ROOTS & BRANCHES

The first time I ever read a trilogy—OK, truth be known, it was also the first time I had encountered the word!—was three comic book stories on witches.

Since then I’ve read trilogies of books, seen movies and watched television.

But the most massive trilogy I’ve ever come in contact is the one compiled by Yvonne K. Kimmel that begins with her translation of her ancestor Samuel Fox’s mid-19^th century diary and continues with two more volumes about Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), who was a Swiss priest and leader of the Reformation in Switzerland.

And when I say massive, I mean it: The three books total more than 1,400 pages … and that’s in a roughly 9 x 12 inch format.

In Kimmel’s first volume, The Samuel Fox Diary, Berks County, Pennsylvania, the original German script diary (written 1840-1881) is translated, including the names of more than 200 persons and includes supporting biographies and ancestry of Pennsylvania immigrants of the 1700s.

Fox family members were the entrusted caretakers of the Pricetown Meeting House in Ruscumbmanor Township, Berks County, and their associations with French Protestant, Lutheran, Moravian, Roman Catholic and German Baptist families as well as the Labidist Community of Bohemia, Maryland, are detailed.

The Fox family also had ties to William Penn’s maternal ancestry (Mennonite Quakers from Krefeld); Gen. George Washington’s elite bodyguard; a couple of early Pennsylvania governors; and prominent families such those named Weiser, Lincoln and Boone.

Kimmel also brings the history alive with tales such as the massacres in the French and Indian War.

She continues the story lines in the book Zwingli: The Key to Finding Your Amish/Mennoite and Church of the Brethren Ancestors, along with supporting DNA analysis that was provided by Darvin L. Martin of Lancaster County. The third of her books is titled Zwingli, Volume II: My Brethren Ancestors Were Reformed, Anabaptist, Moravian & Waldensian and hones in on Kimmel’s personal ancestry.

She finds that hundreds of early Pennsylvania Amish, Mennonite and Church of the Brethren families (such as Amman, Baumgartner, Groff, Meili, Landis, Weber)—and even some 1800s Mormon families of Utah!— are traced to northern Switzerland in the 1500s and descendants of Zwingli.

Kimmel identified 10 groups of persons closely associated with Zwingli, including his mother’s family, his wife’s family, his stepchildren, and Conrad Grebel, Zwingli’s onetime who broke with him and became a founder of the Anabaptists.  

All three books are available from Masthof Press, 219 Mill Road, Morgantown, PA 19543; phone, (610) 286-0258; website URL, https://www.masthof.com