My Peppler family - an exploration

If you are interested in your family history, I can't emphasize enough that the most important thing is to get out there RIGHT NOW and talk to your older relatives. Find out everything they know before it's too late! We hope all our loved ones will have many more years of healthy, cogent life, but you never know.

Most people get interested in genealogy, it seems, in their 40s. By then it may be too late - your best sources may be gone.

When my dad was ill and I started working on this project, he was able to trace the family back to his great-grandfather Louis. With information on Louis, I was able to find him as a 2-1/2 year old boy - one of twins, which nobody had known - in the Baltimore city census of 1850, with his father Philip and mother Eliza and another man named John Williams who probably worked with Philip - they were both "turners"...

And it wasn't until right this minute that, pulling my papers together, I notice that one of the helpful German researchers told me the men in this family had been lathe operators in Germany for several generations! Hah!

I wrote to various "Peppler" and "Beppler" forums online with the information I had and I was lucky to get some emails from genealogist Helen Austin. It was she who gave me the address for Emmi Odenwald of Lahnau, Germany, and Heinrich Peppler of Biebertal, Germany, and they passed me along to Ernst Schmidt's work.

I sent a small amount of money to Emmi and received a booklet of information including the chart of which I've reproduced the pertinent bit below...

1470: "Lude Peppeler" with three horses is found in a Gleiberg official bill in Lutzellinden.

1482: tax records list a "Henn Peppeler" as a horse farmer in Lutzellinder.

1492: tax records list three different "Beppler" or "Beppeler" men.

1590: Johannes Bepler, Miller at Kenzenbach, is found in the registries.

1592: A Johannes Bepler is found in the school lists.

1594: In Briessen Henrich Bebbeler, "Moller in der Main Mohlen" (miller of flour) baptised his son in March.

1600: The first miller Johann Bepler was named in an application to Heimberg to rent the Kinzenbach Mill.

1615: The tax assessments list Johannes Peppeler, the miller, with 14 acres.

1628: Johannes (miller at Kintzenbach) and his brother Johannes Otto (miller at Dorlar) wrote a letter to the Count of Nassau.

Emmi: "The two millers had to suffer untold brutalities during the 30 Years War from the marauding bands of soldiers; this is shown in the document both millers addressed to the Count of Nassau." See the letter just below.

1669: There was a "body contract" made out on Ludwig Bepler for the Amtmanns Mill in Rodheim. (A "body contract" promises the subject will become a serf of the contract holder if he doesn't fulfill his obligations.)

Ruth von Bernuth, Assistant professor of Early modern German Literature and Culture at UNC-Chapel Hill, is in my Yiddish class and was kind enough to translate this letter for me over the phone! Before we get to the letter, here are some of her observations;

1. The millers probably went to their pastor and asked him to write this letter for them. It is in the Baroque German style - that's like early high german, but the convoluted rhetoric, the use of three synonyms and/or repeating each thought three times is characteristic of the Baroque style which became very popular in the early 17th century.
   
   
2. Millers were considered outsiders - not really a part of farm society. "You can't control a miller. You had two sacks of corn when you went to the mill, they give you back two sacks of flour, but who can really tell how much they took for themselves? Millers were regarded as untruthful people. So, because they already have such a bad community image, they would not be complaining unless they had a really good reason..."
   
   
3. This letter was written in the middle of the 30-Year War, which devastated the German countryside. There were villages existing before that war that are completely gone, they were wiped out and couldn't start again. The countryside was full of soldiers: French, Swedish, the different German factions - it was the battleground for all kins of troops. The French people didn't suffer as much because all the troops went into Germany. The Swedish stayed for a century. Millers were particularly vulnerable because the mills were located outside the village, where they couldn't be protected, and the millers couldn't protect themselves - they had no right to carry a sword because they weren't nobles.
   
   
4. The Count to whom they were writing probably couldn't help them.

Dear highly-born nobleborn, mighty, highly and wellborn count, dear gentleman,

We are your servants in duty bound, obedient, most humble in your service.

Your Grace, we would like to address you in all humility, that we have been suffering for many years because of having to quarter your troops, and beyond that, having to quarter the passing soldiers.

That we are completely devastated and exhausted. The mills of your grace are always ruined destroyed and devastated, battered - that we have had to save our wife and children often by escape.

Yes, such a shame and such misery can hardly be explained. And there is no end of this. Because we have to deliver or contribute every week, together with other people of the village, a portion of our belongings and our store. We have to give it to the quartered cavalry. And we won't be able to continue like this in the future.

And in addition to these contributions, there are even more demands. Especially because the quartermaster wants to have, on a weekly basis, from each of us, a portion from the mill and a portion from our possessions and such contributions shall be given from Your Grace's mills. We are not able to fulfill this because we already suffer hardship due to the other contributions.

Also the mill can't bear such weekly demands from us, it can't take them any longer.

Also, without the wherewithall to suffer twice. Here comes the humble request to your grace that there be proclaimed a general edict, that we should be liberated from such severe demands on Your Grace's own mills, liberated.

Also because we have already many expenses from reconstructing the ruined smashed and abandoned mills in order to bringing them back into working condition. So they will work again. And here something must happen, to bring justice. And we remain your grace's humble servants.

Gleiberg, 23 January 1628, your grace, your humble millers,

Johannes Bepler of Kinzenbach
Johannes Otto Bepler of Dorlar

You have to choose a line to work on: you can't do everybody at once. In the case of the Pepplers, I was able to rent microfilms from the village where my dad and his parents and grandparents grew up, and search through the church registers to find the information I needed.

You can now go to familysearch.org and find, in their library catalog, many microfilm resources for the places where your family has lived. Go to your closest "Family Centers" and rent the films for $3.50 each. They come in a couple of weeks, and you can have them for a month. Get somebody to show you how to use the microfilm machine and just be patient.

There are many places online where you can learn more about how to do proper research. Don't just search for familiar names and poach information other people have posted. First of all, it may be wrong, and second, it won't be as meaningful or interesting if you don't track back yourself!