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Here, gathered in our beloved South Dakota, are a few members of our Williamson / Mattson Clan. Charles and Luella are to be blamed (be kind, they didn't know what they were doing). We're generally a happy bunch and somewhat intelligent (notwithstanding our tenuous grasp on reality). I'm also proud to say that most of us still have our teeth.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Hans George Frederick Pfluger, Our Common Williamson Grandparent Leaves Germany.



Pictures from Wiernsheim, Germany. Our Ancestral Home for the Pfluger Name.

From the Fortress of Solitude
Pleasant Grove.

Dear Williamsons,
Tonight I present a bit of information taken directly from the following web site on Pfluger family history. http://www.phlegar.org

This information tells the story of our common ancestor Hans George (spelled many ways) Pfluger, my 6th Great Grandparent as illustrated in the line below. You will find your own tie by replacing your Williamson grandparent with mine (Charles). Of course we all have a common Grandparent in William Jonathan Williamson.

Hans George Frederick Pfluger (6th Great Grandparent to my generation) to George Frederick Plieger to Abraham Pfleger to Anabella Phlegar to Margaret Ann Willis to William Jonathan Williamson to Charles Williamson to Charles Williamson to Me (Victor).

And now information from the web site mentioned above. I've taken the liberty to shorten some of the information in the interest of your time.

In 1700, in the countryside between Pforzheim and Stuttgart, there was a village by the name of Wiernsheim near the Schwartzwald or "Black Forest." In that town lived a Pflüger family: the father was Hans Jerg Pflüger, and the mother was Maria Hübsch. Hans Jerg and Maria had five children, all of them today listed in the town's Church Register (Kirchenregister). They named their first son Hans Jerg (Hans George) my 6th Great Grandfather, after his father and perhaps other ancestors. He was born in 1703, on the first of January. After the younger Hans George reached maturity, when he was 22, he married Anna Elisabeth Strobel. Hans George and wife Anna Elisabeth soon had two children of their own: Anna Elisabeth, born 27 August 1726, died 7 January 1807 and Ursula Catharina, born 22 August 1728, died 10 March 1772 Entries for the children of Hans George and Anna Elisabeth end here in the Wiernsheim Kirchenregister. At the same time, a strange entry for a marriage attributed to Hans George the elder, presents a puzzle: Hans Jerg to Eva Franzisk Jost (my 6th Great Grandmother) from Pinache, another neighboring village. The solution to the puzzle may be explained in the events that followed the marriage of Hans George to Eva. On the Kirchenregister Pflüger family page it says that "nothing more is known about the son Hans George Pflüger, linenweaver in Wiernsheim." This comment is similar to others in the Palatinate area of Germany when young men suddenly disappeared. The young men could not leave their community without permission of their sovereign because they were required to serve in the militia of their province. So, many young men disappeared one day, gone forever. Their families surely knew the circumstances, but how sad for these families. How sadder still for the Pflüger family. Hans George was 27 or 28 years old. He had remarried after his first wife died in 1728 to a woman named Eve (our great grandmother) (the name found on the 1731 ship's manifest). When Hans George and Eve left, they also left behind the daughters born to Hans George and Anna Elisabeth Strobel. The circumstances and reasons for leaving these daughters behind are lost in time. Those reasons may have been the best of reasons: ship voyages were very risky; the Pennsylvania frontier looked idyllic in the brochures being distributed in the Palatinate, but it was unknown and foreign; the devastated Strobel family may have pleaded for their granddaughters to remain behind. The Journey Begins The Neckar River runs past Wiernsheim and empties into the Rhine. A boat voyage down the Rhine was the easiest way, though not the cheapest way, to get to Rotterdam where so many ships departed, filled with German emigrants. Perhaps Hans George and Eve, and now a Maria Barbara, chose one of the Rhine vessels headed for Rotterdam. Even once they arrived in Rotterdam, they may have had a long wait to board a ship headed first to England—required by the British government—and eventually to America. Finally, in August 1731, the Ship Samuel landed at the port of Philadelphia. The ship's manifest (list of passengers) duplicated the list presented to the colonial government in Philadelphia. It included four Pflüger passengers: Hans Georg, Eve, Maria Catarina, and Maria [suspected to be Maria Barbara]. Maria Catarina was the surprise voyager, but she was the daughter of Hans Georg and probably of his wife Eve, a fact we know because Maria Catarina was named in Hans George's later Will. Both Marias were listed with the children on the passenger list. Maria Catarina may have been a toddler when she left Wiernsheim with her parents or she may have been born enroute.

To Learn More about the Pflugers, please visit the following web site from which this information was taken:
http://www.phlegar.org

Simply,
Victor