|
The Menges Family History PagesMenges Origins in Germany Hebstahl, Erbach, Hessen, Germany:On Saturday, September 2, 1749, Johann Conrad Menges, arrived in Philadelphia on board the ship "Albany," recently from Erpacht (Erbach) and Wertenberg (Wurttemberg), Germany via Rotterdam, Holland and Cowes, England. Johann Conrad, along with his brother Johann Jerg (George), and his sister Ann Mareretha (Mrs. Ignatius "Nazius" Reicher), was one of the first Menges immigrants into Pennsylvania and one of a million or more immigrants from German-speaking lands who came to the American Colonies before the Revolutionary War. It is estimated that in the year 1749 alone, 12,000 Germans landed in Philadelphia. Most of these Germans were listed as Palatinates. The cause of their emigration en masse from their homeland is often attributed to centuries of political oppression and religious persecution. There is no doubt that the Germans in Pennsylvania emmigrated from the various parts of Germany, not in order to secure liberty of worship, which they enjoyed in their own land, but to realize a better standard of living and to bring stability to their lives. A trip through the Rhine Valley today would make one wonder why anyone would want to leave such a beautiful area. As a traveler you would see highly cultivated fields, vine-clad hills, and enchanting castles that tell of the glory and dignity of long ago. The valley of the Rhine is the garden of Germany, if not all Europe. The causes which led to the enormous emigration from this region of the Rhine over two hundred years ago were irresistible to the German people. For more than a thousand years the Rhine Valley was the prize for which the Romans, Gauls, and Germans fought. It is safe to say that no other portion of the world has witnessed so many conflicts as the Palatinate of the Rhine. The Romans tried for more than five centuries to conquer the Germanic tribes, only to leave them unconquered at the end of that time. After the Romans withdrew, the Palatines continued to be the battlefields of rival races and nations. No matter what nations were engaged in war, their battles were invariably transferred to the Upper Rhine country. The Thirty Years' War was one of the most destructive wars in history. Not only were cities, towns and valleys devastated by the armies; not only did poverty and hardship follow in the wake of the armies with their multitudes of camp followers; but the whole intellectual, moral and religious character of the German people received a shock that threatened it with annihilation. We can readily understand what were the causes which led to the great exodus of German Palatinates to America as life in their own country had become intolerable and the province of William Penn in the New World offered them an attractive asylum. In the Cambridge Modern History, Volume IV, pages 417-424, is found a most graphic summary of the German people during the 17th century. "After a century of religious conflicts which ended with the exhausting struggle of the Thirty Years' War concluded with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, German national life was broken and the land devastated. The Lower Palatinate was little better than a desert, so utterly had war, anarchy, and emigration changed the face of the garden of Germany. In particular territories the loss of population had been enormous. In the Lower Palatinate it is estimated only one-tenth of the population survived. Notwithstanding the terrible sufferings which the War had inflicted upon the unprotected peasantry, in the greater part of the Empire this unfortunate class was by no means relieved from the imposition of taxes and the burden of services. To these evils was added the insecurity of life and property due to vandalism as a consequence of the war. During more than a generation after the war agriculture was reduced to almost hopeless depression, and the condition of the peasantry was lowered to a level at which it remained for the better of two centuries. The effects of the war were hardly less disastrous upon the middle or burger class, and upon the trade and industry to which the members of that class had primarily owed their prosperity. The population of the towns was diminished greatly." Scarcely had the Palatinate begun to recover from the destruction of the Thirty Year's War, when it was again laid waste by the French in 1673-1679, and was again made the battleground of the armies of the French King and his German, English and Dutch foes. In 1680 the troops of Louis XIV took Heidelberg and devastated the whole of the Palatinate. The German peasant, for centuries accustomed to laboring from dawn to dusk and for a bare existence accepted wars, robbery, oppression, and burdensome taxes as he accepted drought or pestilence. His wants were few, his tastes simple and he loved his home and fields. But when foreign troops laid his home in ashes and slaughtered his cattle, while he suffered from the heartless oppression of the princes, he gathered up his few meager belongings and sadly, though hopefully, sought a new homeland in America. The familiar notation "Palatinate" was applied indiscriminately by immigration clerks to persons from Austria, Baden, Bavaria, Hesse, Wurtenburg, Alsace or Switzerland. The actual borders of the Palatinate included the prosperous and thickly populated Rhine Valley, the Hardt mountains region, the southwest highlands and the hill country around Zweibrucken. Under the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, the Palatinate was divided between Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt and Prussia. The Menges family origins date back to the 15th century in the Hebstahl, Hessen area, which was the center for the Menges of the Protestant faith. The Hebstahl location is verified by an advertisement in Christopher Sower's Newspaper by Conrad Menges for his brother Johann Georg "who was born in Hebstahl, Grafschaft, Fursteneau and is a tailor." Menges researchers have further uncovered approximately 57 pages of data regarding Menges families living in the Hebstahl and Erbach area as early as 1430. Hebstahl and Erbach are ten miles apart in today's southern Hessen, located 40 miles southwest of Darmstadt at the borders of Hessen, Rhineland-Pfalz, Baden-Wuerttemburg and Bavaria. Hebstahl is a tiny village consisting of nine or ten houses on one street (a Strossendorf), located in the picturesque Odenwald, a wooded region in Hessen stretching south from Darmstadt almost to Heidelberg. The Odenwald (literally, Forest of Odin) is a distinct cultural area in Southern Hessia, formerly part of Hesse-Darmstadt. It is a forested, mountain and valley terrain between the Main and Neckar Rivers, bordering on the Bergstrasse to the West, Baden on the South, and Unterfranken on the East. The present County of Odenwald (Odenwald Kreis) contains the main towns of Höchst and Erbach, and samller places: Brensbach, Breuberg, Lützelbach, Fränkisch-Crumbach, Brombactal, Bad König, Michelstadt, Mossautal, Reichelsheim, Beerfelden, Hesseneck, Sensbachtal, and Rothenberg. The village of Sensbachtal lies at the north edge of Hebstahl, with the towns having indistinguishable village limits. The two villages have been combined and are now known as Sensbachtal-Hebstahl. Within the Odenwald Kreis, lies the Sensbach Valley, which is high, just over Eberbach near the Neckar River and the Baden border. The landscape is beautiful with sandstone, deep valleys and mountain forests. Sensbachtal-Hebstahl is at the end of the Sensbach Valley, just six miles from Beerfelden (Berryfield) where the church parish for the area is located. Records from the Beerfelden parish show the Menges family living in Hebstahl as early as 1590. In these early years, the Menges lived in houses number two and seven. This family had a large number of children and with the limited space available, they spread out to the neighboring areas of Sensbachtal, Obersensbach and Untersensbach. Still later, many family members emigrated to America. It is believed that various Menges emigrants of the lst half of the 18th century were brothers and cousins whose origins go back to Hebstahl. A visit to Hebstahl by a Menges descendant in 1980 revealed that a Conrad Menges had lived in the last (eastern most) house in Sensebachtal-Hebstahl as recently as 1979. However, he has since died and there are no Menges living there today. It is said that the male Menges' were all killed during World War II. Before 1813, a large part of the Odenwald belonged to the Counts of Erbach. Its face was dotted with twenty-two semi-independent enclaves with inhabitants that were Protestants versus Catholics. Although the Protestant Menges centered around Darmstadt, they were also found in other parts of southern Hessen and in Frankfort am Main. The Catholic Menges were located on the Middle Rhine with some clusters in and round St. Goar on the left bank of the Rhine, and St. Goarshausen on the right bank of the Lahn (in Limberg, Bad Ems, etc.) and in Frankfort am Main. Menges research thus far has produced no evidence of a blood relationship between these northern Catholic Menges and the southern Protestant Menges at Eberbach. For most people it is not possible to trace with accuracy their family name before the time when surnames were first adopted. During the dark ages, people felt no need of surnames as they were either nomads or lived in a established community, hamlet or manor where all lived under the patronage of their local lord. At first there was but one house, the Lords's Hall, whose inhabitants bore personal names related to their occupation or their personal characteristics. By the time that the whole of Europe was won to Christianity, most of the names familiar to us today as Christian names had been chosen. In those days when communities were small and men were closely bound by personal allegiance to one another, each was identified by single name only, as was the case with the name Menges. It was a "pre-name" just as was John, William or George. But as the population increased, communication, trade and travel became easier, confusion would arise unless there was some way of identifying particular persons of the same name. Thus, surnames began to be used. At first they were not necessarily fixed, and changed with each generation as if they had been a second Christian name. They were chosen casually and discarded without a thought. Usually, one of four sources would provide a surname. It might be the name of a parent - William, the son of John might be called William Johnson, but his son could be called William Williamson. It might be a man's trade or occupation - Fletcher, the arrow-maker, Constable, the custodian of peace. It might remind a man's neighbors of his birthplace - York, the man from York, or his residence, Wood, by the wood or Ford, near the ford. Any of these names might become hereditary and become a true surname. Thus, a family name began its course through history. The source of the Menges surname has been traced back to 753 by Richard Menges of Kaiserslautern. Some of the very early spellings he found in Germany were as follows: 753-785 MEGINGOZ 815-844 MEINGOZ
The Menges surname is not, therefore, from the often-quoted stem of "Menge" meaning "many" in German, but from those variant spelling listed above. The meaning is closer to dealer, handler, or merchant. Another possibility is the stem Meingoss or Powerful God. After the Menges family arrived in America, the surname underwent many spelling changes. The early data is most often seen as MENGES or MINGES. Other variations include: MANGAS, MANGES, MANGUS, MINGAS, MINGIS, MINGOS, and MINGUS. Much of the variant spelling may be because the original records were often in Dutch or German and with Latin spelling. Other variant spellings were due, no doubt, to the careless manner in which ship's captain's list were made. The writer made no attempt to ascertain the correct spelling of names. He merely wrote down what he supposed he heard when the name was pronounced to him. In addition, most immigrants could neither read nor write, so there is no way of comparing the name on the captain's list with an actual signature on the oath. Sometimes the passenger's own signatures were such awful scrawls as to make positive identification impossible. No doubt the most common cause of variant spellings was phonetic spelling, popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The Menges name is pronounced Meng'-es in Germany and also by the Menges in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. With phonetic spelling, it could be written with the letter "e" interchanged with all the remaining vowels. In other words, with slight variations in the sounding of the "e", the name comes out Mang-as, Mang'us, Ming'-is, Ming'-os or any other combination of vowels. By 1850 the various family branches seemed to have settled on one or another of these variant spellings. Only in Pennsylvania did the Menges spelling survive. Also, most families, with the exception of those in Pennsylvania, regardless of spelling, pronounce the name Meng-ges, adding an additional letter "g" to the second syllable when sounding the name. The 1833 probate and administrator's account papers of the will of John Menges (K) provide a classic example of variant spellings which were a direct result of phonetic spelling. John Menges, Sr. signed his name John Menges. Within the many papers he was referred to as John Menges, Manges, Mingis and Mangas. His son, the Reverend John E. Menges, signed as John Menges and was referred to as John Menges, Mengas, Mingus, and Mingis. Another son, Samuel, signed as Menges. Jacob and Daniel, John Senior's brother and nephew from the Michigan Territory, were referred to as Mangas. With all these variant spellings to choose from, it is interesting to note that the Ohio family chose none of the above; they used MINGES, as did the Michigan branch of the Christian Menges family. With all the fears and miseries of crossing the Atlantic Ocean, most immigrants could not have cared less as to how their names were spelled by immigrant clerks. It is difficult for us in the 20th century with all our modern conveniences to imagine what our German ancestors went through, just to get to America. In a letter written in 1735, John Henry Goetschy gives a most vivid description of the sea voyage from Rotterdam to Philadelphia. "After we had left Holland and surrendered ourselves to the wild, tempestuous ocean, its waves and its changeable winds, we reached, through God's great goodness toward us, with good wind, England within twenty-four hours. After a lapse of two days we came to the island of Wicht (Wight) and there to a little town called Caus (Cowes), where our captain supplied himself with provisions for the great ocean (trip) and we secured medicines for this wild sea. Then we sailed, under God's goodness, with a good east wind away from there. When we had left the harbour and saw this dreaded ocean, we had a favorable wind only for the following day and the following night. Then we had to hear a terrible storm and the awful roaring and raging of the wind when we came into the Spanish and Portuguese Ocean. For twelve weeks we were subjected to this misery and had to suffer all kinds of bad and dangerous storms and terrors of death, which seemed to be even more bitter than death. With these we were subject to all kinds of bad diseases. The food was bad, for we had to eat what they call "galley bread." We had to drink stinking, muddy water, full of worms. We had an evil tyrant and rascal for our captain and first mate, who regarded the sick as nothing else than dogs. If one said: "I have to cook something for a sick man," he replied: "Get away from here or I'll throw you over- board, what do I care for your sick devil." In short, misfortune is everywhere upon the sea. We alone fared better. This had been the experience for all who have come to this land and even if a king traveled across the sea, it would not change. After having been in this misery sufficiently long, God, the Lord, brought us out and showed us the land, which caused great joy among us. But three days passed, the wind being contrary, before we could enter into the right river. Finally a good south wind came and brought us in one day through the glorious and beautiful Telawa (Delaware), which is a little larger than the Rhine, but not by far as wild as the latter, because this country has no mountains, to the long and expected and wished for city of Philadelphia." |
|||||||||||||||||
