche, Sulzbach.

Inside the church

Sulzbach, Germany...small and hilly.

Sulzbach,Germany

Our next stop was the Alsace region of France to look into another branch of the Hangars (remember them?). Recap: Catharine Hangar, my great great great grandmother, was born in America in 1837. She was the daughter of Frederick Hangar and Margaret Cook/Koch. Frederick was the son of Martin Hangar and Elizabeth Fulwider/Vollenweider. Elizabeth was the daughter of Hans Ulrich Fulwider. Hans was born in Kappel, Switzerland in 1723. His family immigrated to America in the mid 1700s. Hans married Anna Margaretha Binckele, who was born in 1735 in the Alsace. This Binckele line is who I will be focusing on now. So, the Alsace is an interesting region because it is both German and French. Both countries at one point had control of the region, and depending on who it was at the time, the language of the records vary. My ancestors came from three tiny villages, all within a few miles of each other high up in the Alsatian hills (surprise, surprise): Fouday, Bellefosse and Belmont. Fouday is first and at the bottom of the hill. Bellefosse is next halfway up the hill and Belmont is near the top. What is interesting about this area is that it is Protestant, which is not usually what one associates with France unless you look to the Huguenots. The church in Fouday dates back to the 1700s, although there has been a church there since the Middle Ages. The inside is incredibly simple, it almost reminds me of the meeting houses in New England. There is a part of the church sectioned off with glass for preservation. This section dates back to the 14th and 15th centuries and is covered with beautiful frescoes, a stark contrast to the "new" church from the 1700s. Up the hill in Bellefosse we came across another church which was built in 1913 after a cemetery had been established. Although Bellefosse itself was as old as Fouday, before the 1900s, residents went down the hill to Fouday to go to church and be buried. Further up the hill was Belmont, just as small. The church there dated back to probably the 1700s at the latest. We walked through all the cemeteries and kept seeing the name Pinkele, which we believe may be a corruption of Binckele. We headed over to Strasbourg where the Alsatian archives are kept and hit the jackpot! We found baptism, marriage and death registers going back to the 1600s in those three villages, and even better, found our ancestors! The down side is that the records are all in French and as I only took Ancient Greek and Spanish in high school, I know about as much French as a Martian. Nevertheless, we were able to figure out enough to know what we were looking at, and even better you can access the records online! So we will be able to take more time to go through them. I was able to confirm that Anna Margaretha Binckele's parents were Anna Maria Salome Werle/Verly and Peter Binckele. I also found Anna Maria Salome Verly and Peter Binckele's marriage record which indicated that Peter was originally from canton Bern in Switzerland. These records were amazing because they list dates, names and basically a brief biography about these people. Peter's parents were Christian Binckele/Binggeli and Elisabeth Burri. Anna Maria Salome Verly's parents were Johannes Verly and Marguerite Neuvillers. Curious about Peter and what could have brought him to the Alsace, I did some research online and found out that after immigrating to America, he joined the Moravian church. Apparently before Moravians die, they write their own eulogy so basically they get to speak at their own funerals. As such, I discovered that he was born in Guggisberg, canton Bern, Switzerland in 1704. When he was 9 years old his father died so he moved with his mother to the Alsace where he lived with a brother who was already living there. This is where he met Anna Maria Salome Verly and married her in 1725. He was a woodcutter and was struck by lightening while taking shelter from a storm. The incident left him badly injured and confined to bed for several weeks. Then he brought his family to America in 1736, which is where his wife, Anna, died in 1748. He married again to a widow, Anna Margaretha Geiger, and had more children. He died at the ripe age of 89 having fathered a total of 23 children (15 by his first wife)!