Gramelspacher-Keller History

Wappen

Gramelspacher - Baumgart
Keller - Schaeffer

in
Dubois, Perry, Spencer Counties, Indiana

All the Gramelspachers in the United States - to the best of my knowledge - can be traced to the three Gramelspacher brothers, Fridolin, Joseph and Hilarius. The brothers emigrated from Bollschweil in Baden to Jasper in Dubois County, Indiana. I have not determined when Fridolin and Joseph immigrated, but Joseph was in Jasper by 1836 and probably immigrated in 1834 or earlier. There is an unverified reference to Fridolin immigrating in November 1841. Hilary, his parents, and two sisters came in 1842. (Hilary came in 1840 with Joseph Rees, but evidently returned to Germany for the rest of the family.) Hilarius later moved to Troy, Indiana. Gramelspachers were among the first immigrant German pioneers in Jasper and St. Joseph Catholic Parish. Pedigree

Baumgart is my mother's name and is from Tell City (German) in Perry County, Indiana. Her grandfather was born in Wattenwil in Canton Bern, Switzerland. He came to the U.S. in 1853 as a one-year old child with his older brother, Christian Baumgart, his mother and maternal grandparents. He lived on a farm somewhere in Ohio and moved with his Messerli grandparents to Tell City in the early 1860s, probably responding to a call of the Swiss Colonization Society which founded Tell City in 1858. However, Julie Messerli, his widowed mother, remarried to Jacob Zimmermann in Tuscarawas County, Ohio and moved about 1868 to Osborne County, Kansas near Twin Creek. Baumgart belonged to the Evangelical + Reformed Church. Pedigree

Keller is my wife's name and is from Spencer County, Indiana. The Keller family originated in Preußling in Oberfranken, Bavaria. Johann Adam Keller married into the neighboring town of Langenreuth. Johann Adam Keller and two of his brothers immigrated to Fulda, Indiana in November 1845. They were founding members of Kratzburg Trinity Evangelical-Lutheran Church near there. Pedigree

Schaeffer is my wife's mother's name. The Schaeffer family came from St. Jean de Basel near Sarrebourg in Lorraine, France. The family immigrated about 1855 to Dearborn County, Indiana and then moved to Fulda about 1865. They belonged to St. Boniface Catholic Church. Pedigree & Pedigree2

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Acknowledgements

I am greatly indebted to Amelia Kelly in Chicago for researching numerous German records on microfilm and providing invaluable assistance for the Gramelspacher, Rees, Baumgart, Messerli and Rosenthal lines. The French documents for Schaeffer were most gratiously obtained by Jean-Jacques Kopp in Colombes, France. Mike Keller in Ripley, West Virginia furnished copies of German documents for the Keller line from Dudenhofen, Rheinpfalz, Bavaria. The Weber line from Önsbach, Baden was contributed by Rose Goutbeck née Weber of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada. Many people contributed data for the Gramelspacher lines.

Olding (Oldiges) aus Hannover

Gramelspacher Family

Keller Family