In a blog entry nearly 20 years ago I mentioned the ancestry of Grace Kelly featuring (at number 1822) a certain Leonhard Treusch who is also in my family tree. Back then, his inclusion in my ancestry was slightly speculative, based on the fact that Leonhard Treusch was the founding father of the village of Hiltersklingen after the Thirty Years War and my ancestor Anna Katharina Treusch was born in that very same village more than 100 years later in 1784. And I had read somewhere that Leonhard was the only carrier of the name Treusch who had survived the war. So I adopted him as an ancestor by default, without a precise connection.
Now, after writing about the Odenwald vicar Adam Getrost, I checked up on the Treusch connection again and found that a friendly genealogist has shared very comprehensive data on Gedbas which not only covers much of my Odenwald ancestry including Adam Getrost, but also spells out the connection to Leonhard Treusch. It turns out I had guessed his place in my list correctly although there were four generations missing in the information I had until now.
Oh and the nameline goes back eight generations further through to a guy called Drusche who was born at Meßbach in the 14th century (estimated 1375). He's in the 20th generation of my family tree and thus among the earliest ancestors we know by name.
Grace Kelly in High Noon. Source: Wikipedia.
To celebrate this advance, I'll write out what we know about old Lenny:
Leonhard Treusch
He was born around 1610 in Ober-Gersprenz where he took over the farm of his father (also called Leonhard) in 1635. Apparently there were debts attached to it, which is why there is paperwork referencing this transfer. And it sounds like he was the only surviving son of Leonhard the older. I assume that his girly sounding nickname Lenchen is supposed to express the fact that he is Leonhard the younger.
In 1642 he acquired half a "Hubengut" at Unter-Gersprenz, which had fallen back to the counts of Erbach after the lineage of the owners died out. (A Hube or Hufe was a standard plot of land for farming, the farmer was called the H¨bner, which became a common family name.) That year he also became the mayor of the village (Schultheiß).
Around 1645 he married Elisabetha NN in Pfaffen-Beerfurth. They had at least eight children (the owner of the dataset writes he doesn't normally list those who died under the age of ten years), whose birth places trace the family's relocations:
Margaretha born 10.01.1644 Gersprenz, married Sebastian Daum in 1662, had 11 children.
Philipp Jakob born in May 1649 at Gersprenz, married twice and had 12 children.
Eva born 13.02.1652 at Pfaffen-Beerfurth, married Georg Trautmann in 1681 had three children.
Katharina born about 1652 Pfaffen-Beerfurth, no further info.
Leonhard born 15.01.1654 Pfaffen-Beerfurth, married Catharina Koch in 1683, had 7 children including my ancestor Bernhard Treusch.
Anna born 11.02.1655 Pfaffen-Beerfurth, married Johannes Trautmann in 1673, had 10 children.
Katharina 03.09.1657 Hiltersklingen, married Johann Berg in 1678, had three children. This is Grace Kelly's lineage.
Peter 19.08.1660 Hiltersklingen, married Catharina Heilmann in 1687, Elisabeth Lautenschläger in 1691, had five children with the latter.
And boy, Elisabetha and Leonhard must have been busy with weddings and grandchildren!
In 1651 he became Schultheiß of Pfaffen-Beerfurth.
In 1660 he was charged with resettling the village of Hiltersklingen which had been devastated and abandoned during the Thirty Years War. He and his family were the first residents of the village and when a second household turned up he was named Schultheiß. The move from Pfaffen-Beerfurth to Hiltersklingen brought a change of his legal situation as he moved from the county of Erbach to the realm of the Bishop of Mainz. There are documents about this mentioning that the counts of Erbach gave him his freedom. The move may also explain why he is listed as Roman Catholic whereas everybody else in the Odenwald family since the Reformation have been Protestants.
He died at Ober-Hiltersklingen on 6.1.1690 at the age of 80, leaving a vast family as seven of his chidren got married and had children of their own.
Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.
No comments:
Post a Comment