The Haughns

Finding the land of the Haughns has been the most frustrating experience. The Freemans will be a piece of cake (already seen the train schedule online). The Slaugnwhites and Hebbs took a little work, but the search for the Haughns was exasperating. I got the following information from my Grandmother Hebb (Haughn) through my Mom:

Johann Frederick Hahn was born in 1725 in Wiseback, Germany. He sailed on the Sally in 1752 to Canada, the same year as the Hebbs. He settled in Lunenburg as a blacksmith when he was 27 years old (still single at the time) and was one of the laborers who helped build the Lutheran church, which is still standing today.

As a blacksmith, I wonder how many acres of land Johann got.

So the search started with the name the date (1725), and the place (Wiseback). There was glaring problem to start with; there is no place called Wiseback in the whole of modern Germany. I did some online research using roots web, search engines and online translators. I got a few leads here and there. Rootsweb told me that Johann Frederich was from Wiesenach. Unfortunately, Wiesenach is nowhere to be found in Germany either. I had to assume that he was from southwestern Germany like most of the Lunenburg settlers, but I had nothing to base this one. I searched for names similar to Wiseback, Wiesenach in the southwestern modern German state of Baden-Wurtenburg. I found one Weisenbachs, two Wiesenbach, a Weissbach, a Weißbach and a few other variants. I really needed something to limit my search to a small area. Some evidence, like the name of a nearby town. anything.

Weeks of searching off and on brought up nothing. I tried every combination of search terms I could think of, and checked German sites too. One guy had an entire web page (in German) devoted to the surname Haun. He had scores of pictures of actual Hauns (roosters), a list of famous Haun, the ranking of how common the name is in Germany (16th or 40th, I can't remember), but nothing useful to my search.

Then about a week ago, I got lucky. Some combination of search terms led me to a website that listed the origins of some Lunenburg settlers and where they came from. It seems that the fictitious place name "Wiesenach" come from the passenger list of the Sally, which Johann took in 1752 from the Netherlands to Halifax. The list had such notable entries as "Meg??????, Jean Chrisoph;17; Farmer; Mt. Beliard" and "illegible; 20; Farmer; Grunstadt." I could imagine a hung-over ships purser taking notes grumpily in the morning. I doubt he cared much where his passengers came from.

I continued to only find information I already knew until I linked to a table that placed Johann in Wiesenach within the principality of Baden-Palatinate. (http://www.seawhy.com/gerpalat.html) I don't know where this guy got this information, but I wasn't complaining. But where was Baden-Palatinate? The holy roman empire was fractured into countless kingdoms and principalities by the 18th century.



Luckily, the website guy had included a map that told me exactly where Baden-Palatinate used to be, which turned out to be the region Heidelberg was in, directly south of where the Hebbs were from. Baden-Palatinate was 1350 km² or 340,000 acres, which is an area half the size of Queens county (twice the size of Seoul, and only slightly larger than Sapporo). I felt I was getting somewhere.



I took my Baden-Würtenburg map and a green highlighter and traced where the border of Baden-Palatinate would have been. Luckily the northern border is presently the division between the states of Hessen and Baden-Wurtenburg. Only two places similar to Wiseback or Wisenach remained. Wiesenbach and Weisbach.

I visited Wiesenbach (pron: Vee-zen-balk) on the same day as Falken-Gesäß (Birthplace of Adam Heeb II). It is a short train ride from Heidelberg and then a short walk after that. The town was surrounded by farmland on one side and had a few interesting buildings, including a barn with old grinding stones from a gristmill mortared into the wall. I visited the cemetery only to find new graves. The town hall was from the turn of the last century, and the churches had no dates on them. My friend Harri from Finland later asked jokingly (on MSN) if I saw anyone I knew. On my way out of Wiesenbach, an old man honked at me and then slowing the car down and bending into the windshield gave me a friendly wave. I wonder who he thought I was.




Weisbach seemed a little more promising. It is pronounced "vaize-balk," which is much closer to the two syllable Wiseback I got from my Mom and Nanny. I wish I knew where they got that from.

I visited Weisbach after visiting Mangelsbach, on the day that I walked over 35 km. At the nearest train station, I waited for the supper-time bus, and hoped that there would be one more bus to take me back after looking around.

The town itself is, you guessed it, a farming town (anyone noticing a pattern?). There were about 200 cosy houses, few of them old, centred around a dip between two low hills. Fields and orchards stretched outward as far as you could see. There were painted Easter eggs hung in front of the community centre and I could hear the church choir practicing outside the modern brick structure. No doubt they were preparing for Easter which is to church choirs as the Superbowl is to football players.










The bus stop signage revealed one more bus in two or three hours, but it was labeled with funny symbols including a phone, which led me to believe that it might not come unless I call ahead. Rather than get stranded in the dark, I decided to head west and find my way to the highway back to the train station in Eberbach. I looked at a town map and decided on a narrow paved road hat headed due west through the fields and then woods. I didn't know exactly where I would end up, but since I needed to go west and that was where the sun was setting in front of me, things worked out.

The sunset was spectacular, and remain so in my mind. My camera batteries had just ran out, however and I have no evidence of it's beauty.

I found the highway back to Eberbach and was in know territory by the time it got dark. I practices whistling on the way back. I don't think I mentioned this, but I am trying to learn how to whistle after 24 years of blowing soundless air through my lips. I'm getting better, but still have far to go.