This blog was created with the idea of bringing together information about our families of origin from extended family members. Although I understand a lot of you have been reading this blog, I have gotten only three comments from family members, mostly a variation of “cool!”. I am hoping for a more interactive forum since it takes time to manage a blog and I lose interest when I am not getting feedback. Please give me snippets of family lore! You will get attribution in posts to keep the memories alive.
The Fritz/McElligott clan also inherits from two other families: the Lee family from Canada/Ireland and the Fehrenbach family from Gengenbach, Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany. This post refers to the Fehrenbach family. I am planning a post about the Lee family as well and would appreciate any information you have in the form of comments to this blog. I will incorporate new information into the Lee family post with attribution.
The Fehrenbach clan has a long history in the Black Forest town of Gengenbach. The earliest ancestor I have found is Michael Fehrenbach, Grandma Helen’s 4th Great Grandfather, who was born in Gengenbach some time in the late 17th or early 18th century. There was a steady line of Fehrenbachs in Gengenbach direct to Grandma Helen. My sister Ruth Doherty has done significant research on the family through her connections in Germany and hopefully she will provide some additional insight.
Gengenbach is a beautiful town that several of us have visited. To me it looks like the Disneyland version of Germany except it’s real. People live in these homes and run these shops. Gengenbach was founded in the 13th century and became an Imperial Free City in 1360. However, its history goes back further to the founding of a Benedictine monastery by Archbishop Pirmin († 753) at the mouth of the Kinzigtal at the western edge of the Black Forest. The abbey was founded with the support of the Frankish Count Ruthard, and with its designation by Pope Innocent II as a free abbey became the justification for designation of Gengenbach as a free Imperial city.
The last Fehrenbach of our line who lived and died in Germany was Meinrad Fehrenbach, a master butcher who married Balbina Anna on September 24, 1846. I have actually seen their signatures in the marriage register of the Kloster. Their son Joseph apparently left Gengenbach around 1880 to come to America. I have only one, rather unflattering picture of Joseph with his sons, which I won’t publish here. Maybe someone can find more.
Grandma Helen is the daughter of Joseph and Stephanie Lienhard from the nearby town of Altdorf. They came first to Michigan and then in the mid-1880’s moved to Kansas City. I don’t have any information about their marriage but Joseph did marry Theresia Biedermann on June 3, 1875 in Gengenbach. I have as yet no further information about Theresia, who was 33 years old at the time. Joseph and Stephanie had seven children: Joseph, John, Rosa, Daniel, Mary, Barbara and Helen. I have yet to meet someone named Fehrenbach to whom I wasn’t related (including in Germany, although that was a bit iffy) , as the family is relatively small and the family name uncommon outside the Black Forest region.
Joseph died on June 14, 1914 in Kansas City. Stephanie died on January 18, 1949 at our Aunt Barb Parnacott’s house in Kansas City. I do have a vague memory of her in her room (I was five when she died, so it’s feasible it’s a real memory) before she died. I would really like to find out when and where they were married and what happened to Theresia Biedermann in Gengenbach. If anyone has information about this, please share it.
David-
Thanks for responding. I apologize for taking so long to reply, the blog has been dormant for a while but I am restarting it. I am told that the Fehrenbach name comes only from Baden-Wurttemburg and the Black Forest. Our family is from Gengenbach, which is a beautiful town in the Black Forest. Hopefully I”ll have more to say in the future. I have had good luck with ancestry.com in finding relatives in Germany.
Steve Fritz
I talked with an Ahnenforscher in Gengenbach once (with the help of my German friend, Fritz Schedlbauer), and learned from him that the Fehrehbachs came to Gengenbach from Buchholz. I don’t think that was necessarily a direct connection (they may have gone through other towns), and Buchholz may be the Springfield of Germany – not exactly unique. I also had coffee with Emil Fehrenbach, a lawyer whose name was on a sign on the big (relatively speaking) streets in Gengenbach leading up to the Marktplatz. He was very gracious, but said he didn’t think we were related because his family came from some other town in Germany. He didn’t say which town it was. But perhaps we are related after all!
I must have written this before I did a lot of research. As the Ahnenforscher said, the family did reside in Bucholz in 1791 when Bernhard Fehrenbach, our 3rd great grandfather was born. The Michael Fehrenbach I found was to young to vs our ancestors. The earliest I can document, provisionally, was Laurence Fehrenbach, born in 1723 in Breisgau near Freiburg. Meinrad Fehrenbach was the earliest born in Gengenbach. All of these towns are reasonably close today but not so much in the eighteenth century. The search continues.