Our Kistler Cousins
A few weeks ago I was thinking of the Kistler family, which married into our Hagenbuch family through the patriarch Andreas Hagenbuch’s (b. 1715) daughter Christina (b. 1759). Christina’s mother was Andreas’ second wife,...
Tagged: Berks County
Does Food Define Heritage?
On New Year’s Day, Linda and I were supposed to have friends of ours over for the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch meal of sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, and pork. However, since it was just to be...
Making Sense of Christian Hagenbuch’s Family
Last year, we explored how two Christian Hagenbuchs of about the same age were living in Ohio during the mid-1800s. These were Christian (b. 1770) who was the son of Michael (b. 1746) and...
Henry Hagenbuch’s Revised Birth and Death: The Impact
As my father, Mark, and I have often written, genealogy is much more than names and dates. But what happens when a crucial part of our family’s story is dependent upon one or two...
Henry Hagenbuch’s Revised Birth and Death: The Evidence
Genealogy is like a giant jigsaw puzzle—one where key pieces are missing and a clear picture of what is being assembled is unknown. This article, the first in a two-part series, will examine a...
Family On The Move: 1800–1840
The first part in this article series followed 300 years of family history from 1500 to 1800, as our Hagenbuch ancestors moved first from Switzerland to Germany and then to America. One line of...
Family On The Move: 1500–1800
Like many American families, our Hagenbuch family story is one of movement. It began in Switzerland sometime before the 1500s, migrated to what is now Germany in the 1600s, and finally came to America...
Seeing Ghosts
Ghost (noun): an apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image. As genealogists, my father and I see a lot of...
Drawing Lines to Christian Hagenbuch
Genealogy can be tough, as we trace family lines from the people of the present to those of the past. And, there is no guarantee of success either. Sometimes documents are missing and information...
Thoughts on Timothy Hagenbuch’s 1841 Letter to Daniel
In September of 1841, Timothy Hagenbuch (b. 1804) of Albany Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania mailed a letter to his brother, Daniel (b. 1816), who was living in Delaware County, Indiana. This letter and another...
