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My paternal grandmother's ancestors are presented here in the SPEIDEL WEINLE Family Database. The SPEIDEL line came from Weil im Schoenbuch near Stuttgart, and came to America (Ohio) in 1854 after a 3-year famine. The WEINLE line came from Langenbrettach (formerly Brettach), east of Heilbronn in Wuerttemberg, to Ohio in 1867. Other common surnames include BAUER, BERNER, ENTENMANN, FRANK, LOEFFLER, RENZ, SINGER, WACKER, WANNER, WOERN, WURSTER. There are over 2600 persons in the database, all of whom were of the Evangelical faith. Living people and children who died young are not included.
Most of my research on these families has been based on the birth/baptism, marriage and death records kept by the churches in the towns where my ancestors lived. These records are available on microfilm at LDS Family History Centers and/or Lutheran Church Archives in Germany. I have also used some secondary sources, mostly books I found at libraries in Stuttgart, including family registers made based on the church records, town genealogies and histories, published genealogies, etc. In cases where I have used secondary sources for events, the placename does not include the state and country as a reminder to myself that I still have to verify the info in the primary sources.
Since 1991, I've spent over 2000 hours looking at microfilms and books, analyzing, organizing and computerizing my data (and I'm not done yet!). I would love to hear from anyone researching the same lines.