Ancestral Lines of Chester Everts Howell - (PDF ... - Adkinshorton.net

MINIERMany Minier descendants have conjectured concerning the origin of the familyof Christian Minier, the first settler in Big Flats, Chemung County, N. Y. Andbecause a name of much the same spelling is to be found in France the suppositionhas often been that his ancestors were French Huguenots. Quite possiblythey may have been, however the wedding record of Christian's grandfathershows that his great grandfather, Wilhelm, was living in Germany as early as1703.Wilhelm was an armorer and at that date was in the service of the Count ofHohenlohe at Ernstbach in the Odenwald, a region just east of the Rhine Riverwhere the Neckar meets the Rhine near Heidelberg. Ernstbach's vital records,as well as much else there,was destroyed in World War II when German metalworking installations in that vicinity were bombed.It is more than possible that these destroyed documents might have shownthat Wilhelm Minier came with the French to this Palatinate countryside duringthe French and German conflicts of 1689 and 1693. If so, he may have stayedthere quite voluntarily, for this place after the Revocation of the Edict ofNantes in 1685 still welcomed Protestants, as France did not. His son andgrandson were married in the Reformed Protestant Church in the Palatinateregion. The Palatinate was an Electoral District of the old German confederationof small governments near the middle of the Rhine River's course andsouth of the lands of the Duke of Hesse.Wilhelm's name in the old German Church records is spelled Minnir whichtoday is pronounced in the locality of this church as "Me neer" with almostequal accent on each syllable. Although the Ernstbach records are lost, referencesto his residence there in 1703 and 1705 are to be found in the old ChurchBooks in a village near Heidelberg where his son was married and where hisgrandsons, among them Hans George, the father of Christian Minier of BigFlats, was born.An account of the life and family of Hans Georg Minier found in theMoravian Church Archives in Pennsylvania shows that he was born at"Litzelsasse near Heidelberg in the Palatinate". Litzetsasse is an old spellingof the name of the place now on the map as Lutzelsachsen, one half mile fromthe church in Hohensachsen where the church records for the two villages areto be found in the keeping of the Pfarrer, Peter Kohler. The old church withits onion shaped tower, so common in this part of Germany, stood inHohensachsen until July 1956 when it burned. It had been built about 1772 replacingan older building. Although picturesque, it was not as ancient as aremany of the very old structures surrounding it.These adjoining villages just north of Heidelberg are on the east side of theold Bergstrasse or "Mountain Road" which was, histories say, first laid out bythe Romans as a part of a route for trade. This highway closely hugs the baseof the steep and wooded slope of the Odenwald hills to the west slope of whichthe villages cling. Small streams tumble down beside the downward slopingstreets of the two villages, winding between small stone homes. Except for60