Their daughter, Christena, married Conrad Weifenbach in 1866 in Auglaize County, Ohio. And one of their daughters, Anna Christina Weifenbach married my great-grandfather, Conrad Tobias Roediger in 1889, eight years after he arrived in America. All of this is very clear and well documented from documents here in the US.
What has been a mystery to me up until recently is where the Diegel's were from in Germany. The first clue I found was in a 7 page typewritten family history, written primarily by Linna Diegel Klinefelter Ratcliff about 1968 and edited by Donna (Diegel) Roberts in 1981 which I will refer to as the Diegel Family History or DFH to save my fingers.
I will begin with the first paragraph from the Family History document:
According to this account, George Diegel (my 3G Grandfather) and his brother, Jacob were from Hassel Greis, Rothenberg, Hurhessen, Germany. I can find no evidence that such a place exists, but what struck me about this was how similar it looks to Kreis Rotenburg, Kassel, Kurhessen, which not only exists, but is in fact the very same area from which the Eichenauers came from. Rotenburg is a town, known more specifically as Rotenburg an der Fulda, which means that it is the Rotenburg situated on the Fulda River. Kreis refers to a local district within a larger government district known as a Regierungsbezirk. Rotenburg is a small district within the larger district of Kassel which is one of the administrative districts of the state of Hesse(n). During the time that the Prussians held sway over this region, it was known as Kurhessen.
So, I am theorizing that this family history was orally communicated to someone unfamiliar with the place names in Germany who either wrote it down by hand or typed it and who simply misread the capital letters or misheard the actual names while typing them. If this is true, then George and Jacob were from one of the villages within the district of Rotenburg. I have not been able to find a full list of the towns and villages in this administrative district. But, not only does the government break down the villages and towns into districts, so does the Lutheran Church. The Lutheran Church's break down does not exactly mirror the government's, but it does give me a list of 65 village churches within the ecclesiastical district of Rotenburg whose records have been partially or completely digitized.
So I spent hours and hours over several days looking for Diegels in the villages of the Rotenburg District looking for the two brothers--which I discovered much later had been largely unnecessary.
According to the DFH, George Diegel was born 7 March 1811 in "Hassel Greis, Rothenburg, Herhessen, Germany". Unfortunately, his brother, Jacob's birthdate is not provided in this document, however, it does state that he was married and had three daughters when he emigrated. According to the DFH, Jacob married Mary Christena Schwarzen. The three daughters born in Germany were Anna, who married Christopher Clay in Loraine Co., Mary, who married Henry Berlet Sr. in Loraine Co., and Eliza, who married a "Mr. Reynolds" before she was 18, and subsequently divorced, also in Loraine Co.
From census records, I learned that George and his wife moved to Washington Twp, Auglaize Co, OH before 1840, and that his brother Jacob's family (which had grown with the addition of two sons born in Loraine Co, Jacob and Adam, plus the husbands of two of his daughters and their children) also moved to Washington Twp, Auglaize Co. before 1870.
Armed with this information, I searched obituaries for clues as to where they had come from in Germany.
This paid off when I found the obituary of Eliza Diegel, Jacob's daughter. There is a lot of useful information in this obituary, but for now just notice that she was born in Schwartzen Hassel Greis, Rothenberg on 30 April 1834. Of course, you can read the rest, just meet me at the end of the obit for a continuation of this discussion:
As soon as I found this, I knew that what I had hypothesized from my study of the 65 churches in Rotenburg District was right on target. Schwartzen Hassel had to be a corruption of Schwarzenhasel, which is one of the 65 churches I had been trolling.
I had already learned the birth date of Eliza's uncle George Diegel (my 3G Grandfather), from both the DFH and from FindAGrave.com, to be 7 March 1811, and when I looked in the Schwarzenhasel Church records I found his baptismal record:
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| 1811--März 12, George der Sohn des Bauers Henrich Diegel et ux. Elisab geb. Pfiel, nat. 7ten Abends 5 Uhr. Gevatter. George Diegel Geschirrmeister? in Kaßel |
Translated, baptized 12 March 1811, George, the son of the farmer Henrich Diegel and his wife Elisabeth née Pfiel, born on the 7th at 5 pm. Baptismal sponsor was George Diegel, Master craftsman of Tableware? in Kassel.
This led me to his Confirmation record. His is Number 3:
This confirms what was previously known about George Diegel: He is the son of the farmer, Henrich Diegel and Elisabeth Pfiel and was born on 7 May 1811, and adds the info that he was 14 years, 2 months and 14 days old when he was confirmed in the Lutheran Church of Schwarzenhasel on 22 May 1825.
Another test to ensure that I hadn't fallen down another rabbit hole involved George's older brother, Jacob and his wife and three daughters who were born in Germany, Eliza being the one whose obit confirmed that they were from this particular village.
So, I will continue with Eliza, who according to the obit (and agreed with in the DFH), was born 30 April 1834. So, opening the Schwarzenhasel Baptismal Book 1830-1937, I searched for a corresponding record. I did not find a baptismal record for her on that date, but I did find one for an Anna Elisabeth Diegel, daughter of Jacob Diegel almost exactly one year earlier. Because the entry covers two pages width, I will present the two pages as two separate images so it is more legible. Fortunately, it is the first record on the page, so I can retain the header:
In this first half, I learned from the second column that Anna Elisabeth Diegel was born in Schwarzenhasel in House #54
From the second column I learned that there were 31 days in April in 1833. At least that is what this record gives as her birth date. Obviously that is an error because we all know that "30 days has September, April, June and November". Be that as it may, she was born between 11-12 at night.
According to the third column she was baptized in Schwarzenhasel on May 5th.
Fourth column: her given name was Anna Elisabeth, a legitimate daughter. Jump to the bottom of the next image for an explanation of columns 5-6.
Column five lists her parents as Jacob Diegel, Schneider [tailor], and Christina Maria Kirchner.
Column six provides the name of her baptismal sponsor as Anna Elisabeth Sauer, Jungfrau [unmarried young woman].
This record made me wonder if I had not indeed fallen down a rabbit hole, as there is a year's difference between the American records and this German record concerning her birth. Then add this bit of information about Eliza Diegel's parents gleaned from the DFH:
According to this, her mother's name was Schwarzen, rather than Kirchner, as the German record states.
However, I again was saved from disbanding the Schwarzenhasel records when I found the death certificate of Eliza's younger brother Jacob who had been born in Loraine Co, OH about 5 years after their arrival in the US:
The VERY IMPORTANT thing to note about this death certificate is that Edward Diegel, Jacob's son, states that Jacob's father was also Jacob Diegel and his mother was Mary Christina Kirchner. This lines up with the German record, with the minor flip-flopping of the first and middle name and the anglicizing of Maria to Mary.
I will skip over the other two daughter's baptismal records in Germany, and the birth records of Jacob Diegel and his wife, Christina Maria Kirchner. But I assure you that they are all there and they all correspond neatly with the records of the Jacob Diegel family found on FindAGrave, leaving no doubt that my Diegel ancestors were indeed from Schwarzenhasel.
I have pondered on how the DFH mistakenly assigned the maiden name of "Schwarzen" to Jacob's wife. Her birth record in Schwarzenhasel confirms that her father was Nicolaus Kirchner, and there is no marriage record in Schwarzenhasel to suggest she was married to someone named Schwarz before she married Jacob Diegel. So, my guess is that someone who didn't know much German, trying to make sense of information written in German, thought that the place name, "Schwarzen hassel", referred to her maiden name. Just my theory.
Finally, since the Diegel, Weifenbach, Eichenauer and Rödiger families are so intertwined, I was curious to know where each of their hometowns were to each other in Germany.
Rödigers were from Tann
Eichenauers were also from Tann, but prior to that, they were from Niederthalhausen
Weifenbachs were from Niederaula
and the Diegel's from Schwarzenhasel
Thank you Google Earth for helping me illustrate the proximity of these four villages:
Something to ponder--the distance between the Schwarzenhasel and Niederaula is 22 miles, with Niederthalhausen and Tann lying roughly halfway between them.
Congratulations if you have managed to read this entire Blog. There will be more on the Diegels later to be sure. Not only do I have information of the rest of Jacob and Maria Christina (Kirchner) Diegel's children, but George and Jacob also had 7 siblings, one of whom died in Schwarzenhasel, but her husband and three of their children also emigrated to Auglaize Co. So, stay tuned for more Diegel adventures!
--Stephen Rödiger
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