The Bruch family had deep roots in Feckweiler, with the first mention of the name “Bruchman” coming in 1366. The name is found in both the 1465 and 1500 tax registers for the village. The next surviving tax lists are from 1559 and 1563. In 1559, we find two Bruch men who are heads of a household in Feckweiler: Bruch Hans and Bruch Jacob. In 1563, we see Hans and Jacob again, but this time Bruch Georg appears right next to Hans.[1]
The gap of six decades between the 1500 and 1559 tax lists is hard to bridge, especially considering the relative lack of records that survive from that time. However, we are fortunate that in 1585 the church in Birkenfeld performed an inventory of its land holdings. The scribe may have copied an old document into a new folio but, whatever he did, he helpfully preserved the names of some of the earliest known tenants of this church land. In 1587, the church made another version of the same list. This time the names of the tenants were updated. By comparing the two lists, we can see who inherited what land from whom.
In the 1585 version of the list, we find a list of the tenants of “the old church fertilized field (alten Kirchen Dungfeld).” This large field, suitable for growing crops, was divided into four parts, each with its own tenant who paid 18 Alb. in rent. One of these quarters was held by “Bruch Petg. Hans (Bruch Petgen Hans)” of Feckweiler. The only person this could be is the Bruch Hans from the 1559 and 1563 tax lists. Hans was certainly dead by 1585, but this church inventory contains the names of many people who were dead; the scribe was simply recording the latest information he had. In the 1587 version of the list, updated with new names, we find different tenants in Hans’s quarter of the old church field: Bruch Jacob and Lauers Thomas.[2] Thus, we know that Jacob Bruch inherited this tenancy from Hans Bruch, who must, therefore, be his father. Lauers Thomas was not the son of Hans Bruch, but his wife Gertraudt must, by the same logic, be Hans’s daughter.[3]
So, with these two lists, we can identify two children of Hans Bruch. But we can also identify Hans’s father. Hans’s name was recorded as “Bruch Petg. Hans,” which is a patronym. Almost no one used two names in this time and, if they did, it was to identify the person’s father. This same naming device would continue well into the 17th Century, as with Jacob Bruch’s son Nicolaus, who often appears as “Bruch Jacobs Nicolaus.” We should thus read the entry in the church land records as “Hans, son of Bruch Peter.”
So, thanks to church accounting in the 1580s, we can not only identify Jacob’s father, but also his grandfather. We can also infer the existence of a sister named Gertraudt because her (fourth) husband, Lauers Thomas, shared the inherited tenancy. We are lucky indeed that the church kept such good records of its land!
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[1] Rauchhaberregister des Amtes Birkenfeld aus dem Jahren 1559 und 1563…reproduced in Jung, Rudi: Familienbuch Birkenfeld, 1989.
[2] Rechnungen der Pfarrkirche in Birkenfeld für 1585, 1587, 1589 (LHA Ko. Best. 33, n. 7901).
[3] See the baptism of Bernhardt, son of Thomas Fickeisen, 30 Nov 1584 in the Birkenfeld Church Book. Gertraudt is one of the baptismal sponsors, and is described as “the late Schneider Bernhardt’s and current wife of Thomas Lauer of here (Schneider Berndts selig und jetz Thomas Lauers Hausfrau alhier).”
Bruch Family History 