|
 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)
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THE REFORMATION
 The
revolt against the church and the feudal system began slowly in the
14th and 15th centuries in many different places. Within the church,
the power of the Roman papacy had been weakened and the hold of the
church on many areas was contested by secular forces. One of the first
organized rebellions occurred in Bohemia when followers of John Huss ,
a Czech religious reformer, started a series of conflicts with the
Catholic church. But, perhaps the greatest event changing the map of
Europe occurred in Germany where Martin Luther set in motion the events
that tore Europe asunder. In Switzerland, Calvin and Zwingli convinced
people that their version of the way to salvation was the correct one.
The Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists fought with each other and
with the Catholics for control of people’s minds and of their land.
Differences in religious beliefs became one of the forces that caused
people to flee their homes and relatives and move to different parts of
Europe and to America. In Switzerland, Zwingli in Zurich and Calvin in
Basel and Geneva followed Luther’s lead in denouncing certain practices
of the Catholic Church. In Switzerland, Geneva and Basel became the
strongholds of the Calvinists. Catholics retained their hold on the
Forest Cantons which were for the most part rural farming areas.(7) However, the two reformers
also had their differences with Luther and, so, in the early 16th
Century forces were in operation that resulted in the migration of
people within Central Europe and convinced people that they should move
to the New World.(8)
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THE ALSATIAN
DÜRRENBERGERS
 By far the most significant
series of events that contributed to the disruption of life in Central
Europe were associated with the Thirty Years War (1618 -1648) which
devastated the region and resulted in the depopulation of the area. Not
only were people killed in battle, but they died from starvation and
pestilence. The War involved troops from all of the European nations
and involved both territorial and religious factors. It is estimated
that the population of Württemberg dropped from 400,000 to 48,000 in
this period of time.(9) The war also brought massive
movements of people. It is significant that Dürrenbergers
appeared in both Alsace Lorraine and in Württemberg at this
time. In the aftermath of the war things were so bad in Alsace Lorraine that the Duke of Zweibrücken
turned to the Swiss cantons in his search for people to farm his land.(10) The end of the war had also
brought difficult times for the Swiss who had benefited greatly from
the hostilities. They had remained neutral although some Swiss
mercenaries fought on both sides in the conflict. In addition to men,
the Swiss had provided food and other supplies to the armed forces of
the combatants. With the end of hostilities prices for all commodities
collapsed and with the return of all of the young men who had been
employed as mercenaries a great depression ensued in Switzerland. In
1653 a peasants revolt in the Cantons of Bern, Basel, Solothurn, and
Zurich led to further dissatisfaction with life in Switzerland and was
another factor in causing people to seek a better life elsewhere.(11)
The first members of the family that we know about came to the
Strasbourg area from the Canton of Basel.(12) We know that many
of the Swiss left Baselland and moved to the Strasbourg area to take
advantage of the generous offers of land, building timber, exemption
from taxes and military service, and schooling for their children.(11) As a consequence of
overpopulation and difficult living conditions, many other Swiss moved
down the Rhine and into the Danube River Valley in the late 17th and
early 18th Centuries seeking a better life for themselves and their
children. According to one source, the Dürrenbergers who moved to
Alsace Lorraine were Calvinists who converted to Lutheranism.(12) but soon found that the
French rulers wanted them to become Catholics. And, a few of them
married Catholics living in the area and changed their religion once
again. The Swiss families acquired farmland and settled into other
communities near Mertzwiller such as Daugendorf and Morschweiler. But,
further difficulties lay before them. The French Revolution broke out
in 1789 with consequent unrest including forced military service in
Napoleon’s armies. The New Republic meant new rules which produced
violent social changes and in the resulting chaos many families lost
their farms and lives. |
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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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