Transcript

The Alamance Genealogist Reprint

Fogleman-Shoffner Connections and Roots in Germany Discovered

Contents: Family Traces the Homeplace of Its Ancestors . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 European Origins of Catherine Fogleman Discovered . . . . . . . 108 Exact European Origins of our Ancestor Hans George Vogelmann (George Fogleman) Discovered . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 Most Recent Fogleman-Shoffner Discoveries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Originally Published in September 2012, Volume 29, No. 3, pages 107‒118

Alamance County Genealogical Society PO Box 3052 Burlington NC 27215

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Fogleman-Shoffner Connections and Roots in Germany Rediscovered By Judie Fogleman Lewis

Dr. Aaron Spencer Fogleman, the author of Hopeful Journeys, German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717‒1775, discovered the path had come full circle from Germany to Colonial America, and back to the old country again. It is believed that Dr. Fogleman is the first Fogleman researcher, and there are several, to make the connection of Hans Georg Fogleman (appears as Vogelmann in his written signature on the registry of the Ship Shirley) to Sanzenbach, Germany.

The will of George Fogleman [Will Book “A,” pages 323‒325, Orange County Registrar of Deeds, Hillsborough], dated 18 May 1785, further established the family roots in Orange County (NC). Burlington Times-News Editor, Jay Ashley, best describes the event in October 2009, when family descendants met to mark the home tract of George and Catherine Low Fogleman. Later that same day, Dr. Fogleman presented his findings about the church records and a slide show of the birthplace of Catherine Low in Alsace, France. Ashley’s article is printed here with his permission.

Family Traces the Homeplace of Its Ancestors By Jay Ashley, Times-News

Editors’ Note: Reprinted with the permission of Jay Ashley.

Descendants of immigrant George Fogleman and his wife, Catherine Low, have erected a historical marker on the home tract of the first Fogleman settlers in this area.

The placement of the marker on Clapp Mill Road caps an eight-year search for the exact location of the property, as well as an even longer search for the exact European origins of George and Catherine Fogleman. The marker is on one of the four tracts split in the original 208-acre site purchased by George Fogleman on May 24, 1760. Wade Euliss is the current owner.

Judie Fogleman Lewis began with the original deed and the aid of William L. Miller Jr., a former branch manager for a surveying and mapping company in central Florida, who had platted a general location. Ellen Fogleman Whitworth had an early drawing showing a section belonging to “old George Fogleman.” Several people retrieved deeds and other documents through 1883 when a division of the property temporarily halted the search.

May Memorial Librarian Lisa Kobrin provided the name of a local map maker, William Moran, who helped locate the original home place. Moran was able to more precisely find the vicinity of the farm, and Euliss helped the group come even closer to their goal

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by presenting Lewis and Trudie McPherson with a packet of more recent deeds related to his property. But a lack of the material between 1883‒1887 still existed and Lewis asked Moran to take another look at it. Using the deeds and other legal material, he and Darrell Clapp were able to plat maps showing the chain-of-title to the property as it split to the current landowners.

Dr. Aaron S. Fogleman of Batavia, Ill., who recently discovered the European origins of Catherine Low Fogleman and wrote the inscription for the marker, was asked to do the unveiling. The origins of George Fogleman remain a mystery, but two weeks earlier, Dr. Fogleman visited the area in Lembach in the region of Alsace from where Catherine Low was born, christened, and lived before coming to this country. He later shared details about that visit during a presentation at the Clapp Family Library on Harris Road. The Foglemans were part of a large immigration of Germans into this area who had come lastly from Pennsylvania in the years before independence and were among the earliest European settlers in these parts. George was a weaver and farmer.

The marker further indicates that the Foglemans purchased 208 acres on the site in 1760 and built their home ½ mile west of what is now Clapp Mill Road (formerly Spoon Road). George arrived from Europe in Philadelphia on the ship “Shirley” in 1751. They lived in West Manheim Township, York County, Pennsylvania before moving to this area with other German families and were co-founders of Low’s Lutheran Church. Their descendants still live in this area.

European Origins of Catherine Fogleman Discovered By Dr. Aaron Spencer Fogleman

Editors’ Note: Reprinted with permission from the Fogleman Reunion Newsletter, May‒December 2008, Vol. VIII, Issue I & II.

About thirty years ago I became interested in Fogleman family history, and it did not take long to learn that the Foglemans from my home town and the surrounding area (present day Alamance and Guilford Counties, North Carolina) came from the German territories of central Europe by way of Pennsylvania in the years before American independence.

Following in the footsteps of other Fogleman family history researchers, I soon discovered the names of the family that first came to North Carolina in this period—George and Catherine Fogleman, or Georg and Catharine Vogelmann as their names are spelled in German. They lie buried in the graveyard at Low’s Lutheran Church in Guilford County, a church that they and many other German immigrant families helped to build. In time more discoveries of what other Fogleman family researchers already knew followed: Hans Georg Vogelmann (Fogleman) appears to have arrived in Philadelphia on the Ship Shirley on 5 September 1751. He and Catherine were connected to Sherman’s (St David’s) Lutheran Church in West Manheim Township of York County, Pennsylvania, before they moved with others to North Carolina in about 1760.

Low’s Lutheran Church is located in the eastern edge of Guilford County on Highway 61 near its intersection with Highway 62, about 2 miles west of the Alamance Battleground State Historic Site.

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Much is known about the family after their arrival in North Carolina and need not be repeated here. But what I really wanted to know was, where exactly did they come from in Germany? This is what many of us want to know about our ancestors. Why this is so important I cannot say. Maybe it allows us to make a connection, to realize some sense of identity as Americans. That is, Americans are people who came from somewhere else, and knowing that place is important to us. Whatever the reason, we just want to know.

My own ancestors (and probably many of yours) include numerous other families from central Europe who also came to this part of North Carolina and married in with the descendants of George and Catherine Fogleman, and finding the exact origins of any of these families was important to me. John and Margaret Moretz with their son Christian, Joseph Stähli (Staley) and his son Conrad, Georg Huber (Hoover) and his daughter Barbara, Jacob Fuchs (Fox) and his son David, the Moser brothers and perhaps their parents, and John Loeffel (Spoon) with his son Christian were all adults when immigrating from central Europe at this time. Where did they come from?

It will be difficult if not impossible to ever find the European origins of all these families, but a few weeks ago I finally made the discovery for one of them—Catherine Fogleman. Catherine married George Fogleman in Pennsylvania, before moving to North Carolina, and this means that her name was different and her place of origin could have been different as well. For years many have speculated that Catherine’s name might have been “Curtiss” or “Goetz,” but I had always been skeptical of either proposition. “Curtiss” comes from the David Isaiah Offman and Paul G Kinney records, which are personal notes on early German families kept from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries by these two Lutheran ministers. In some ways these notes are very helpful, but they do contain errors and a lot of unverified information. They are what historians call “secondary” sources, i.e., the work of someone else, and not the originals. Historians prefer to work with what are called “primary” sources, i.e., original records like wills, census data, land records, tombstone inscriptions, church books, and the like.

On the other hand, the emphasis placed by some on Catherine Goetz as the potential wife of Hans Georg Vogelmann is based on a primary source—the baptismal record of Sherman’s Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania that shows this woman and Hans Georg Vogelmann cosponsored a child there, but there were two Catherines who co-sponsored baptisms with our Vogelmann at Sherman’s: Catherine Goetz and Catherine Lau (Low).

There is no way of knowing from these records alone which if any of these Catherines Hans Georg married, but it is clear that up to this time (1755) neither Catherine was married to him, as George was still single. One cannot know the European origins of Catherine Fogleman without being certain of her family name before marrying George in Pennsylvania.

A George and Catherine Fogleman memorial monument and marker in the graveyard at Low’s Lutheran Church in southeast Guilford County, NC. The weathered marker reads: “In Memory of George & Catherine Fogleman, Pioneers & Progenitors, Died

1805 ‒ 1810 Respectively. Erected in 1930.”George—the immigrant, died in 1785, and Catherine died in

1811; their graves are in a row to the right behind the marker.

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A good way to discover the European origins of German immigrants in North Carolina in this period is to examine their family and neighbor connections with Pennsylvania, and here is where it gets interesting: A David Lau (Low) also appears in the Sherman's church records in Pennsylvania, and he was obviously close to Hans Georg Vogelmann because he asked him (and Catherine Goetz) to sponsor his child at its baptism. Moreover, David Lau and Hans Georg Vogelmann disappear from the Pennsylvania records in the late 1750s and appear in the North Carolina records shortly thereafter—both connected to the founding of Low’s Lutheran Church, where our Foglemans are buried.

There can be no doubt that these two families were close in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Interestingly enough, Lau is considered one of the founders of Low’s Lutheran Church (they even named the church after the family) and he is also considered a founder of Sherman’s Church. So which Catherine is our Catherine Fogleman, Goetz or Lau? It appeared to me that the Lau connection to the Foglemans was much stronger than any other, and so I hypothesized that Catherine Lau married Hans Georg Vogelmann in Pennsylvania and began looking for the European origins of the Lau family.

It did not take long before I found their home village in Annette Kunselman Burgert’s volume entitled Eighteenth Century Emigrants from the NorthernAlsace to America (pp. 328‒329; Camden, ME: Picton Press, 1992). Burgert’s work is a “secondary” source, but using reliable secondary sources can lead a family history researcher to the original records. Burgert is the best in the business at linking European and American records in order to find the European origins of German immigrants in 18th-century America. She has published numerous books in which she shows the family connections of thousands of immigrants in Pennsylvania to specific villages and families in central Europe. I and other historians find her work to be impeccable. Of course her work needs to be verified, and she provides detailed notes on her primary sources that allow anyone to do this.

In her Northern Alsace volume she provides the origins of David Lau and his many brothers and sisters, including Catherine. The David Lau of Sherman’s Lutheran Church and Low’s Lutheran Church was the brother of our Catherine Lau. At least one other Low brother (Johann Peter) and one other sister (Maria Elisabetha) emigrated to Pennsylvania as well. It is not impossible that their parents, Hans Peter and Maria Elisabetha came as well, but Burgert found no record of this. Further, Burgert found none of this family in the published Philadelphia immigrant ship lists. However, the connections Burgert found between these brothers and sisters in Pennsylvania to those with the same names and dates in Alsace are indisputable, and all of them can be viewed in her volume. The connections between the Laus/Lows in Pennsylvania and those in North Carolina we can make ourselves with what we already know.

The city of Lembach today. Catherine and 7 of her brothers and sisters were born in Lembach in the18th century. (Photograph courtesy of the official website of the City of Lembach.)

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The Lau family left for America from a village called Langensoultzbach in northern Alsace, but they had been moving around a lot before then. Catherine and seven of her brothers and sisters were born in nearby Lembach, with only the youngest daughter born in Langensoultzbach in 1741. (The Lembach Lutheran church book lists Catherine’s birthday as 9 September 1738). Their father, Hans Peter, had been a tailor at Lembach and was a day laborer in Langensoultzbach. Their mother’s name was Maria Elisabetha Gutmann. Hans Peter and Maria Elisabetha married in Lembach on 5 May 1721. Maria Elisabetha’s father was Samuel Gutmann, a former citizen and baker of Strassburg, the largest city in Alsace. Hans Peter’s father was Hans Theobald Lau, a “Hoffmann” (farmer on a manorial farm) in Sultzthal, also in the area.

Catherine and her brothers immigrated into Pennsylvania between 1741 and 1749, but unfortunately they do not appear in the ship lists, and so we cannot say exactly when they arrived. Some of their relatives emigrated to America years earlier, arriving in Philadelphia on the Ship John and William in 1732, and so they were clearly part of what historians call a “chain” migration. That is, family and fellow villagers go to America and write home, encouraging others to follow them. Their two grandfathers’ positions as a Hoffmann and a baker, followed by their father’s occupation first as a tailor and then as a day laborer supporting a large family suggests a downward economic plight that likely explains their emigration to America.

Alsace is a region now in northeastern France, but whose culture historically has been very “German.” Lembach, where Catherine was born, is very close to the German border city of Zweibrücken. The French took over this area militarily in the late 17th century, but its inhabitants kept their German language, Lutheran religion, and other aspects of their culture through the Second World War, in some ways to this very day.

Can we really be sure that Catherine Low of Alsace is our Catherine, the wife of George Fogleman? The Catharina Elisabetha Lau who came from the above places and was the sister of the other Lows in Pennsylvania and North Carolina was born in Lembach on 9 September 1738.

The tombstone of our Catherine Fogleman in Low’s Lutheran cemetery notes that she died in September 1811 and that she was born in September 1738. This convinces me that our ancestor, Catherine Vogelmann, wife of Hans Georg Vogelmann, was Catharina Elisabetha Lau of Langensoultzbach (born in Lembach), northern Alsace.

Soon because of my work I will be living in Germany for a year, and I intend to go to Langensoultzbach, Lembach, Sultzthal, and other nearby areas to investigate Catherine Low Fogleman’s world as it is now. Much if not most of the buildings from her period are probably still there, and the people (especially the older people) speak German. Very likely there will be a village archives and perhaps even a published local history that could be very interesting. And, of course, I will take a lot of pictures.

Americans researching their family history often want to know as much as they possibly can about their immigrant ancestors, and Foglemans are no exception. We already knew when and where George Fogleman arrived (Philadelphia, 1751), and where he and Catherine lie buried (Low’s Lutheran Church, Guilford County, North Carolina). Recently Judie Lewis was able to pinpoint the exact location of George and Catherine’s original homestead nearby in Alamance County. And now we know Catherine’s exact European origins. That is a lot to know about immigrants from so long ago, but of course we want to know more. Someday we may discover the origins of other German families who are our relatives, perhaps even Hans Georg Vogelmann himself.

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Exact European Origins of our Ancestor Hans Georg Vogelmann (George Fogleman) Discovered By Dr. Aaron Spencer Fogleman

Editors’ Note: Reprinted with permission from the Fogleman Newsletter, April‒June 2012, Special Edition.

Four years ago I was able to discover the exact European origins of Catherine Fogleman, the wife of our immigrant ancestor George Fogleman (Hans Georg Vogelmann), and the mother of many of the Foglemans in North Carolina from whom most of us are descended. As many of you know by now, her name was Catherina Elisabetha Lau (Low), and she emigrated from the parish of Lembach in northern Alsace with many of her family members to Pennsylvania in the 1740s, where she met George Fogleman a few years later, before they moved to North Carolina in ca.1760 with other Foglemans and Lows and helped found Low’s Lutheran Church in what is now Alamance County. Both George and Catherine lie buried in the church graveyard, below tombstones inscribed in German. It was quite an accomplishment to discover Catherine’s origins, and we all celebrated this at our meeting in the fall of 2009, but we also wanted to know more: We wanted to know the home town or village of George Fogleman.

I have wanted to know where George came from for the past 34 years. I became interested in my old family history and immigrant origins in 1978 and began looking for the origins of Hans Georg Vogelmann and his family at that time. It did not take long to determine that he probably came from northern Württemberg because over 90% of the hundreds of Vogelmanns in the LDS records came from this region and because a lot of people from there emigrated to Pennsylvania and thereabouts in the18thcentury. But which of these hundreds of Vogelmanns was ours, if he was even listed among them (and it turns out that he wasn’t at the time), and from which of the hundreds of Lutheran parishes in Württemberg did he come, assuming that he came from this region (and I now know that he did)?

There were many stumbling blocks and red herrings that lay in the path toward discovering George Fogleman’s origins during these many years. The LDS records are an indispensable and ultimately critical resource, but they are a work in progress, and so is the software that we must use to access them online. Also, a fellow named Melchior Vogelmann kept cropping up in the records, and he was a distraction. Melchior came from Möckmühl, a Lutheran town in Württemberg and emigrated to Pennsylvania about when George did. Also, his son and namesake migrated to North Carolina, also about when George did. But Melchior settled in Mecklenburg County—a different world than the area around Low’s Church, as far as these things go, and there is nothing showing a connection between him and George. Moreover, in 1986 I sat in the Lutheran Church at Möckmühl and read through the originals of their church books and found no sign of our George, or anyone else from the Low’s community.

I am happy to announce that in late April 2012 I finally discovered the home village of our George Fogleman, and yesterday (22 May 2012) I was able to confirm this by looking at the microfilm of the church books at a nearby LDS Family History Center. I can now say definitively that our Hans Georg Vogelmann in the Low’s Lutheran Church graveyard in Alamance County, North Carolina came from the small village of Sanzenbach, in the parish of Westheim (now called Rosengarten), in the territory of the free imperial city of Schwäbisch Hall, which is in the modern state of Württemberg (now Baden-Württemberg) in Germany [see map on next page].

Let me explain why I am convinced that this is the right place. From the Offman/Kinney records, Low’s Church records, and the graveyards in the area we know of several Foglemans/Vogelmanns who were

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obviously related. What we needed was a North Carolina record that indicated the exact birth date of one of them. This was critical because names alone do not prove that a Fogleman in America was the same as anyone with the same name in Germany—there are just too many of them (hundreds, in fact). In the absence of migration records, wills, or anything else that indicated where the North Carolina people came from, all that we can do is try to find an exact birth date of someone in North Carolina who was born in Germany. With this we can look through the LDS records to find the Vogelmann with the same birth date, and then note the town or village in Germany where that Vogelmann lived.

Several children of Georg and Anna Margaretha Sannwald Fogleman were born in the village of Sanzenbach (3), but their first child, Anna Margaretha, was born in Raibach (2). The distance from Schwabisch Hall (1) is 1.4 miles for Raibach, 2.2 miles for Rosengarten (4), 3.7 for Westheim, 3.8 for Sanzenbach (3), and 18 to 22 miles to Zweiflingen. It is 67 miles from Alsace, France (birth place of Catherine Low) to the Hall, and 375 miles from the Hall to Rotterdam, Holland.

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Michael and Anna Margaretha Fogleman Shoffner’s monument in the graveyard at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church located near the village of Alamance in Alamance County, NC.

The person who allows us to make this connection was Anna Margaretha Vogelmann. With the assistance of Judie Lewis, I was able to find the critical information about her. Anna Margaretha married Michael Shoffner and lies buried in St Paul’s Lutheran Church, not far from Low’s Lutheran. Her tombstone says that she was born on 3 August 1724 and that her father was Georg Vogelmann. The Westheim church books note that an Anna Margaretha Vogelmann was born on 3 August 1724 in Raibach (which is near Sanzenbach) and that her father was Georg Vogelmann and her mother was Anna Margaretha Sannwald. The match is clear, and by looking through the rest of the Westheim church books we see who all of her brothers and sisters were, and they match nicely with the other Fogleman names we know about in Alamance County.

Anna Margaretha Vogelmann (Shoffner) was the oldest child and had six brothers, three of whom died as infants or small children. Georg Michael, Georg Melchior, and Johann Georg emigrated with her to Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and I believe appear in Low’s and other records. The last, Johann Georg, married Catherine Lau/Low and is our ancestor. (Note that “Johann” and “Hans” are interchangeable in German.)

The Westheim church books reveal a great deal about our George Fogleman and his family, including who his parents and grandparents were. George was born in a small village called Sanzenbach on 2 September 1732. His mother was Anna Margaretha Sannwald and his father was Georg Vogelmann. Our George was named after either his father or his godfather, also named Georg. His grandfathers were Adam Vogelmann and Michel (Michael) Sannwald.

The Vogelmanns and Sannwalds were large families in Westheim parish, which included Raibach, Uttenhoffen, Sanzenbach, Rieden, Sittenhardt, Westheim, and a few other very small places. They appear to have lived in the parish for many generations, but they moved around a lot within the parish. More details will emerge as I finish working through the originals of the church books and other records.

The village of Sanzenbach and Westheim (now Rosengarten) parish lie practically within the shadows of the town wall of Schwäbisch Hall, and I recommend that you orient yourselves first on this important and well known city when trying to find out more about the homeland of our Fogleman ancestors. We are quite lucky to have our people coming from a place like Schwäbisch Hall, which is a city that interests many historians who frequently write about it and the surrounding area.

While stationed in Germany with the Army from 1981 to 1984, I lived about 30 minutes away and visited there once. Because of its somewhat remote location Schwäbisch Hall avoided the devastation of both world wars, as well as the Thirty Years War (1618‒1648), which in some ways was worse than World War II. Alas, a fire in the late 1600s burned most of the town, and with this took away the medieval

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architectural heritage. But they quickly rebuilt, and you can see today the buildings our Vogelmanns knew before emigrating. They were new at the time, and now they are 300 years old.

Much more information about the Fogleman family and their homeland will be forthcoming, but for now the issue regarding the exact location of that homeland is finally settled, and we know where to look to find out more about the place and its people. At some point we must have another reunion so that I can talk to you about this discovery, as we did when we celebrated the placing of the Fogleman historical marker and I spoke about Catherine Low Fogleman’s origins. Perhaps we can do this after I get a chance to visit Schwäbisch Hall, Sanzenbach, and the surrounding area. In any event I will certainly look forward to it.

Most Recent Fogleman-Shoffner Discoveries Editors’ Note: After the article about the “Exact European Origins of Our Ancestor Hans Georg Vogelmann (George Fogleman) Discovered” appeared in the Special Edition of the Fogleman Newsletter, Dr. Fogleman found church records that will impact Foglemans and Shoffners throughout the United States, but more particularly in North Carolina and Tennessee.

The following e-mail message from Dr. Aaron Fogleman to Harry Shoffner and Judie Lewis details his most recent findings from the church records in Germany.

Dear Harry (and Judie),

Today [2 Aug 2012] I began looking at the LDS microfilm on Orendelsall/Württemberg and the results were incredible. Everything we suspected is now confirmed: The Foglemans and Shoffners met in this place, and emigrated from there to America. Let me explain below, and try to catch Judie up on this.

You may have noticed that the Vogelmann family no longer appears in the Sanzenbach/Westheim records after ca.1740, yet they emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1751. And there were no Shoffners in Sanzenbach or thereabouts. Yet Michael Shoffner Sr. was married to Anna Margaretha Vogelmann (Hans Georg’s sister) and both are buried at St Paul’s Lutheran in Alamance County. So where were the Vogelmanns from 1740 to 1751 and how did they meet the Shoffners? My aunt once told me, “All I know is that the old people told me at the reunions back in the 1920s and 1930s that Foglemans and Shoffners came over together on the same ship.”

My aunt was right. Today I looked at the church records of Orendelsall and found everyone. The Vogelmann parents (Hans Georg and Anna Margaretha Sannwald) moved to this area in 1740. Their death records (Margaretha on 5 October 1757 and Hans Georg on 28 December 1758) note that they were born in Raibach and Sanzenbach respectively. Moreover the birth dates listed in those records match exactly what we had found in the Westheim church books.

The Vogelmanns lived in a small settlement called “Tiergarten,” which was between Zweiflingen and Friedrichsruhe in the parish of Orendelsall (a few miles east of Heilbronn and northwest of Schwäbisch Hall). It was in the political territory of Zweiflingen, which belonged to the ruling Hohenlohe family. Orendelsall was the parish. If you look on Google Maps you will find Zweiflingen, Friedrichsruhe, and Orendelsall, but not Tiergarten. The latter word means “zoo,” but what it refers to was a giant game park that the Hohenlohe family had built in the early 17th century. Perhaps you have heard of stories of

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elaborate hunts for aristocracy and royalty, in which the game was driven past them while they shot. All of this was destroyed in the Thirty Years War (1618‒48), and part of it was rebuilt in the early 18th century as a Pleasure Garden, which also included animals.

In 1712 they built a palace, which is still there—Friedrichsruhe. They also opened part of the old game park to new farmers, who built a community named after the game park: Tiergarten. Apparently this really took off after 1740. So the Vogelmanns left Sanzenbach for Tiergarten in order to take advantage of the newly available land.

Hans Georg and Margaretha Voglemann had three more children in Tiergarten, none of which made it to America: Anna Magdalena (b. 18 January 1740, d. 1749) Georg Casper (b. 3 December 1742, d. 8 June 1745) Anna Catharina (b. 6 January 1745, d. 1802 in the area)

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The Voglemann parents (Hans Georg and Anna Margaretha Sannwald) moved to “Tiergarten,” between Zweiflingen (5) and Friedrichsruhe (6) in the Orendelsall parish, where they died in 1758 and 1757 respectively. This was also where they met the Schaffer/Schaffert/Schaffner (Shoffner) family circa 1740. And, this is where Margaretha Voglemann married Michael Schaffert, Sr. in 1751.

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Thus, Anna Catharina was six years when her brothers and sisters began emigrating to America, and she remained with her parents.

Now for the Shoffners. Here the LDS online records were both helpful and misleading. We know that Anna Margaretha Vogelmann (immigrant Georg’s oldest sister) married Michael Shoffner Sr. and went to North Carolina. We know from Grimm’s dictionary (the most authoritative work on the German language) that Schaffer and Schaffert were alternate spellings of Schaffner (Shoffner) during this period. The online records for Orendelsall show that a Michael Schaffert married an Anna Margaretha “Vogel” on 27 April 1751. Harry’s list of Michael Shoffner and Anna Margaretha Fogleman’s children was very helpful, as it had some exact birth dates, making it clear which were born in Germany and which in America. All of those on Harry’s list appear in the online Orendelsall records under Schaffert and “Vogel” except for Michael Jr.

Today I found everyone in the original church books and noted mistakes in the LDS online records. In fact, Anna Margaretha Schaffert’s maiden name really was Vogelmann, and not “Vogel,” and her father was Georg Vogelmann of Tiergarten (originally Sanzenbach). Also, Michael Jr. appears as he should (b. 1 January 1752). Thus the online records misspelled Margaretha’s maiden name and omitted Michael Jr. The best part is that the pastor noted in the register after the birth of each child that their parents later had “gone to America.”

Now we know what happened. The Vogelmanns moved from Sanzenbach to Tiergarten/Orendelsall in 1740, where they met the Schafferts (Shoffners). In 1751, as their kids began growing up, some of them emigrated to Pennsylvania and then North Carolina, probably just after they watched their oldest sibling marry Michael Schaffert. They made it to North Carolina in 1760 and wrote home about how well things were going. After the birth of their seventh child in 1762, Michael Schaffert Sr. and wife Anna Margaretha Vogelmann followed the Fogleman brothers to North Carolina. Below is the information on the Shoffner/Fogleman children in Tiergarten:

Johann Michael (b.1 Jan 1752) Johann Georg (b. 29 Jun 1754) Anna Dorothea (b. 23 Mar 1756, d. 1756) Anna Magdalena (b. 28 Aug 1757) Georg Martin (b. 11 Dec 1758) Johann Friedrich (b. 18 Jun 1761) Anna Catharina (b. 4 Jul 1762; did not emigrate or died before reaching NC)

Michael Schaffert and Anna Margaretha Vogelmann probably emigrated in 1763 or shortly thereafter, after she recovered from childbirth and the French and Indian War ended in America. Harry’s list shows that they had a son named Peter born in North Carolina in 1769.

This has been one of the biggest days I have ever had researching family history. Now we know the Shoffner-Fogleman connection, and now we know where the Foglemans spent their final eleven years in Europe. Schwäbisch Hall lay off the beaten trail as far as 18th-century emigration to America went, and I wondered how this happened. Now we know that the Vogelmann family moved first to Zweiflingen/Orendelsall, which lay much closer to the large streams of migrants heading for America in the 18th century. There is still a lot more to learn. Zweiflingen has a “Heimatbuch” that I ordered today. It will contain a lot of history of the area, especially regarding the ruling noble family and their “Tiergarten,” probably with pictures. I am nearly finished with the Westheim church books and will

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update you later with details on the Vogelmann and related families in that area going back to the mid-17th century.

If you want to begin surfing to find out more on where the Foglemans and Shoffners spent their last years in Germany, I recommend that you orient your inquiries on Zweiflingen and Friedrichsruhe. You will see a palace and a resort (with golf course) in the latter, and this is exactly where the Vogelmann family lived (the “Tiergarten”). For $400 per night you can sleep in that palace, but it will probably cost you more to play golf, use the spa, or get a massage. I bet the food is fabulous—Württemberg has the best food in Germany. Who wants to blow $10,000 on an exquisite find-your-roots vacation? Let’s do it! We can stay in the palace and take easy drives to see Sanzenbach, Schwäbisch Hall, and Lembach to check out all of the old home places. (Remember Catharina Lau Vogelmann?)

Good night, Aaron

Dr. Aaron Spencer Fogleman is Professor of History at Northern Illinois University at DeKalb.

A native of Burlington, North Carolina, he is the son of Robert Bruce Fogleman and Nancy Spencer Surratt, both from Burlington. The family moved west in 1965, and he attended school in Oklahoma, northern Illinois, and northeastern Montana. Dr. Fogleman studied History and German at Oklahoma State University from 1977 to 1981, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree, and also completing the Army ROTC program. In1981‒1984 he was stationed with the US Army Signal Corps in Ludwigsburg, Germany, where he was promoted to first lieutenant, then captain.

A Fulbright scholar at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, Germany from 1984 to 1986, he received a Masters of Arts degree in Modern History. His Master’s thesis was emigration from Baden (a region in southwest Germany) in the 18th century. Dr. Fogleman also studied Early American History at the University of Michigan from 1986‒1991, receiving a PhD degree. His dissertation was German immigration, settlement, and political culture in colonial America, 1717‒1775. He was an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alabama at Mobile from 1991‒1997, then an Associate Professor from 1997 to present. He was a visiting scholar, Max Planck Institute for History, Göttingen, Germany, 1996‒97 and 1999. He is a former Associate Professor of History at the University of South Alabama in Mobile.

Dr. Fogleman has presented works at a large number of locations throughout the world, and has written articles for numerous publications. His three major publications include Atlantic Lives: An 18th-Century Couple’s Search for Truth and Opportunity in America (UNC Press, Chapel Hill, forthcoming); Jesus Is Female: Moravians and the Challenge of Radical Religion in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2007); and Hopeful Journeys: Germany Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1996).

Judie Fogleman Lewis has served as editor of the Fogleman Newsletter since its first edition in August 2001. Each issue is available for review by selecting the Fogleman Newsletter Archive icon, at the official web site, http://lynnpdesigncom/foglemanreunion/, created by Lynn Dougherty, also a Fogleman descendant.