1. Schwenk Ancestry · 2. Lieb Ancestry · 3. Breymayer Ancestry
OUR SCHWENK ANCESTRY IN SWABIA
And Other Ancestral Tributaries In Southern Germany: A Family HistoryThe Prelude
This will be an attempt to tell the story of our Schwenk ancestry beginning with Conrad Schwenk, born 1601, and leading down through the four immigrant Schwenk siblings, Maria Agnes, Luise, John and August, who came to America between the years 1854-1872. With each succeeding generation, a new tributary joined our "mainstream" of Schwenk ancestry. We will explore some of those tributaries.
A weaver at work in the dark, damp Dunk beneath the ground floor of his house (sufficient humidity was required for weaving of flax fibers into linen). The tassel on the weaver's cap served as a means of shooing flies away.
Our ancestry is rooted in southern Germany in what is today the state of Baden-Württemberg and lies in the region between Stuttgart and Ulm. The maps provided should be helpful to the reader/visitor. The rolling, hilly region north of the Danube River is called the Swabia Jura; the Germans call this the Schwäbische Alb.
MAPS: Also see the Tools Page
The word Swabia (also spelled Suabia); in German, Schwaben , comes from the name of a tribe, the Suevi, who amalgamated with the Alemannic peoples in the 5th Century A.D. This grew into a duchy in the 10th Century which continued in the House of Hohenstaufen until 1268. In 1488, the many very small states of this region - the remains of the former large Duchy of Swabia - formed what was called the Swabian League. This was simply a union for self-protection. In 1512, the Holy Roman Emperor made Swabia one of ten "circles" of what would much later become Germany. Swabia encompassed the lands between the Rhine River on the west, and the Lech River to the east (at Augsburg, Bavaria); north to above Stuttgart and south into the northern part of present-day Swizerland. These historical facts are not really important to our story, except that the people living today in roughly the area between Stuttgart and Ulm consider themselves Swabians, and speak a dialect of the German language called Swäbisch.
The Origins of the Family Name, SCHWENK
In Medieval Europe
until around the end of the 14th Century, there were no family names. One
might be called Hans der Weber (weaver), or App der Mayer (farmer), or Conrad
aus Attenweiler, Johann der Schmidt (smith), or Jerg Klein (small). These
names, attached to the given or Christian names as you can see, pointed to the
occupation, personal characteristic or geographical origins of the individual.
And so for the purposes of bringing some order to the record books of the
feudal landlords (probably for reasons of taxation), and the need to better
identify individuals in a growing population, surnames, family names were
required. Friedrich, the son of Johann der Schmidt, would henceforth be named
Friedrich Schmidt, regardless of his occupation, personal characteristics, or
where he hailed from.
Where did the family name Schwenk come from? According to one book
on the history of family names, Schwenk meant "Dweller at the sign of the
swan." The Germans considered the swan to be a holy bird. The German
verb, schwenken
means, "swing; turn, swivel, traverse (a gun); shake about, wave to
and fro, flourish, brandish, toss (cooking); rinse (a glass, etc.); sling out
(colloquial); Links schwenkt in the military means, left wheel, quick
march! (taken from The New Cassell's German Dictionary, pub. 1958). The
swan-origins hypothesis seems somewhat plausible, but other scholars believe
this familiy name originated in a military milieu.
As you may know, this family name is very uncommon in America.
According to one source, there are only about 2000 households with that name.
But this name is also fairly uncommon in the German-speaking areas of Europe.
For example, the phone book in Bern, Swizerland with a population of perhaps
300,000 in 1994 revealed only one Schwenk. In Dettingen on the Erms River (SE
of Stuttgart) pop. ca. 9000, none. In Ehingen just SW. of Ulm and much larger
than Dettingen/Erms, also none listed. In the large city of Ulm, however, the
phone book in 1994 showed about twenty Schwenk listings. However, in
Laichingen, a town about 12 miles WNW of Ulm and with a population of around
10,000 souls, the name Schwenk is today and was 400 hundred years ago more
common than Smith or Jones in America. And Laichingen is where our "traceable"
Schwenk story begins.
Laichingen and the Destructiveness of the Thirty Year's War
Laichingen
lies atop the Schwäbische Alb at an elevation of about 2600 feet. In
comparison, Ulm lies at 1500 ft. above sea level; Stuttgart at 760'. It is a
rolling, agrarian landscape, with the hilltops covered with original
forestland and the basins and valleys in croplands and pasture. Hamlets,
villages and towns dot the map, and rarely is there more
than a two mile distance between them. The economy of Laichingen was and is
based on agriculture; and this is true of the many other villages in this
region where our ancestors lived. And because it was strictly agricultural, no
bombs of World War II fell on these communities. There was, however, a
horrible, insanely destructive war some three hundred years earlier, a war
between the Protestants and Catholics which was particularly savage in
Laichingen and the surrounding area. This was the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648.
And because of this war and the wantonness of the Imperial troops in around
1634, the church books (the vital records: births, marriages, and deaths) of
the Lutheran (Evangelical) community of Laichingen were destoyed, and with
them the birth and marriage records of our "Patriarch" Conrad
Schwenk (spelled then, Schwenckh), as well as those, probably, of his parents
and their parents. Were it not for the wanton destruction of those records, we
may well have discovered two or three earlier Schwenk generations. And this is
because in much of Europe, the Protestant churches or parishes began keeping
vital statistics during the mid-1500s; the Catholics somewhat later. Prior to
this time, religious and temporal authorities did not bother keeping these kind
of records. Only the nobility did, for they needed to prove ancestry. We can
be grateful to that pastor in Laichingen who in 1657 out of the ashes began
recording the vital statistics of the village in new church books.
In 1949, a Dr. Dieter, then the pastor in the community of
Feldstetten (we will talk more of Feldstetten later in this Schwenk story), a
smaller "sister community" 2_ miles west of Laichingen, wrote a
brief history entitled, Feldstetten During The Centuries . Feldstetten
was in the 1600s and 1700s about one half the size of Laichingen. It suffered
the same devastation during the Thirty Years War. The author of that brief
history states that the population of Feldstetten in the year 1630 numbered "still
800 inhabitants and 150 horses...in spite of the Pest of the previous years
(1626/27). But after the bloody outrages, plunderings, famines and epidemics
there were in 1635 only 50 inhabitants present." Further in his writing
he states, referring to the population figures, "...in 1652 only 120 and
only in the year 1829 was the number of 806 reached again. For the rest (of the
communities) the following numbers have come to us: in the year 1654, counted
Feldstetten 132 inhabitants, Laichingen, 296....." And so with this we
have a feeling for the conditions in which our Conrad and Magdalena Schwenckh
found themselves in the first part of the 17th Century.
§§§
Conrad Schwenk (1601): First Generation
Andreas Schwenk (1641): Second Generation
Bernhard Schwenk (1672): Third Generation
Conrad Schwenk (1702): Fourth Generation
Conrad Schwenk (1773): Fifth Generation
Johannes Schwenk (1798): Sixth Generation
John Schwenk (1839): Seventh Generation
A. Elmer Schwenk (1881): Eighth Generation
