Coincidence???
From the 1819 Family Book of the Catholic Church in Wehr, Baden we know:
Martin Trefzger (born 11/19/1779) and Robertha Buche Trefzger had 3 sons and 9 daughters.
The first son, Franz Joseph, was born in 1808. The second son, Martin, was born in 1815.
Martin (born in 1815) married Katherine Genter (born in 1823) on 4/21/1841. Martin and
Katherine are the ancestors of all the TREFSGERs and TREFSGARs in the USA.
A German chart of ancestors shows the following about the first son:
"FRANZ JOSEPH TREFZGER, born December 3, 1808 in Wehr, Baden.
Franz-Joseph Trefzger, a teacher, was an advocate of the idea of a German National Parliament
to build a German federation (of individual German states plus Austria-Hungary) in the
year 1848. This idea died, because the German Royal Princes were opposed and suppressed the
movement.
In 1849 there was a revolt in Baden which found wide support of the population. The Grand-
Duke had to flee. He obtained the help of the Prussian troops who then suppressed the uprising.
Franz-Joseph Trefzger, along with the retreating armed insurgents, was forced into Switzerland.
He refused to request mercy from the Grand-Duke and like many other revolutionaries,
leaving wife and child behind, left for North America."
On Feb.24,1997 Eleanor M. Trefsger wrote about her husband:
"Allen and his sisters always told me his grandparents Martin and Katherine, several of their
children, and one of Martin's brothers (they didn't know his name), who had been an organist
in a Lutheran Church, was afraid of being arrested for playing church music, and felt he had to
leave Germany. So the story goes, they left their homes in the middle of the night, crossed
the Rhine, and got passage on a ship to America. Sometime afterward, someone wrote to his
family and said that he had died so that the government would not harm his family.
Allen's father hardly ever spoke of this to his family, it was in the past, and they were glad to be
in America."
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