User Home Page Book: The Liegl Ancestry: Introduction
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Introduction
While everyone in this book is related to me and my immediate family, either directly or through marriage, that is not the case for anyone else except my children. You are related to me either through my father's side or my mother's side, but are unrelated to the opposite side. Most people will obviously be interested in the relatives on their own side, but they may find some interesting stories throughout this book. While names, dates, and places are the backbone of a genealogy, it is dry information. I have tried to add some of the more interesting aspects of ancestor's lives, such as occupations, honors, military experiences, and family stories both flattering and unflattering, yet without trying to embarrass anyone. I have also chosen not to include several that may have embarrassed someone and added nothing to the family history.
To me, family stories are the most intriguing part of a family history. While it is true that most of them cannot be proven to be 100% fact, there is usually enough truth in the story to be believed, and most are supported by other facts. Anyway, family stories make history interesting by opening up possibilities as to what our ancestors were like, and they were so much more than names, dates, and places. A family history really is how our ancestors thought, acted, believed, and lived, as well as reflecting the attitudes of the times. That is what family stories give us and why they were so important to include. I wish I had more of them.
Believe it or not, after almost 40 years of research, I have still only scratched the surface of information available. There is so many resources I still have to research that can tell us about our ancestors, I will be busy until the day I die, adding to this book. And there are relatives who have never answered me with the information on their own family that I would like to add to this book. To those who have answered my call, I thank heartily, for without you, this would be a much less interesting (and much shorter) book.
I really have many people to thank that made this project possible. First and foremost is my grandmother, Margaretha Steeber Liegl, who saved all her father's Civil War papers, old photos, etc., which got me started. Ken Steeber was a great help and inspiration when I hit my first bout of "boredom", and got me started again. He is also the only one who figured out the name was ADAM and not ADAMS, which opened up a whole new ancestral line. John Steeber did the same for me when I was in my second "interruption". Margaretha Starrock in Germany, who sent me volumes of information from the churches in Rheinbischofsheim and Lichtenau and showed me it was possible to find ancestors from as far back as 1600. Frau Elisabeth Lauppe from Germany, who is a distant cousin, without whom I would not have known that I was related to a famous German writer and a famous German knight, nor would I have been able to trace my ancestry back to the year 1300. Also to Erika Bullmann Flores from Albion, Michigan, who was so helpful in translating the old German script for me so I could understand what those old German documents said. Cousins Jean Naylor and Sue Jackson, who gave me a load of new relatives by contacting me and sending me their ancestral lines. Jack King, who made this even more fun with a "my nacestors are better than your ancestors" competition, which he constantly lost, but all in good fun. Also to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose Family History Center microfilm allowed me to verify, document, and find many more ancestors. Of course, a big thank you to all of the relatives who sent me the information that filled this book. It would have been a useless project without all of you.Lastly, thank you to my wife, Arlene, who put up with me and this silly hobby for over 39 years.
I have divided this book into three parts. Part 1 contains information about ancestors that came to the United States from Europe and their descendants. Part 2 contains information about the ancestors (that I have been able to identify) of those brave immigrants in Part 1, who remained in Europe. Part 3 contains information about a few specific relatives whom I have collected a large amount of information about, as well as some statistics and lists I believe are best understood when listed as a whole in appendix form.
I tried to make the sequence as simple and understandable as possible, going backwards from the present day. I decided to group the families in PART 1 by the last names of the ancestors who came to the United States, andfollowing the bloodline from those brave ancestors who took that voyage to present day, as best I could. Some ancestors who immigrated are included with the last name which they were joined to by marriage, if little else is known of them. For example, ADAM is included with STEEBER and KRUGER is included with LIEGL. When and if I can learn more about these ancestors, I will give them their own chapter.
In PART 2, I traced the bloodline backwards from the immigrant ancestor, in their native country. As I have not been able to discover the European hometown of all immigrant ancestors, this section only includes a few bloodlines. All of the research done in Europe is documented with letters and papers that I have, as is most of the research done in the US. I view documentation as very important and if I have evidence of a fact, but cannot document it, I state so. Be assured that if something is stated as fact, there is ample evidence that it is indeed, factual. There is evidence that some bloodlines extend back from Germany to the countries ofDenmark, Netherlands, and Spain, but I have not yet found any evidence in those countries of any ancestors. I have left chapters for these ancestral lines in hopes that future research will provide information to fill these chapters. Most of the information about the ancestors in Part 2 were from microfilm copies of the churchbooks in Germany which were not only obviously written in German, but also in the old German Script. In addition to this, they were all handwritten, and I am convinced that the ministers of the 16th and 17th centuries were the doctors of today. Their handwriting, for the most part, was atrocious. Combining that with the old German script, and it often was very difficult to read. For that reason, some names were unreadable or very difficult to decipher. Therefore, some names may not be spelled exactly correct, as all letters of the name could not be determined. In this case, a "best guess" was made and I did my best to spell the name as it appeared in the record. If the name was totally unreadable, it is stated so. Also, keep in mind that sometimes, the last name was not included in the record, especially in the case of females. The ministers also seemed to use the spelling of names that they preferred most, and many people's names were spelled differently throughout the churchbook. For example, Johann, Hanß and Hans; Conrath and Curt; Cloß, Niclas, and Niclaus; Georg and Jurg; Marcellus and Marzolf; were different spellings referring to the same person. Surnames were no different: Arledder, Arletter, and Aledder; Bairtschi and Bertschy; Hart and Hairt; Heyger Heiger, and Haiger; and Stieber and Stüber were all found being used interchangably, often by the same minister only days apart. Add to this that the ministers often liked to show off their intelligence by using Latin now and then and you get names like Philippus and Christianus.
- To make it even more difficult, The Germans often used their middle names instead of
To me, family stories are the most intriguing part of a family history. While it is true that most of them cannot be proven to be 100% fact, there is usually enough truth in the story to be believed, and most are supported by other facts. Anyway, family stories make history interesting by opening up possibilities as to what our ancestors were like, and they were so much more than names, dates, and places. A family history really is how our ancestors thought, acted, believed, and lived, as well as reflecting the attitudes of the times. That is what family stories give us and why they were so important to include. I wish I had more of them.
I originally added descendant charts at the end of the chapters to make it easier to follow the relationship of one person to another, but that became very difficult to update as I received more information. Instead, I decided to add an appendix with the descent charts of my immigrant ancestors, so you can see all of the descendants that I could find of our immigrant ancestors. If you see a name with an *, it is simply a mark I added in my computer program to show that that particular person has no blood relation to myself, just related through marriage, or adopted. There are several appendix which list various extra information that are better presented in their complete form rather than with the individuals separately, such as census records, city directories, and a list of all the blood relatives that I could find, with their relationship to me. Each reader can find his own ancestors in these appendix and enjoy the information they contain. My main database program is Family Tree Maker. If anyone has Family Tree Maker, I would be happy to share my gedcom file with them.
I have been lucky enough to obtain and copy many old family photos over the years. Unfortunately, reprinting them for all of the relatives would be both time and cost prohibitive, and reproducing them on a copy machine would be an injustice. However, I have scanned many of these photos onto computer disk and will gladly copy them onto disks for any relative with a computer. Contact me for a description of the photos available, decide which ones you want, and I will send them to you. I also have all of the family history on one CD, which I can send also. I'm still interested in obtaining more family photos, both old and current, of relatives for my master family photo album and would appreciate any sent to me. If you do not want to part with the old ones, I understand. A copy, or if you are able to put them on computer disk, would be a great addition.
Genealogy seems to be a popular school project today and I hope many of my school age relatives will benefit from this book if they are faced with this project. I have several old papers and records, originals and copies, many from Germany, and photos, which may make an interesting addition to this project. Please feel free to contact me if I can be of any help to anyone, especially the kids. I can be contacted several ways, butthe best way is probably by e-mail.
My address is:John Liegl
465 Bryn Mawr Dr.
Brick, N.J. 08723
My phone number is:732-920-7965
My e-mail address is:[email protected]
I hope that my relatives, by reading this, will get at least a fraction of the satisfaction I have had in researching and writing this "book". I have found that my ancestors were not only famous, brave, intelligent, and talented people, but were also very average, hard working, unskilled, occasionally rowdy and even unlawful. But they all exhibited the human frailties and imperfections so commonly seen everywhere, yet they are all so very special to me because their blood flows through my veins today, just as it flowed through theirs hundreds of years ago.
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