This has been a very good week for Karl family genealogy. Not only has Elizabeth published her KarlFamilyHistory web site, but I have had quite a bit of success in pursuing the Karl family to Germany.
We have never really known where in Germany the Karl family actually came from. Grandpa and Daddy both said that we came from Luxembourg, which is a German-dialect speaking country, but it’s not really Germany. Elizabeth and I had found various 19th century U.S. census forms containing the immigrated Karl family, and they invariably pointed to an origin within Germany itself. Namely, the family was said to have come from either Germany, Bavaria (now a part of Germany, but then an independent kingdom), or “ReinBeirn”. Furthermore, we had information from the obituary for Peter, our (I’m writing this from the viewpoint of the Karl siblings) great-great-uncle, who died in 1915 in Ohio, which said that he had been born in “Wertzviler”.
The problem was that there was no “Wertzviler” to be found in Germany today. Last fall, Cynthia and I took a vacation to Germany. One of the things we did was try to find the Karl family origin. I had found on the internet a reference to a town that today is called “Wörschweiler”, but at an earlier time was called Wertzweiler. I was sure that this had to be the place. So we went there and were put in touch with a gentleman who was an expert in the local genealogy. He said there had never been any Karls in Wörschweiler. He suggested that it might be a town a little further to the south, Worschweiler. So we went there, looked in the local cemetery and found no Karls (or Renzes – Johann, our great-great-grandfather, was married to Catherine Elizabeth Renz), and talked on the phone to a gentleman expert with the local history: again, no Karls had ever been there.
When we got back from Germany, I subscribed to two Internet genealogical lists, one dealing with genealogy in the Saarland and one dealing with genealogy in the Rhineland-Pfalz. Both the Saarland and Rheinland-Pfalz are “states” in current Germany, both are close to Luxembourg, and part of the Rhineland-Pfalz once belonged to Bavaria and was called Rhein-Bayern (see above, where the US census shows “ReinBeirn” as one of the Karls’ origins). I submitted a description of the Johann Karl family as I knew it (i.e., Johann, our great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth, his wife, and their eight children, John, Peter, and so on, including Philip, their youngest, who was grandpa’s father). I got no replies directly on the net, but a couple of people sent me email suggesting possibilities for Wertzviler. One of the suggestions was Würzweiler, a little village in Rhineland-Pfalz.
Two developments then occurred, both of which came to fruition last week: I ordered seven microfilms from the Mormons in Salt Lake City which contained official or church records from towns around Würzweiler, and I hired a gentlemen I had “met” on the Internet genealogy lists to do some research for me in the area around Würzweiler. My microfilms came in last week and I went in to the local Mormon church to look at them. I don’t know if you have ever had the opportunity to look at microfilms, but let me tell you – it is a very tedious job. Plus, my back was hurting. I had just about given up when I was about half way through the first microfilm, which contained photos of a “church book” from the Rockenhausen parish church, but I decided to just scan down the rest of the film very hurriedly. At one point the film stopped, and there was the baptismal entry for our great-great-grandfather, Johann. The name Karl seemed to leap off the film at me. Here is a copy of Johann's baptismal entry. And here is how I described it to Elizabeth:
Transcription and translation of the baptismal entries found on FHL tape 0400421 (on the tape itself, it is called “Film LM1216”) :
The first one is found on a page following a page headed “1803”:
On the left margin: (Jo)hannes Karll ex (Wü)rzweiler
Body: Trigesima junii baptisatus, qui 29na ejusdam natus est
filius L : jacobi Karl et Catharina Stolhoferin joannis,
quem S : e fonte lavabant joannis hilger et Catharina
Drinex ex Würzweiler
Translation : baptized the 30th of June, who was born on the 29th of the same (month)
legitimate son of Jacob Karl and Catherine Stolhofer (daughter) of John,
whom as sponsors from the (baptismal) font washed John Hilger and Catharine
Drinex(?) from Würzweiler
The other development was that I got email from my researcher in Germany, saying that he had talked to the officials in Rockenhausen and that Peter had indeed been born in Würzweiler. He has since traveled to Rockenhausen, the nearest town to Würzweiler, and checked out the official records himself. He has found many. He also managed to locate a lady whose maiden name was Renz. She had family documents that went back to the time of our great-great-grandfather. In fact, she had documentation about our great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth, and who her parents were and so on. In all, the researcher was able to document approximately another 80 relatives we have (or had) in Germany. Plus, we know of at one living relative in Germany; I figure she would be something like a fourth cousin to us. Here is a picture of Würzweiler, taken by my German researcher; the village of Gerbach is in the background.
So now we know the parents of both of our paternal great-great-grandparents, namely, Jacob and Katherine Stollhofer Karl on the paternal side and Valentine and Barbara Mueller Renz on the maternal side. (I don’t know if Cynthia or Elizabeth has realized it, but this might mean that Cynthia’s cousin, Lynn Mueller, might actually be related by blood to me, too.)
