Searching for Roots at the Devil's Hammer--Part II

 

I set out on this adventure with my former roommate, Katha, herself from a village in the area.  We'd started with nothing but the name of my ancestor's village of birth, Seidwitz.  Other clues were provided by the letter of recommendation written by his former employer. It was written and signed by a woman named Margarethe Orttung on the 4th of March, 1840 in a place called Teufelhammer--Devil's Hammer.  The ornate old German handwriting had been transcribed by my grandfather's translator incorrectly as "Teufelskammer"--"Devil's Chamber."  After asking Katha's relatives and various locals whose doors we knocked on on a Saturday afternoon, we finally discovered the correct name, and that it was a part of a village called Wirbenz, about a ten minute drive from Seidwitz.

Teufelhammer in 1904

  

Teufelhammer in 2009

By the time Katha, her parents and I pulled up by the house, the elderly couple was already standing outside.  We parked and got out, they waited patiently for us to approach the house.  "Do you know of a woman named Margarethe Orttung?" I ask the man.  "Sure, she was my great-grandmother," he answered cheerfully.

They invited us inside and led the four of us into their kitchen.  They hauled out all of their genealogical records.  They explained that Margarthe had run the farm and watermill alone for a number of years after her husband died.  They showed us the farm's book of tax records from nearly the whole the 19th century and turned to a page written by Margarethe, also in 1840.

                        The Orttung Family's Steuerbuch and my family's the Dienstbotenbuch

 Margarethe's handwriting

The Old Millhouse

 We were also told that the name of the place is a relic of very ancient times.  Franconia, like Saxony, is full of places with old Slavic names, predating Germanic settlement in these regions--places with endings like -itz and -enz.  The mill where my not-quite-sure-how-many-greats-grandfather worked already existed in those times, as a blacksmith's workshop--at a time when people who worked with metal were still thought to have mysterious powers.  They could transform and create.  It was these otherworldly abilities, the association with the gods of fire, and the sound of the tools gave that the place its lasting name.