ROOTS & BRANCHES

“This beginning is made in the name of the Lord.”

So begins the translation of family information recorded by hand in a German prayer book by members of the Daniel Hiester family, collateral ancestors of my mother Mildred Hiester Beidler.

In last week’s “Roots & Branches” column, I talked about how this translation was included in Valeria E. Clymer Hill’s privately published genealogy of the Hiester family and noted generally how important the little pieces of information it included were.

Well, let’s talk more specifically about the insights gained.

One was about Daniel Hiester, the 1737 immigrant who was a brother to my direct line ancestor Jost Hiester.

Other documents portray Daniel as a “business first, family second” type of individual, but the prayer book shows that he entered the births of each of his children and probably also aligned those entries with special verses since most were placed on different pages of the prayer book without regard to what would otherwise be chronological order.

It seems obvious from entries dated later that Daniel’s son Wilhelm took over custody of the prayer book.

In addition to recording his own children’s births, Wilhelm also gave interesting information about his marriage:

“1784, on the 18^th of March. I, Wilhelm Hiester and Anna Maria Hiester, were married to each other in her father’s house, between twelve and one o’clock, by the Rev. Mr. Schulsz, preach in Tulpehocken.”

Given that Anna Maria’s father was Isaac Meier, “her father’s house” would be the Isaac Meier Homestead in Myerstown, a well-preserved landmark in the borough.

The prayer book was also helpful when I was asked to help uncover the history of a property in Penn Township, Berks County, that was known to have been in the Hiester family.

As it turned out, the Penn Township (then in Bern Township since Penn hadn’t yet been created) property was Wilhelm’s, and the prayer book identified the dates between which the house was likely built.

In giving a bit of biography about himself, Wilhelm noted that he moved from Reading to Bern township after his marriage in 1784.

Wilhelm also noted in his children’s birth and baptismal records that his third child Elisabetha “was baptized in Bern township, in Berks county, in our house” in 1789. This was after her older siblings had been baptized elsewhere. So what he called “our house” was likely constructed sometime between 1784 and 1789.

Finally – well, actually, if truth be known it was the first time I recognized the value of the prayer book transcription – there was its contribution to the history book of the congregation into which I was born, Bern Reformed United Church of Christ.

I was helping to edit the biographies of the congregation’s pastors and was not happy that for one of the pastors, the Rev. William Hendel Jr., there was only a secondary source reference (from another congregation, no less!).

But there in the prayer book was the description of immigrant Daniel’s funeral in 1795: “His funeral sermon was preached by the Rev. young Mr. Wilhelm Hendel, preacher of the Tulpehocken and also of this community.”

A wonderful insight, indeed.

Hill’s genealogy, including the prayer book translation, can be found online at https://archive.org/details/genealogyofhiest00hill