Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Keppler Connection

About the family's only claim to fame is that Matthaeus Ohnmacht was born to Johann Ulrich and Elizabetha Katharina Ohnmacht on April 30, 1834 in Langenrand. He married Anna Maria Keppler from Schoemberg on February 13, 1866. Anna Maria was a distant relative to Joannes Kepler (spelled both ways Kepler or Keppler) the mathematician, astronomer and astrologer who was born on December 27, 1571. Matthaeus and Anna Maria had nine children of which four survived childhood. He died and was buried in Langenbrand on April 18, 1919. Anna Maria was born on January 20, 1839 and died on October 9, 1896. The surviving children's names were Christine Barbara b1868, Anna Maria b1870, Katharine b1873, Christine Friederike b1877 and Rosine Barbara b1882.

Matthaeus worked as a lumberjack. Lumberjacks are workers in the logging industry who perform the initial harvesting and transport of trees for ultimate processing into forest products. The term usually refers to a bygone era (before 1945 in the United States) when hand tools were used in harvesting trees. Because of its historical ties, the term lumberjack has become ingrained in popular culture through folklore, mass media and spectator sports. The actual work was difficult, dangerous, intermittent, low-paying, and primitive in living conditions, but the men built a traditional culture that celebrated strength, masculinity, confrontation with danger, and resistance to modernization.  Some of the tools that he might of used:
"The first Keppler who became resident in Schomberg, is Peter born around 1620 in Calw. His father was Johann Georg, who was the beginning of the Crown host in Calw." It is the period after the thirty years war and the plague. Events that have largely wiped out the population in the area Schomberg and Langenbrand.  The French had invaded this area under Ludwig XIV. By the end of the 19th century the Keppler family continued to migrated from Schomberg to Wurzenbach.

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