#G160 BUBICKOFFER, Franz and G161 Anna Maria
Franz Bubickoffer:
Born: 1687, unknown location
Died: 25 April 1749 in Epfenbach
Also known as Franz Ubtighofer, master weaver and citizen of Epfenbach. Other alternate
spellings are Bubikofer, Bobikofer, Optikofer, Ubtigkofer, and possibly Bubeckopfer.
Father: Johann Joachim Ubtigkofer. Born in Switzerland?, died in
Epfenbach?
Mother: Elisabeth Keller
Married: Anna Maria
Anna Maria:
Born: Unknown
Died: Unknown
Father: Unknown
Mother: Unknown
Children:
1. Anna Dorothea UBTIGHOFER (or Bubikofer or Optikofer) (1717 - 7 Nov 1759), m on 16 Oct
1736 in Epfenbach Hans Wilhelm ZIEGLER of Josef and Maria E. Ziegler . Wilhelm was born 13
Oct 1697 and died 10 Jun 1743. One of her children is Johann Peter Ziegler, born in 1741
in Epfenbach. See citation below under "An Important Document."
*2. Johann Peter BUBICKHOFFER #G80
(1718-28 Jun 1789), m 30 Jan 1753 Sabina Catherine HIMMELMAN.
*direct line to Wallace F. Gray
Sources for Franz Bubeckopfer and family and from Presenting the Publicovers by Scott Winston Teal, 1986, p. 5. Other sources are from information provided by Jennifer Publicover. See her information below.
The difficulty in spelling of the surname is explained in the section on the Publicover family. (See link below.) For sources of the spelling see Sources.
Teal has a theory that the origins of the family could possibly be traced back to the village of Puppikon in Switzerland. Franz Bubeckopfer, he says, may have arrived in the village of Epfenbach, on the Neckar River in what is now southwestern Germany, during the early 1700s. (pp. 4 and 5.) [See notation below as to the true location of Epfenbach*.]
Were Franz and Anna Maria Bubikofer of Epfenbach the parents of Johann Peter Bubickhoffer?
The evidence strongly suggests that they were based on the information that follows. I am quoting some correspondence by e-mail sent to me by Jennifer Publicover (jpublicover@primus.ca) during the summer of 2001 which corresponded to documents that she faxed to me.
Jennifer grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and lived for ten years of her adult life in Montreal, Toronto and Boston before returning to Nova Scotia. Her parents came from a little village in Lunenburg County, the area settled in the 1750s with Germans, Swiss and Protestant French, where the Publicover name evolved after Johann Peter's immigration. Jennifer has retained her maiden name.
Jennifer's background in looking into this question
"In the early 1990s, I travelled through the area in present-day Germany that my
family name was supposed to come from. Before leaving Canada, I did some searching for the
exact name of Johann Peter's town. I found this entry in a book that you are likely
familiar with, which I found through the South Shore Genealogical Society:
"Wright, Esther Clark. Planters and Pioneers, Nova Scotia, 1749 to 1775.
Hantsport, N.S.: Lancelot Press, 1978, p. 60:
"'Bubikoffer, Peter (Publicover) Lunenburg, New Dublin. Farmer, from Palatinate,
"Sally" [ship], 1752, prob. son of Franz and Anna Maria Bubickoffer of
Epfenbach. m.[married] 30 Jan. 1753, (Sabina) Catherine Himmelman. . .'
"The quote goes on to list their children. I'm giving you the straight quote because
of the one element of doubt cast by the word "probably" ("prob."). We
can't say for 100% sure that he came from that town and those parents unless we can find
another source that correlates as well. (What I found in Germany, as you will see later,
nearly makes that 100% -- but not quite.)
"Nonetheless, it was all that I found to go on before my husband and I set off.
Actually locating Epfenbach on the map was a bit of a challenge, partly because it is just
a little forestry town of a few thousand people, and partly because just knowing that it
was in the Palatinate (or die Pfalz, as it is known in German) wasn't enough. The
borders of the Palatinate have shifted pretty wildly over the centuries, and when one
looks at an historical map of the general Rhineland area in the 1750's, it was a real
spaghetti-mess of territories intermixed and divided up amongst petty nobility. Today we
think of the Pfalz as being the province west of the Rhine. At that time, there was a
little area to the east of the Rhine just south of the Neckar known as the
"Kurpfalz" (sometimes spelled “Kürpfalz”), which is culturally part
of Baden and in today's province of Baden-Würtemberg. Epfenbach is located here. This
does correspond to your reference to the "Baden-Palatinate" that you have in a
chart of last names and their origins on your website [at http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/g/r/a/Wallace-F-Gray/BOOK-0001/0002-0001.html]
but on a different page in a straight text section you describe Epfenbach as being west of
the Rhine -- this could mislead some one.
"*Scott Teal also claims that Epfenbach is on the Neckar river, but it is really some
kilometers to the south."
Jennifer and husband visit Epfenbach
"My husband and I eventually drove into Epfenbach, and had no clue where to begin. However, there was a town cemetery which was obviously lovingly kept up, and we walked around in it, noting that the headstones were not that old, and none bore anything resembling my last name. There were some elderly ladies watering and tending the flowers, and in the stuttering German that I could muster at that point, I asked one of them if there were an older cemetery in town.
"She took an interest in us, and I explained that we were from Canada, etc., and showed her what info I had. She completely took us under her wing, and we wound up spending the night in her cosy condo. She introduced us to the town historian, who ran the local museum, and he got in further contact with the town priest and the mayor, all of whom checked what records they had for me. Remarkable! The next day, the town historian gave us a detailed tour through his museum, and we corresponded a few times after we left Epfenbach. His name was Helmut Foerster, and if he is still among us today, he would be about 80 years old. All of this was in German, and everyone was very kind to the stammering foreigners during our brief stay in Epfenbach.
An Important Document
"So, to the documents that unfolded during and after the visit:
"Zapf, Emil. Unsere Heimat und Sippe: Die
Geschichte des Dorfes Epfenbach im Kraichgau und eines Teiles seiner Einwohner von 1600 -
1935. [Our Home and Clan: The History of the Village of
Epfenbach in the County of Kraichgau and Some of its Inhabitants from 1600 to 1935.]
Published in 1938, out of print at the time that this correspondence with Helmut
Foerster took place in 1992.
"On pages 410 - 411, there is an entry concerning the marriage of a Hans Wilhelm
Ziegler to Anna Dorothea Ubtighofer. Anna Dorothea is described as being born in 1717 in
Epfenbach and dying there in 1759, of the Reformed faith (Reformierte Religion). She was
the daughter of Franz Ubtighofer, master weaver and citizen of Epfenbach. As you shall
see, the evidence is strong that this Franz is our Johann Peter's father, and Anna
Dorothea thus his sister.
"In this particular copy of this book (1938 edition), there is handwriting in some
places with corrections/additions, possibly from an earlier edition. The source of the
handwriting is unknown. Under this first mention of Franz Ubtighofer, there are two
scribblings of alternate spellings, one of which is not completely legible but looks like
"Bubikofer", and the other which is a definite "Optikofer".
"The entry goes on listing the three children of Anna Dorothea and her husband. The
second child, Johann Peter Ziegler, was born in 1741 in Epfenbach. His godfather was Peter
Optikofer, son of Franz Optikofer of Epfenbach (and therefore Anna Dorothea's brother).
Again, scribbled under the line containing Peter and Franz Optikofer, is the unknown
handwriting with the alternate spelling "Bubikofer", or, as my friend Helmut
Foerster interpreted it, "Bübikofer" (umlauts could be added or subtracted
pretty freely). So, this unknown scribbler seems to provide the link between several
different spellings of the name that were unknown in North America, and this Peter may
well be our Johann Peter (many German males had Johann for a first name, but actually went
by their second name).
The Family Tree of a Descendent of Anna Dorothea
"The next document to deal with comes from, funnily enough, the family tree of the
wife of Helmut Foerster, who descended from the marriage between Anna Dorothea Ubtighofer
and Wilhelm Ziegler that I talk about above. In her family tree, Ubtighofer is spelled
with a "k": Ubtigkofer. It obviously refers to the same people, though. Mrs.
Foerster's family tree information is split up between two separate pieces of paper,
between which I am jumping back and forth to summarise for you below.
"In this tree, Peter is neither relevant nor mentioned, but we gain important
information about his lineage via his sister, Anna Dorothea. Her dates, 1717-1759, concur
with what we found in the previous document, and it is stated that her father (and thus
Peter's father) is Franz Ubtigkofer. Franz's wife is not mentioned, but his dates are:
"Born 1687 in ?? Died April 25, 1749 in Epfenbach.
"Franz's parents (and thus Peter's grandparents) are given as Johann Joachim
Ubtigkofer and Elisabeth Keller. There is no further info on Elisabeth Keller, and there
are no dates for Johann Joachim, but it is written of him:
"Born ? in Switzerland? Died ? in Epfenbach?
"Apparently, after the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), there was a large influx of
Swiss Germans into the area, and Johann Joachim may have been part of that. The whole
region suffered terribly from time to time from wars of religion and territorial disputes
with France, and from epidemics that followed such conflicts, and so towns were often
resettled with immigrants afterwards. Indeed, as you know, there was plenty of impetus to
leave the Palatinate for the New World, although nowadays it is a lovely area of
Germany."
Other Connections
"This last document does not deal with any hard and fast connections at all, only
some people with an interesting last name that may or may not have any relation to the
Ubigkofers already dealt with. It comes from this book:
"Diefenbacher, Karl; Pfister, Hans Ulrich; Hotz, Kurt H. Schweizer Einwanderer in
den Kraichgau nach dem Dreissigjährigen Krieg, mit ausgewählter Ortsliteratur.
[Swiss Immigrants into the County of Kraichgau after the Thirty Years' War, with Selected
Local Literature.] 1983.
"In this document, there are four family entries, in which none of the individuals
nor available dates correspond with the people we are interested in. However, all of these
families were part of that mass migration from the region around Bern in Switzerland to
Epfenbach, and they all bore the name "Bütikofer". Some of them also list name
variants alongside Bütikofer: Bittighofer, Biettighofer, and Bittighofer. Indeed,
according to some German friends of mine, these variant names are comon throughout Baden.
Just an interesting thing to know, for future reference; this is not really publishable
information.
"All this information that I have given you is as much as I was given by my contacts
in Epfenbach. They also suggested going to the state archives in Karlsruhe, but that is a
project yet to be undertaken. The Mormon church has copied a lot of German archival
material, and at the time I did do some searching on this side of the Atlantic through
them, but it was not an exhaustive search and I was unable to prove beyond a doubt (nor
disprove) that the connections that I found in Germany were hard and fast ones. As I said
earlier, other life issues have intervened in the meantime. This is not to say that I will
not take it up again, however; and I would heartily encourage anyone who speaks German and
can read old German script to take up the project where I left it. [Note from Jennifer,
added Nov. 2001: The Mormon church has since acquired some materials concerning Epfenbach
which may prove interesting!]
Getting back to Scott Teal's information on this page:
" Scott's theory about the town of Puppikon is interesting, but it is only speculation. He also has no way of knowing when Franz migrated into Epfenbach, nor even if he himself was the immigrant -- it may have been his father, Johann Joachim, perhaps even before Franz was born. There is no documentation that we know of thus far, and so we should not say anything definite until such documentation comes to light. However, Scott did provide a really valuable service in linking the Publicover family together on this side of the Atlantic, and he did a tremendous amount of work out of his own interest."
One More Reference
"This has been a great impetus for me to look through my old notes again, for the
first time in many years. I have one more reference that I had actually forgotten about,
just because it was limited in its immediate usefulness, but for anyone continuing this
line of research, it offers some places to start:
"Zapf, Emil. Epfenbach: Heimatbuch eines
Dorfes zwischen Kraichgau und Odenwald. [Epfenbach: Record of a Village between (the
County of) Kraichgau and the Odenwald (forest)] ("Heimatbuch" doesn't really
have an equivalent word in English, but it means a book of records and history of one's
home or homeland.) Gemeindeverwaltung 6921 Epfenbach (published by the community of
Epfenbach), 1969.
"On p. 46, there is a fleeting reference to a Franz Bobikofer with a number of other
householders who worked a plot of farmland called the "Pfälzers Hub". The
farmlands in this area were organized into sections, and each section was called a
"Hub", which is just an old word for a "Hof", which is a farm. A
number of people would work each farm and pay taxes, often in a mixture of actual money
and goods like produce, livestock, etc., and even labour, to the Kloster (Convent)
Lobenfeld, which administrated the district from not only a religious but also a
governmental and social point of view (in lieu of paying taxes to a lord or some other
nobility, for example). This record dates to 1731, and it describes the Hub's physical
location, lists the men who worked it (including Franz) and the proprietor (Stephan
Stroh), and the taxes paid: 5 Kreuzer, 7 Heller (like pounds and pence), 2 Huehner und 10
Eyer (2 hens and 10 eggs), ein Korn und Haberschnitter (I'll have to look that up in an
historical or dialectial dictionary, but it has something to do with the cutting of
grains).
"Anyway, this Franz has no dates or relatives to identify him; the possibility exists
that he is the father of Johann Peter, or maybe not; but the spelling of his name is
certainly hopeful. It's neat that I'm taking a look at this book again after all these
years. Back when I bought it in Epfenbach, my reading level in German was such that it was
a hard slog to get through even short sections of it, especially because so much of it is
written in the local dialect. So, I read enough to understand Franz's little reference,
and that was about it. Now that I can skim through much faster, I realise that it would be
an excellent book to read for anyone who planned to do family research there, because it
contains lots of sources and historical information on the town that would point out some
good directions to go in."
Quotes from Planters and Pioneers: Nova Scotia, 1749-1775.
By Esther Clark Wright. (ISBN 0-88999-087-5): (First printing, 1978)
BUBIKOFFER: LUNENBURG, NEW DUBLIN. Farmer, from Palatinate, Sally [ship], 1752, prob. son of Franz and Anna Maria Bubickhoffer of Epfenbach. m. 30 Jan. 1753, (Sabina) Catherine Himmelman. Ch: Johnannes Conrad, John George, John Philip, John Michael, John, Susanna, John Henry, John Peter, Maria Margareta.
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