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Published August 17, 2024

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I’ve had a chance in some spare moments to pull out files (yes, this began-in-the-Gutenberg-age genealogist still has paper files!) from some of the files of my personal ancestry.

OK, so it may have been connected to some new presentations I’m cooking up for next year’s family history conferences, but reacquainting myself with these ancestral lines was good for my pedigree’s soul, too.

First there’s my “double” Himmelberger line, one of several surnames spread across my charts in which I descend from the same immigrant ancestor twice.

In the case of the Himmelbergers, both my father and my mother trace to 1737 immigrant Valentine Himmelberger (1709–1787), who was born in the southwest German town of Schriesheim and took out his land in Centre Township, Berks County.

My father descends from Valentine’s eldest son Philip, who ventured further west in Berks County to what’s now Jefferson Township and is buried with a no-longer-extant tombstone at St. John’s (Host) Church.

Mother descends from Jacob, a younger son of Valentine, who is buried with his father and numerous other family members at Salem (Belleman’s) Union Church.

Two items made me re-interested in this family. One was that a Himmelberger friend of mine had previously told me he knew where Valentine’s land was but I hadn’t written down what he said. So I circled back and in conversation verified that preliminary work I had done years ago on locating this land was correct, which was tremendously validating.

The other was that another younger son of Valentine was baptized in 1752 at the church in which I was raised (Bern Reformed United Church of Christ) but the father was identified as Valentine Himmel but annotated in the transcription I saw to be “Himmel(berger).”

How did the annotator know that? I can’t read that long ago transcriber’s mind, but I believe the reason is this: The baptismal sponsor was Ulrich Bagenstose, a neighbor of Valentine’s in Centre Township.

Finding these two Centre Township men together along with there being no other record of a “Valentine Himmel” leads to this conclusion.

Then there are the Kershners (originally spelled Kirschner or Kürschner). This is double line of sorts for me, too, but both of my descents are on my mother’s side and this complicated, multi-immigrant family that hails from Langensebold, Hesse, is full of intriguing interrelationships.

One of those is that I have an ancestor Gertraud Dieterich who was the mother of my ancestor Anna Elisabeth by Gertraud’s first husband Johannes Schuffert, and the mother of my ancestor Johann Georg Kirschner by Gertraud’s second husband Johannes Kirschner. Anna Elisabeth Schuffert went on to marry Martin Kirschner, who was a half brother to Johannes Kirschner, making Martin’s wife his step-niece (Feel free to read over this a few times).

There’s more—a lot more!—to the Kershner story, but we’ll save that for the next “Roots & Branches.”