Published August 6, 2022
| 1 Comment | Leave A ReplyA few weeks ago “Roots & Branches” reviewed Edna Barnett Chelson’s Our Pennsylvania German Families book, the 600-page door-stopper that contains her genealogy life’s work.
I remarked in the second column about the book that the Strunck family we have in common came from the town of Sprendlingen, which now lies in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
I remembered researching the Struncks in the early 2000s when I still did private client work … especially the fact that many of the records in the Sprendlingen Protestant church book were some of the worst examples of ink-splotched pages I had seen.
But this contact with work of decades ago spurred to do something I’ve been doing a bit of lately … comparing the old photocopies I made back in the day from old analog Family History Library microfilms with today’s digital scans on the German for-pay supersite Archion.de
In the research I had done in the early 2000s, the line stopped with an Adam Strunck, about which I only knew that his second wife was named Catharina (whom he married in 1597) and that he died in 1620.
I always wondered whether a better examination of the church records might yield more facts about the family, who are the forebears of Anna Elisabetha Strunck Hiester, my mother’s immigrant surname ancestor Johann Jost Hiester’s wife.
In the research I did back then, I proved to my satisfaction that Anna Elisabetha’s parents were 1744 immigrant Weymar Strunck and Anna Katharina Schnell.
Weymar in turn was the son of a Lorentz Strunck born 1647, grandson of a Melchior, who was in turn the son of the aforementioned Adam, whose lifetime began sometime in the 16th century.
In beginning to examine the Sprendlingen records on Archion.de, I found that the digital images can be “fine tuned” with lightening and darkening tools, allowing many of the ink splotches to reveal the words beneath the blackened areas.
Reading through these records was still difficult, but after not too much time, I found one additional record with some new details: It was Adam’s first marriage, to a woman named Maria, the widow of Peter Eckem on Oster Montag (“Easter Monday”) in 1580, which would have been on April 14 under the old Julian Calendar then still in use.
The marriage record also identified Adam Strunck as being from the nearby village of St. Johann.
While St. Johann appears to have been connected to the Protestant parish of Sprendlingen, identifying that village as his residence suggests that other adjacent villages’ church records should be checked for the Strunck family, and it probably would also be wise to check Roman Catholic records, too, since religious affiliation in the pre–Thirty Years War period was still fluid in many areas.
As I end so many columns: More research to do!
1 Comment
For Sale
The Best of "Roots & Branches", Fifth Edition published July 2017, edited by Terri J. Bridgwater.
It contains a selection of columns from Beidler’s award-winning newspaper column (currently published in the Altoona Mirror), which is the only syndicated newspaper column on genealogy in Pennsylvania.
The book can be ordered online, or purchased directly from Jim when he speaks at a conference.
Cindy Cruz
2 years ago
Thank you for sharing information concerning Anna Elisabetha’s ancestors in Germany. She and Johann Jost were my 5Xs great-grandparents. Their daughter, Catharina, married Nicholas Lieb, from whom I descend.
I enjoy reading your column every week!
Cindy Cruz
Your 6th Cousin