1. Schwenk Ancestry · 2. Lieb Ancestry · 3. Breymayer Ancestry
THE BREYMAYER BRANCH
Briemair, Brymaier, Preymeyer, Breymaier, Breimaier, Breymeyer, Brielmayer, Breÿmaÿer, Breylmayer, Breimayer and Breymayer are most of the ways this family name have been spelled during the past five centuries in Mundingen. The last two spellings are about the only variants there today. Two old Germanic words, Briel or Brühl were widespread words meaning, very good pasture. The word Mayer was one of many words for a farmer. There are, incidentally, four families living in Mundingen today who still carry the family name of Breymayer or Breimayer. A family head of one of those is the current mayor of Mundingen.
The earliest documented member of this family in Mundingen was Martin Brielmayer who lived and farmed on the Justingen Hof (estate, farm) in 1497. Some of his other relatives and descendants who farmed this and some of the other ten Höfe in this community, were: Hans Breymayer 1508; Jerg, Michael, Simon and Gall 1525; Jacob 1593; Martin, son of Jacob 1598.
In this quest to trace our ancestry, the logical question arises as to which of the above are our direct ancestors. The church books of Mundingen lead us back to the early 1600's and no further. In the tracing of our Felicitas Breymayer's (b. 1764) paternal ancestry, we are lead to a Matthias Breymayer, born 1575-1580 in Mundingen. His father was probably Jacob, born circa 1550, but this has not been documented. Dr. Kiess' book deals with the history of this village rather than geneaology, although where a familial relationship is known he states this. The Martin Breymayer who possessed a Lehen, a Fiev, or as we might call it today, a long term lease of land on the Justingen Hof, might well be considered our Breymayer Patriarch because there was no other Breymayer family in Mundingen in 1497. And so until a family researcher might find access to the various archives where these records of land ownership/possession are preserved, with the desire to trace the genetic footprints leading from our documented patriarch Matthias back to our probable patriarch Martin, we will have to be content with Matthias filling that role. The birth records begin in 1641; those of marriage and death in 1654. Whether earlier records had been lost or destroyed during the 30 Years War or first instituted in 1641 and 1654, was not clearly indicated in the Kiess book. It seems probable that the Mundingen parish began recording these vital records in the latter part of the earlier century as did most of those in the region. But, as in Laichingen, this doesn't really matter; we are simply left with the records beginning essentially after this war.
What were the conditions there in Mundingen around the beginning of the 17th Century? On page 239 of the Kiess book, the population in 160l was "(?) 210; 1617, (?) 230" (? because the local pastors sometimes included the "catholic souls" residing and working there chiefly as farmhands, and sometimes not); 1654 only 46. In 1661, 66. These figures give the reader an inkling of the disastrous effects of the war which had ended in 1648. In 1654, there were only nine married couples; in 1663, twelve; three of these carried the Breymayer name: Matthaus and Barbara; Jacob and Catharina, and our Martin and Catharina. Jacob and Martin were brothers; Matthaus (spelled variably) was a probable first cousin whose father was a Martin and probable brother of our patriarch, Matthias, though this has not been documented.
The First Generation
Matthias Breymayer, Farmer
Little Matthias was being rocked in his cradle sometime between 1575 and 1580 in Mundingen. This estimated time of birth is based on his later wife's documented birth year of 1579. His father was probably Jacob. We do know, again from Dr. Kiess' book, that a Martin, a contemporary of Matthias, was definitely a son of Jacob. In 1679 and 1688 we find two marriages between two grandsons of our Matthias and two granddaughters of Martin. This fact suggests to the writer that the common great-grandfather of these four was Jacob, the couples being second cousins to each other.We do not know the maiden name of Anna. She and Matthias must have married sometime around 1600-1610 and probably in Mundingen. We do know they had three sons who survived infancy and married. One was Baste, a nickname or short name for Sabastian. His name was not found by this writer in the church books, but his name is mentioned on page 198 of the Kiess book; this was in connection with the customary Inventory made after the death of a spouse or directly after a marriage. Whether this 1655 Inventory had to do with the death of Baste or his wife is not clear, however no death entry was found for him in that year. The important point here is that Baste was indicated as being the brother of Jacob. Birth year of Baste could not be determined.
Jacob was born sometime around 1610. When he died there on Feb. 16, 1668, the pastor failed to enter his age at time of death. He married sometime around 1640 to a Catharina Götz from the village of Böttingen, a community lying about ten miles north of Mundingen. She was born on Dec. 24, 1620. They had at least six children, the first documented being born in 1642; five grew up to marry, three of these being sons, Jacob, Johannes and Matthias, who went by the short form, "Theus". Jacob and Johannes were the men who later married their presumed second cousins. A descendent of Johannes is Dr. Helmut Breymayer who resides today in Böblingen near Stuttgart. He made contact with this writer - his ninth cousin - in Nov. 1995. He has extensively researched his Swabian ancestry (16,000 + names in his family tree stored in his computer). We thank him for his incisive comments on the preliminary writing of the Breymayer section of this book.
When Jacob Sr. died in 1668, he appeared to be the wealthiest member of the community. He possessed several farms at the time of his death. The one which he owned outright - that is, not on a "lease" basis - was the land, the farm, which he had purchased in 1649 from the Urspring Monastery. House # 7 belonged to that farm, and that is today the Hirsch Inn. This was covered in the earlier section of the Schwenks. And although this Jacob was not our direct ancestor, he played a very important part in the history of Mundingen, and was the older brother of our Martin Breymayer.
Martin was born in 1613 and takes center stage in the following chapter. His father Matthias died sometime before 1654. His mother Anna lived out her life in the home of Martin. She died on Dec. 5, 1681 in Mundingen. She had lived to the extraordinary age of 102! This age at death penned in by the pastor gives the reader her birth year of 1579, but we still do not know her place of birth nor her maiden name.
The Second Generation
Martin Breymayer, Farmer, Judge, Heiligenpfleger
The year was 1613, seven years before the Mayflower would touch the shores of Cape Cod. Life in Mundingen was peaceful, and the economy in Old W•crttemberg was flourishing. The population was growing. But our Martin would see all this come to an end when he was a young man age 21. That was in 1634 when the wrath of the Thirty Years War would strike Mundingen and the surrounding region full force. He would see the population of his village shrivel to less than one-fourth its prewar figure. This depopulation would be a result of flight to the protection of walled cities, of death at the hands of the Imperial troops, of starvation and the plague which ravaged the region in the years following 1634. He would witness the removal of seven of the thirteen plows in the community which would be melted down into bullets and cannonballs. He would see one-third of the houses and granaries in Mundingen destroyed or no longer usable. And he would see weeds and brush choking much of the farmland because of the lack of farm labor, plows, and draft animals. We can scarcely imagine the horrors, the grieving, the suffering and privation and hopelessness experienced by Martin and his family.
Sometime before the spring of 1655, Martin was courting a certain Catharina Kaud. She was the daughter of Jerg Kaud of Immenhausen near Tübingen. It was common for men from small villages to find their brides in communities outside their own, and in view of Mundingen's population hovering around 60, this is not surprising. They married in Mundingen on April 23, 1655.
Their first child was Matthaus, "Mathay", born 11 Sept. 1657. He married a Barbara Ilg, a local girl, on 20 May, 1679. He died in January, 1733. The second child was our Georg. He made his debut on Feb. 1, 1660. More about him in the following chapter. The next child born was Matthias who appeared on about the first of January, 1664. He married Anna Catharina Zaininger, another local lass, on Aug. 30, 1685. He served as Schultheiss in Mundingen 1706-1728. He died holding that post on June 15, 1728. The fourth child was lainJacob. Birthdate was July 11, 1671. He died in infancy.
All four babies were boys, as you have noted. Then their mother Catharina died on Nov. 23, 1671. The pastor failed to enter the age at death or cause of death. She was probably younger than 50 at her death.
In the following spring on June 16th, 1672, Martin remarried there in Mundingen. His wife was Maria Bopp, a widow of Johannes Bopp, former mayor of Attenweiler near Biberach, not far south of the Donau River. Her two daughters and one son would join the Martin Breymayer household. These three children would later marry there in Mundingen. The one daughter, Anna, would marry Jacob Breymayer Jr., our Georg's first cousin. See next chapter for the outcome of the other daughter, Maria.
Martin and Maria did not bring any children into the world together. She was born in 1617 in Rottenacker just southeast of Mundingen on the Donau, and so at 55 years of age she was past the child-bearing years with this second marriage.
When our Georg was born in 1660, father Martin was shown as farmer and Heiligenpfleger. If you recall, this was defined earlier as one who administrated the building maintenance funds or finances of the local parish church. Church treasurer is probably a more concise term. It was an important but chiefly honorary post; it doubtless required little of Martin's time, and remunerated him accordingly. When Martin died, he was shown to have been local Judge for 22 years. This entry was made on March 1, 1694. The reverential wording of this death register entry reflects the high esteem this man had in his community. And this is also reflected by the amount of offering given at the funeral service, 26 Kreuzer (nearly ‡ Gulden), far more than the average funeral offering. The pastor also noted his age as death, 81. And this birth year of 1613 is essentially confirmed when in 1687, seven years earlier, the local pastor attempted to reconstruct personal histories of some of his parishioners when he wrote,
"Martin Breymayer the older, of Mundingen, approximately 75 years of age, was born of lawful and Christian parents." And just to the left of this entry at the edge of the page were the words, "Father, Matthias, Farmer; Mother, Anna was very old, 102."
A death date of his widow Maria was not found nor searched for.
The Third Generation
Georg Breymayer, Farmer, Heiligenpfleger, Mayor
The year is 1660. The Plymouth Colony survived that first winter forty years earlier and is now thriving. Across the Big Water in that tiny out-of-the-way Lutheran community Mundingen, an enclave just outside the boundaries of Old Württemberg but ruled by it, and surrounded by Catholic communities which lend even further to its isolation, its economic and social life is only beginning to resemble the times before 1634; its population, however, would not grow back to the prewar figures until between 1835 and 1847. And so it was in this year on Feb. l, that our ancestor Georg was born.
Jerg, a nickname for Georg, grew up with two brothers, a stepbrother and two stepsisters. One of those was Maria Bopp, 2-1/2 years younger than Jerg. They must have gotten along very well, for he asked for her hand sometime before their wedding on Aug. 10, 1680. And judging by the great number of children they would bring into the world, they continued to get along very well. We know that three of those fifteen children survived and married - the one most important to us, Friderich. We know that six died in infancy. A search was not made as to the outcome of the remaining children, however we know through Cousin Dr. Helmut Breymayer, that Magdalena, one of those three who married, had children and one of her descendents lives today in Silver Spring, Maryland; he is Ken Simons, another of our cousins. She married at the extraordinarily young age of 15.
As were all the Breymayers in those days, Georg was a farmer. Sometime after his marriage, he acquired ownership of the small farm - approximately 8 acres - which belonged to House # 7, the future Hirsch Inn. His son Johannes was shown in 1713 as the owner of the much larger adjacent farm. These two properties were one large farm back in 1649 when Jacob Breymayer, Georg's uncle, purchased it from the Monastery of Urspring. How Georg and son acquired these was not documented in Dr. Kiess' book. Georg also possessed the Maierhof, the large farm owned by Württemberg. His father had turned possession of this over to him in 1691.
Like his father, Georg became the financial administrator, the Heiligenpfleger, for the local parish church. This title appears after his name when his fifth child was born in 1688. And so it appears he took over this post from father. He was shown as Gemeindepfleger for many years in the birth register pages. This word means approximately that of community treasurer or vice mayor. This was an honorary position, but an important one, just as is the case today in small town America. He was not the top dog, however; that was the village Schultheiss (village mayor/marshall/judge. There is no good English equivilent).
Georg was requested and served very often as Godfather at christenings. On that subject it is interesting to learn that in old Württemberg only two people - a man and a woman - were allowed to serve as Godparents unless the infant's parents were "important people." When a pastor recorded the christening of his own child, there were nearly always four or five Godparents' names entered. And this also held true for the Schultheiss, an esteemed schoolmaster, etc. When Georg and Maria's son Friderich (ours) suffered this wet and frightening ceremony, the Godparents were a clergyman from nearby Dapfen, his wife, Georg's brother Matthias, and Catharina Semmindinger, wife of the then Heiligenpfleger. And so it is clear that Georg was an important man in his community.
Sometime in 1704 before he had reached the age of 42, George fell ill. He died on Sept. 30 that year. Cause of death was listed as hitzige Krankheit which translates to: "acute malady or disease." That doesn't tell us much except that he died of natural causes. His widow Maria apparently did not remarry. According to Dr. Kiess' book in the section covering the history of the 11 farms, she sold one-half of a Fief or "lease" on the "Grosser württ. Hof" , also called "Maierhof", to her oldest son Johannes in 1710. And in 1726 she sold House # 7, the "Hirsch" property, to her youngest son Friderich; this was the year of his marriage.
Persistent searches were made through the death registers for her death date without success (Cousin Dr. Breymayer also could not find this entry). We know from her date of birth of 11 Oct. 1662 that she was age 64 when she sold the "Hirsch" property to Friderich. Thus she remains as one of very few ancestors whose death date was not found.
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