More
Homberger Family in Binzikon
Jean
M. Hoffman, CG
I
wrote two years ago about a Canton Zurich index of old marriage
records [here]. In them I found that the furthest back Homberger
ancestor in the gemeinde of Egg was originally from the gemeinde of
Grüningen in the village of Binzikon. He was married twice before
the move to Egg, the second wife, Elsbeth Buchmann being the Hoffman
ancestor. The Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City has
microfilm of church records from Grüningen and viewing them was to
be my next step.
Last
summer when the FHL announced the end of microfilm lending, I quickly
ordered the Grüningen film, no. 996915. It was only last Saturday
that I was ready to look at it. First I checked it in the online
catalog for details of what I would be seeing. It was a surprise to
find it has already been digitized and put online. But it is in a
“locked” state allowing viewing only in Family History Centers or
affiliate libraries, so I can't view it at home. But I was in an
affiliate library and spent time happily locating records of family
members.
We
now have images of the actual marriage records for Rudolf Homberger.
Because he was first married in 1681, I estimated his birth about 25
years earlier. That was quite close. He was born (or probably
baptized) on 10 November 1657. His father was Bernhard Homberger and
his mother was Elsbeth Maurer. Her first name is a variant of
Elisabetha. There were birth records of Rudolf's siblings and
cousins. The cousins were the children of his uncle Diethelm
Homberger and Elsbeth Hoffman. Later we'll get baptismal records of
all his siblings and cousins, and hopefully his parents. The death of
his first wife was in 1692 but he did not remarry until 1696. Both
wives were from the adjacent gemeinde of Hombrechtikon. At the
FamilySearch website in the family tree, this family is present with
names even of Rudolf's grandparents who were probably born before
1600. The Homberger part of the Hoffman family tree is going to be
growing.
We
are also looking into details about Grüningen and Binzikon. One
source is an atlas (ortslexikon) of Canton Zurich from 1835. We used
to use in on microfiche at a Family History Center but now we can see
color images rather than black and white film at Ancestry.com.
Wikipedia has a little and the gemeinde has a website.
From
his 1657 baptismal record you can see the date of 10 9bris (an
abbreviation for November), the place of Binzikon (spelled
Bintzicon), father's name, mother's maiden name, child's name (with
an annotation we haven't deciphered yet), godfather Rudolf Walder and
godmother Klienannlj Walder. The year only appears at the start of
each new year.
