The Third Generation
Bernhardt Schwenckh, Weaver/Judge
Angelika Bischoff-Luithlen, an author and historian and former resident of Feldstetten, wrote an amusing and historically informative book in 1978 entitled, "Der Schwabe und die Obrigkeit: nicht nur Gemütvolles aus alten Akten und schwäbischen Dorfarchiven." Translated, "The Swabian and the Authorities: not just what is cheerful and agreeable in old Swabian Village Archives" . This book is comprised of many short, short stories of how life was for the common man during the past three or four centuries in this part of Germany. One chapter is devoted to the subject of weaving and is entitled, "Bei ons webt älles, bloss dr Pfarrer et" , which translated out of that Swabian dialect means, "Around here everyone weaves except the preacher." She tells us that in the territory of Württemberg, weaving had been for centuries a very traditional trade and provided a necessary additional income for most families. With the weaving of linen cloth, a certain degree of humidity is required, and the air in a house would not provide enough moist air for this task. Because of this the weaver's loom in most homes was located in an in-between floor or level between the ground floor and the basement, a Dunk was its name. She writes, "The weaver sat in the company of beets, potatoes and chickens in the damp underworld." We hold an image of the weaver as a woman seated at her loom. This author states that this work later changed to that of men, and that by the 16th and 17th Centuries was an occupation, a guild, an additional livelihood for every man. It was not a healthy means of livelihood sitting before a loom in a poorly lit, damp environment. She calls this trade a "Hungerberuf", referring apparently to the meager income derived and its resulting skimpy meals. She states that a piece of bread with salt twice a day were the only meal times. A common expression in those days was that, "a weaver was not allowed to take on an apprentice unless this youth had suffered hunger for twelve weeks." Another expression was, "a weaver weighs only a sparrow-dropping more than a tailor." She tells the reader that often during the harvest months many weavers from the Laichingen area went to Ulm to work for farmers there and returned to their linen weaving after harvest work was completed. Whether Conrad, Andreas and Bernhard went hungry, sat in damp, dark rooms beneath the floor of their homes, had pale complexions, were light in weight and coughed a lot we'll never know.
In 1649, one year after the end of the 30 Years War, compulsory education was introduced in the Duchy of Württemberg. So it seems quite certain that little Bernhard and his older brothers Conrad and Georg, and later sister Ursula, entered the Laichingen School House at age six and completed the required six years of education. We will never know if Bernhard attended school beyond the required six years. In any case he must have learned his letters well because he became in later years a local judge in neighboring Feldstetten.
His principal livelihood appears to be that of a weaver learned as a child at the loom of his father. His brothers were also weavers. As Frau Angelika Bischoff-Luithlen has told us, "around here everyone weaves except the preacher."
Meanwhile just over the hill in Feldstetten a little girl named Anna Maria was growing up. She was 4_ years older than Bernhard. Her father was Philipp Hülsenbeck (or Hilsenbeck) and brewed beer for a living. Her mother's name was Barbara. Sometime before the fall of 1695 these two young people began courting, and on October 15, 1695 a wedding was held in Bernhard's village.
It was not uncommon in those days for the groom to move to the village of the bride if she were an "outsider", and this is what Bernhard did. So at age twenty-three and just married, Bernhard packed up his loom and made the move to his bride's village. This young couple began raising a family in the following year. And according to the birth registers which reach back to about 1589 in Feldstetten, little Andreas Schwenk, born on Aug. 20, 1696, was the first Schwenk born in this community. An additional search of the marriage registers revealed that a Claus Schwenckh from Laichingen married there in September of 1618, but the birth registers recorded no children born of that marriage. He and his bride apparently set up housekeeping back in his village.
Let us pull off the main road for a moment and spend some time getting acquainted with the Hilsenbeck family. Anna Maria's father Phillip had died in July of 1678 there in Feldstetten. He was born in 1628 in Gingen near Geislingen, a town northeast of Feldstetten. He married a Margaretha Pfister in Münsingen on Nov. 8. 1646. Her father was a clergyman in that city. Their first child was born in April in Feldstetten, some five months before the wedding, and thus became the first Hilsenbeck born in this community. The Feldstetten pastor entered his personal comments regarding this "early birth", if memory and field notes serve the writer faithfully! Nine more children followed. About six of these survived. Their mother died on Dec. 16, 1663 at the age of 37. Philipp remarried in October of 1664 to a Barbara Hanser. This marriage was not recorded in Feldstetten. We know when this occurred because of the local parson's comments as he entered the name of their first child born on 23 Feb. 1665; he noted that only four months had passed since the wedding of its parents. This couple would have six more children -one of those our Anna Maria b. 3 Mar. 1668 - before our apparently very virile Grandpa Hilsenbeck would die on July 13, 1678 at the age of 50. Barbara then remarried the following year to a Ludwig Frickh, a brewer apparently from Gussenstadt. Our Grandma Barbara died two years later on April 20, 1681.
Philipp had fathered sixteen children in these two marriages. Three of his sons also became brewers. Mattheus, born in 1648, later moved to Laichingen and in 1677 bought the "Krone" Inn. There in 1684, he also bought the "Ochsen" Inn for his brewer brother, Caspar. Mattheus was the village attorney for Laichingen from 1683 until 1703. He died in 1721.
The third brother who learned to brew suds was Christian, christened Christianus. He remained in Feldstetten. His one son Caspar followed the same trade. Caspar's son, Caspar, was brewer and baker. And his son, Johan-Jacob Hilsenbeck, born Jan. 8, 1750 would likewise become brewer and owner of the "Löwen" Inn in Feldstetten. We will meet him in the next chapter - and in a most interesting way!
And now back to Bernhard and Maria (she went by her middle name).There must have
been great sadness in their home in the early summer of 1700, for their first
child, Andreas, died on June 28th. About six weeks later, another baby boy was
born. He was given the same name. Oh how our Bernhard so desperately wanted
to honor the name of his own father! Two years later on June 20th, 1702, a
little Conrad made his entrance! This was "our" Conrad
(spelling modernized), and he would become quite an extraordinary man in this
community as we shall later see.
In August of 1704, little Andreas died. The following June, Conrad
found a playmate with the birth of his brother, Johannes. Then in 1707 the
house was filled with great sadness once again. Maria, while in labor with her
fifth child, died. The following words were entered into the death book by the
pastor in Feldstetten:
"On the 19th of April around 5 in the evening, Anna Maria, wife of Bernhard Schwenck, weaver, died while in childbirth, and the grave was filled with two. She was 39 years of age, and was buried on Tuesday afternoon in the accompaniment of a full church..."
And so here is Bernhard, a young widow with a heart full of grief and two little boys to take care of. The situation did not allow for a full year of mourning before marrying again. And so he married a young woman Anna Durss, age 28, in October of the same year. Her father, Johann, then deceased, was a member of the court and town council in the village of Nellingen, a community lying about 7 miles northeast of Feldstetten. How he met Anna we may never know. Perhaps Bernhard, then at the age of 35, had become interested in the law, though the title of judge did not appear alongside his name in the birth registers until the year 1714 when Anna Barbara was born. In any case Bernhard and Anna met, and on the 15th of October, 1707 married in Feldstetten, she for the first time. During the years from 1708 through 1719 they had eight children: Four girls and four boys.
All six of Bernhard's sons became weavers, and four of them married there in Feldstetten. A lot of little Schwenks began filling the school house during the following centuries. When this Schwenk visited Feldstetten in May of 1994 and June of 1996, it had a population of around 1000, though strangely only two Schwenk families still reside there. One of those is a Hans Schwenk, a descendant of Bernhard. This the writer documented after the 1996 visit there with Hans, the sixth cousin of this writer.
In April of 1740 the Grim Reaper once again approached the home of Bernhard Schwenk, entered and this time took Bernhard away. The following excerpt from the Feldstetten death books tells us quite a bit about this man, though much from inference:
The 16th of April on Holy Easter Eve, Bernhardt Schwenckh, local first judge and weaver passed on. His age was 67 years and 7 months. His final illness lasted 8 days, but with severe pains ex difficulta te emittendi Urinam natis. He was buried Easter Monday with the accompaniment of a large gathering. The funeral text was 1 Peter, verse 1,6"
We don't need to know any Latin to see that the likely cause of death was kidney stones. And we can safely surmise he was a highly respected and probably beloved man in this community, which in 1740 then had a population of around 500. Incidentally, clergymen for many centuries entered quite a lot of Latin words into their Kirchenbücher - we call them church books. It was, of course, a rare common man who could read those words. When a pastor would write a letter to his superior, most of it would be in the German language, with a good many of the words spelled phonetically and not correctly, as was so common in those days. And then, with no apparent reason, an entire paragraph would be quilled in Latin? The motivation behind this custom is unclear to this researcher; in any event, the acquisition of a Latin-English dictionary was necessitated.
In 1752, Anna, the widow of Bernhard, passed away there in Feldstetten. The date was Feb. 5, 1752. She was age 72 and 7 months. She died from a fever and some kind of ailment which had troubled her since youth.
§§§
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
