ORIGIN OF THE DURRENBERGER NAME

George F. Jones in his book, German American Names, (1) suggests that the surnames, Dürenberger and Dürrenberger, are derived from a region in Austria south of Salzburg.  In German, the name implies that the original members of the tribe came from a region around a dry or barren mountain, the Dürrenberg.  And, he had good reason for making this assumption.  The Dürrenberg near Hallein was by far the best known of the dry mountains in Central Europe.  It had been the center of mining activity for over 3000 years.  Thus, the area had been known to Europeans for a long time.  The mineral taken from the mountain was salt, a most important commodity for the preservation of food.  The history of the utilization of this resource goes back to the days of the Celts and is well documented at the Celtic Museum on the Dürrnberg near Hallein.  The Roman invaders who occupied the region in the first part of the first millennium prized the resource as well.  Production of salt from the mines continues into the present and the mining activities may be seen at the Salzburg-Bad Dürrnberg Salt Mine.

However, he is probably wrong.  Most of the people in Austria and Bavaria who have a name indicating that their ancestors came from a region near a "dry mountain" are named Dürnberger.  Most of the people in this country named Durrenberger have ancestors who came to the United States from Switzerland, France, or Germany. In Central Europe there are four mountains identified as dry and barren peaks. Two of them probably can be eliminated as the source region from which the Durrenbergers came. They are the Dürrenberg near Leipzig and the one near Hallein. There are few Dürrenbergers to be found anywhere near these regions today.  The greatest cluster of people with the name, Dürrenberger are found around Basel in Switzerland and just north of Lake Constance in Germany.  Thus, the most likely sources of the Dürrenbergers were the Dürrenberger Alpe near Reutte in Western Austria and the Dürrenberg near Gimmelwald in central Switzerland. While it is obvious that Germanic names became corrupted when people arrived in this country,  most of these name changes have been identified. Thus, the Terryberrys and the Derryberrys have traced their roots back to a Durrenberger immigrant, and in the Minnesota Durrenbergers a family dispute resulted in the dropping of one "r" from the family name, creating the Durenberger line.(2)

As we go back in time, the earliest Durrenbergers appear on the scene in the early 16th century.  However the name probably came into use much earlier than that. Germanic surnames began to appear sometime between the 11th and 15th century and the first Dürrenbergers arrived in Alsace Lorraine and in the Wangen-Leutkirch region of Württemberg early in the 17th century.(3) There have been none identified anywhere before that time. Members of the family have always seemed to be on the move -- but the reasons for the migrations were not always clear. In the next sections we will try to account for some of the movements of Durrenbergers within Europe and from there to the New World. 

POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, AND RELIGIOUS FACTORS

A part of the answer to the question asked at the end of the preceding paragraph can be found in the changing pattern of tribal movements and in the battles that took place for people’s properties and people’s minds. In the period just before the Birth of Christ, nomadic hunters and gatherers roamed much of Central Europe. Incursions of Celts peaked about 300 BC when they occupied much of modern Switzerland. Around 130 BC alliances among the Germanic tribes produced powerful armies that were able to push the Romans back to the Rhine. Prior to this time the Roman Empire had grown and expanded in all directions, but, especially northward throughout central and northern Europe into the British Islands. They described Central Europe as a region of impenetrable forests and impassable swamps. The Romans built roads and cities and organized the land into administrative units.(4) They introduced Christianity and created parishes and dioceses.

About the Fifth Century AD, Germanic tribes, the Alemanni and Suevi, encroached on the Roman territory from the north and took over the towns and countryside from the Romans. They were conquered in turn by the Franks whose most successful leader was Charlemagne who in the 8th and 9th centuries unified much of Central Europe. Most of this time, armies of mercenaries fought for control of the land which was held in hundreds of feudal territories. With the death of Charlemagne, his lands were divided among his three sons with a further division among the counts and dukes who had fought with him. Thus, in the Middle Ages most of the territory of mainland Europe was split into hundreds of small units held by knights and the clergy. Many of the Counts and Dukes were also Bishops of the Catholic Church and held control of large territories which contained numerous farms and villages. One estimate is that there were between 300 and 600 administrative units in the area of modern-day Württemberg alone.

The central part of the lands held by Charlemagne, Lotharingia, included the area now known as Alsace Lorraine which continued to be a battleground between French and German forces for many years after the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire. In southern Germany the Dukes of Swabia controlled large areas of land until late in the 13th Century when the various Dukes of Württemberg assumed control of much of the territory.(5) Finally, one of the Swabian families, the Habsburgs, gained control of Alsace Lorraine and Baden in the 12th Century and went on to create one of the great powers of Europe, the Austrian Empire, which controlled the lives of most of the population of Central Europe in the late Middle Ages. During this period of time, the Crusades were a major factor in the buildup of the power of individual knights and the expansion of the holdings of the counts and dukes who participated in the Crusades. Much of this time Swiss mercenaries, probably including some Dürrenbergers, fought with many of the troops of other nations. Out of all this chaos, the modern European nations began to emerge. However, events occurring in Central Germany at this time caused further divisions and the breakup of land ownership patterns established under the aegis of the Catholic Church.(6)
 

MIGRATION TO THE NEW WORLD

Various reasons account for the migration of Germanic peoples from Europe to America. A few skilled workmen were brought to Jamestown, Virginia as early as 1608; others followed.(13) The British encouraged Protestant groups to settle in their colonies, and William Penn sought German colonists for his colony. Thus, the early movements of Germanic peoples consisted mostly of Protestant groups escaping persecution by the Catholic rulers of France and Austria. At this time, Europe was a much more complicated region than we can conceive of today, and the standard practice was that each ruler decided which religion the people in his territory should follow.(14) Thus, the administrative units were divided among the three dominant religions: Lutherans, Catholics, and Calvinist or Reformed. Minor religious groups such as the Mennonites and Anabaptists were uniformly discriminated against by all the others.

The first Dürrenberger families that we know about arrived on the ship, Robert and Alice, which had sailed from Rotterdam, Holland in 1738 with a load of Palatines. Soon after their arrival in this country they changed their name to Terryberry. Other Dürrenbergers arrived in this country from Alsace Lorraine in 1750 and from them arose the Derryberry family. Most of the Derryberrys settled in the south; the Terryberrys in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.(15)

THE NEW YORK/TEXAS DURRENBERGERS

The first of the Texas Durrenbergers arrived in this country with a group of French Catholic families form Mertzwiller in Alsace Lorraine and settled on land purchased from the Holland Land Company in New York just east of Buffalo. Some of the families in this group came to this country on the ship, Mary Ann.  The ship started out to sea in 1836, but encountered a massive storm that almost destroyed their ship and forced it back to port for repairs. They set out again in 1837 and arrived in New York Harbor on February 2nd.  The leader of the group, Joseph Batt, had made a vow to build a shrine to the Blessed Virgin if they survived their voyage to the New World.  Antoni and Joseph Durrenberger were members of the group of Alsatians who settled into life in the community of Williamsville who built the shrine, Our Lady Help of Christians, at Cheektowaga, New York. Joseph1 was a director of the Board that oversaw the development of the shrine. He was married twice; his first wife bore four children: Magdalene, Mary Ann, Beatrix, and Joseph2. He lived in the Williamsport area and operated a tavern there. His son, Joseph2, born on September 1, 1841, was the progenitor of the Texas Durrenberger family. Joseph1's first wife died in 1861 about the time that Joseph2 joined the Union Army and was sent to New Orleans for duty.(16)

Joseph1 married Mary Ambs soon after his first wife’s death. She had two children, Catherine and Anthony.(18) In New Orleans, Joseph2 met and married Josephine Christina Voelkel. He saw service in Company F, First Regiment, Artillery in the Union Army.(19) On May 7, 1864 his marriage took place in The German Protestant Church of New Orleans. (20) Josephine was a French speaking Alsatian.

After the war, Joseph2 returned to New York briefly, before settling on a land grant near Giddings in Lee County, Texas where he raised his family. There he engaged in farming and banking. After his wife’s death in 1909, Joseph 2 moved to Orlando, Florida where he became involved in land development and investment, acquiring a sizable fortune before he died in 1933. In Florida, he had been living with his son, William. He was a member of the Evangelistic Lutheran Church at the time of his death. Most of his surviving children remained in Texas to produce the family group known as the Texas Durrenbergers. Three of his children preceded him in death.(21) The descendants of this family are now scattered across this country; most of them highly successful in the fields of science, business and education.

MINNESOTA DURRENBERGERS

The Minnesota Durrenbergers have their own mysteries to solve. They have examined all of the usual lists of German immigration sources without finding their ancestor, Gebhard Ignatius Dürrenberger who tells us that he arrived in this country in June, 1854 from Württemberg and was naturalized in 1855.(22) His ancestors may have lived in the Aare Valley in Switzerland and may have moved to the Wangen area during or after the Thirty Years War.(23) We do know that he was born near Wangen on January 27, 1818.  His family had been living in the area for some time.  German records indicate that he may have been married to a woman whose first name was Barbara.  Her death may have been the reason that he left Württemberg.  Little is know about his life in the Wangen area, but her arrived in this country as a mature individual of 36 years who had sufficient capital and experience to commence farming in the Minnesota River Valley.

In the period of time when he arrived on the scene, a popular route from southern Germany to the New World was down the Rhine to Antwerp or Rotterdam, then to Le Havre, across the Atlantic to New Orleans, and up the Mississippi River to St. Louis or St. Paul. This was a time when steamboats were carrying passengers and freight up the Minnesota River as far as Mankato. As the river traffic increased, the towns of Shakopee, Chaska, Henderson, St. Peter, and Mankato became distributing points. The advantages of a location on the banks of a busy river made these towns the headquarters for many stage lines and freight companies that carried people and goods to the hinterland as hundreds of people arrived each day in the 1850’s to settle on the fertile soils of the Minnesota River Valley. The land had been opened up to these migrants as a result of the signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux in 1851.(24)

Gebhard got off at Henderson, which at that time had five firms transporting people and goods to the lands recently opened up for settlement as a result of the peace treaties with the Sioux Indians. How did Gebhard obtain the land on which to settle? Where did he get the money to buy the equipment to till the soil and erect a barn? The answer to these questions probably lies in the fact that Gebhard was a mature individual when he arrived in Minnesota - about 36 years of age. That is also probably the reason that he has been an elusive antecedent. He could have sold his interest in a farm in Württemberg prior to leaving for America and so did not notify the authorities that he was leaving thus escaping the manumission tax paid by all those who left legally. Shortly after getting his farm developed and a home built, Gebhard must have sent for his future wife to join him in Minnesota. He and Therese Mueller were married in St. Paul in 1859.(25) How did she get here, and why did they get married in St. Paul and not in Henderson? How did they survive on the edge of civilization in those trying times. The Civil War commenced just as he was beginning to raise a family; his first child, Theresa, was born in 1860; his second child came in 1861. Then, in 1862, fighting broke out with the Sioux in the Minnesota River Valley.(26) How did his family survive, when hundreds of people were killed in nearby New Ulm? Then, as his family grew and the farm no longer could support all of the children, how did they decide what to do with the rest of their lives?

We know that my grandfather, Anton, went to work for the Great Northern Railroad and lived in St. Paul until his death. Most of Anton’s brothers and sisters remained in southern Minnesota, married and raised their families there. In the third generation, some of the family moved out of the southern Minnesota area to the central part of the state.

The fourth and fifth generations showed that the "Wanderlust" genes that had brought Gebhard to the New World were still active. In our family (the descendants of John George Durrenberger), no one still lives in Minnesota. We are scattered across this country. And, we all have seen much of the rest of the world. Bill, a retired general in the Army, spent his overseas duty in the embassy in London and ended his military assignments in Hawaii. Bob served in the Air Corps in Australia and New Guinea and worked for the United Nations in setting up an agricultural settlement in Libya. John served in the Navy in Hawaii and went on to work for the U. S. Air Force as an operations analyst in Wiesbaden, Germany. He died while on a skiing vacation in Germany. Jim served in the Army in Germany and spent some time working for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia.

In the 5th generation, Sally worked as a petroleum geophysicist, in China, at the time of the Tiannamen Square incident. Paul has circled the globe and visited Australia. Sandy Gordon lived in Alaska for a number of years. Although there are still Durrenbergers living in Minnesota, many have left the state, much in the way that their forebears left birth homes for greener pastures.
 

OTHER DURRENBERGER FAMILIES

A number of other Durrenberger families have come to this country since the first people with that name arrived. The Swiss included Verena from Reigoldswil; Ursula from Ziefen; and Anna from Diegten. Those that came directly from Alsace Lorraine have been more numerous and have been examined more thoroughly by Brian Anton.(27) Their genealogy is being examined by other groups, some of whom are listed in this web page.  The rest of the story of the Durrenberger Family remains to be written as we solve some of the mysteries about our ancestors and as we find some of the connections that bring us together in the past.

FOOTNOTES

1.  George F. Jones, German-American Names, Baltimore, Md. Genealogy Publishing Co. 1990. various pages. Names derived from terrain features generally ended in 'er' For a long time they were preceded by von (from). As the migratory tribes settled into villages and the population increased, the need for first names arose.

2.  The story told by members of our family is that Anton and Gephart, sons of Gebhard were in business together (a tavern). The business failed and Anton owed Gephart $ 50 and the business owed others. To avoid responsibility for the debt, Gephart dropped an 'r' from his name. However, it must have been more complicated than that for other members of the second generation also dropped an 'r'.

3. Annette Burgert, Eighteenth Century Emigrants from the Northern Alsace to America, Camden, Maine: Picton Press, n.d.., various pages. There are towns with similar names in the Aare Valley and in the Allgäu region. The Aare Valley lies in Solothurn, one of the Catholic Cantons.

4. Kurt F. Reinhart, Germany - 2000 Years, Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company,1950. Basel, Strasbourg, Ulm, Köln, and Vienna were cities founded by the Romans.

5. It wasn’t until 1806 that Württemberg became a kingdom when Napoleon gave the Duke of Württemberg land just north of Switzerland that had been a part of the territory controlled by Austria. Theodor Eschenburg,"The formation of the State of Baden-Württemberg" in The German Southwest, Stuttgart:Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1991, p.37.

6. G. Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany, Oxford:Basil Blackwell, 1947. Various pages.

7. These rural Cantons were Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zug, Fribourg and Solothurn. E. Bonjour, A Short history of Switzerland, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. p. 179.

8. William Martin, Switzerland from Roman times to the present, New York: Praeger, 1971. Various pages. Translated from the French. The reformation took place principally in the cities and the Forest Cantons remained Catholic for the most part.

9. Germany 2000 Years, p. 292-93.

10. Gerst, Chronicle of the HUNSPACH Community and the Parish Hunspach Höffen Ingolsheim, Strasbourg, France, n.d.. Translation by Hildy Ziera McNeil.

11. Switzerland from Roman Times, pp.110-112.

12. Brian Anton, personal communication, dated 19-10-99.

13. The landing of The Concord on October 6, 1683 with thirteen families from Krefield is thought to be the first infusion of German blood into the New World. Trommler - McVeigh, America and the Germans, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, p.xiii.

14. A. G. Dickens, Reformation and Society in Sixteenth Century Europe, London: Thames and Hudson, 1966. Various pages.

15. See Terryberry web page www.aloha.net/~esinger/terryber.htm . Also personal communication from Brian Anton.

16. The Batt Ancestry, n.p.., n.d., copy provided by Nella Beverly Neary.

17. Glen R. Atwell, A Comprehensive History of the Chapel and Pilgrimage of Our Lady Help of Christians, Cheekatowaga, New York and of the Alsatian Immigrant Community at Williamsville, New York, Buffalo, New York: The Hollings Press, 1979.

18. Notes provided by Janet Drumm Dirnberg on information in the files of the Erie County Surrogate Court in Buffalo, New York.

19. Information on Army discharge provided by Nella Neary.

20. Copy of Marriage Certificate provided by Nella Neary.

21. Obituary, published in Orlando, Florida newspapers on July2, 1933.

22. Naturalization Paper, Territory of Minnesota, dated 14th day of July, 1855.

23. Brian Anton reports that a Dürrenberger moved into the Eisenharz community in Southwest Germany about 1750. In that region are towns with names similar to those of towns in the Aare River Valley in the Catholic Canton of Solothurn. Another clue to be followed!

24. Information on The Minnesota Historical Society’s Web Site .

25. Obituary of Gephard Durrenberger in the Le Sueur Sentinel, May 15, 1900.

26. Information on The Minnesota Historical Society’s Web Site .

27. See Brian Anton’s site, Durrenberger Family of Alsace and Switzerland .

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