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The history of the Wiegel family (a glassblower family) starts with Christian Wiegel, the eldest known ancestor who is mentioned for the first time in the church register of Silkerode, situated in the German Harz-area. On the 15th of August 1674 in the neighbouring village of Bockelnhagen his son Johann Caspar was baptised. His surname Wiegel is apparently not known to the Evangelical Lutheran minister, since, as the name of the father he enters ‘Meister Christian’ (Christian Wiegel was master of the glass factory - Glashütte - in Bockelnhagen).
After 1681 the family disappears from the Harz-area and turns up again in 1694 near the so called ‘Wanderglashütten’ in Grünenplan (Weser-hillcountry). In the church registers there we find the following members of the family: Johann Caspar Wiegel (born 1674) and Anna Maria Wiegel (born 1679), Conrad Wiegel and Hans Wiegel Strecker (probable children of Meister Christian too) and Anna Catharina Thon, the widow of Christian Wiegel. She dies in 1721 at the age of 86 and so she must have been born about 1635. Later on we find descendants of the above mentioned children Wiegel among others in Schorborn, near the ‘Glashütte am Schorbornsteich’ in the neighbourhood of Holzminden.
Rutolph Wiegel, a son of Johann Caspar Wiegel, was born 1708 in Delligsen (Glashütte Grünenplan). He has four sons, one of which (Christian) later on stays in Germany. Nowadays the last mentioned has an extensive offspring there (Branch A). The earlier generations are listed in Branch Germany.
In the second half of the 18th century the three other sons (Johann Christoph, Abraham and Johan Antohn) seek their luck and livelyhood in the Netherlands and work there in various glassfactories with several other German emigrants. They are the ancestors of the Branches B, C and D. Particularly in Leerdam the name of Wiegel appears to be connected with the glass factory as well as the Lutheran congregation.
Nowadays approximately 350 persons with the name of Wiegel live in the Netherlands and all of them descend from one of the three brothers mentioned. So, all Wiegels in the Netherlands are related to each other.
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