Local heritage book of Westenfeld

(* 1594 - 1811, oo 1629 - 1811, + 1667 - 1811)

Westenfeld – PLZ 98631 – belongs to the District of Hildburghausen. Neighboring places are Haina in the southeast, Sülzdorf in the south and Wolfmannshausen (a predominantly Catholic place even today) in the west. The Evangelical Lutheran parish of Westenfeld, as is Behrungen, is supervised by the rectory of Queienfeld, District of Schmalkalden-Meiningen.
The Westenfeld Church Books are located in the Westenfeld rectory. The pages of the Church Books were photographed with a digital camera and the data then processed with the Genealogy-Program GES-2000.

The present Local Heritage Book of Westenfeld comprises all entries from the oldest Church Books (1594 – 1769) as well as entries from the following Church Book (1770 – 1852/53).

On Whitsuntide in 1667 Pastor Tobias Kramer assumed his office in Westenfeld. He reports that the rectory burned down on July 15, 1636 and along with it the old Church Book had been destroyed. This Church Book “is said to be over 100 years old.” He laments that he “could find no genuine register of those previously baptised and those who had died,” and further writes, “…tried to replace this deficiency to the best of my ability, partly from an old Register that a schoolmaster in the vicinity had kept, and partly from immediately questioning those still living, I have completed a “Register of Souls” with the following entries.” The Baptismal Registry, which was reconstructed in this way contains entries as of 1594, the Marriage Registry asof 1629. Death dates were not reconstructed. One can certainly assume from this that the reclaimed data is fragmentary, inexact and perhaps even erroneous.

In 1716 Jartin Härter had a son baptised. In the baptismal certificate it says that he is “the first inhabitant of the newly laid out village of Sultzdorff” (Sülzdorf). In the following years numerous entries can be found in the Westenfeld Church Book for Sülzdorf inhabitants
On August 28, 1765 shortly after 12 o’clock a lightning strike on a barn caused a conflagration that destroyed 17 residences and 15 barns.

Occasionally one finds a death date written in after the fact next to the birth date entries. I take these death dates for the time period after 1852 to be unproven and without any source information. Place names were basically reproduced using the current day spelling.
In a few cases data that are known to me through my own research can be stated for people who originated from places in the area. Data with the source designations FB Aubstadt, FB Gollmuthausen, FB Rappershausen or FB Waltershausen derive from Family Books, which Mrs. Karina Kulbach-Fricke has produced for her private genealogical research.

Translated by Karen Gebhardt Shepard