Early Emigrants from Wittgenstein to America

This document prepared by Paul Riedesel

The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine (1970, #3) published an written originally by Hedwig Mundel and translated and edited by Don Yoder which lists several hundred possible emigrants. More than a third of them were arrested before they departed. Leaving Wittgenstein required permission from and payments to the Count. The author worked from a legal document drawn up in 1725 for Count August of Sayn-Wittgenstein (of the southern county based in Laasphe). It was submitted to the Imperial court in Wetzlar and, among other things, listed the many subjects who had attempted to "abscond" from Wittgenstein.

More recent research by Jochen-Karl Mehldau of Karlsruhe has demonstrated that at least some of these individuals never left Wittgenstein. I have marked (^) some who did not emigrate, but there may be many  more. 

The original article lists their place of origin (usually village) and names. They are grouped by families, but no ages are given. In most cases, it can be assumed that the first name (always male) was the husband/father of the others. The Index number is the original sequence number in the Count's document.

^Other evidence shows that they did not leave Wittgenstein; there may be others.