Description
Beginning with the patriarch Sebastian Kilian, a farmer in Kühnhard, born before 1560, this book ends with his great-great-great-grandchildren living in America in the 1700s. Sebastian was the great-great-grandfather of the immigrant Andreas Kilian who settled in North Carolina west of the Catawba River, before 1749. Through DNA testing, proof of the European origin has been found and links this American family to a modern-day German family.
Here you will find:
- The ethnicity of Bavaria and Württemberg
- The lives and genealogy of the Andreas Kilian family of Germany and America
- A historical perspective on the social, economic, and political challenges of the times
- The study of German documents up to 400 years old
Records from 17th –19th centuries reference 117 people from other families including Busch, Butz, Cranz, Ebert, Fischer, Gross, Hörner, Probst, Trump, Walther and Weber.
Supporting documents include:
- Copies of 85 baptismal, marriage and burial records from German church books
- Land records for 1612 and 1613 from the Barons of Wollmershausen in Württemberg
- The ship Adventure passenger list in 1732; 2 oaths signed by Andreas Kilian in Philadelphia in September 1732
- Copies of 30 pages of land grants, deeds, militia lists and a will from the North Carolina archive
- 114 photographs of the places where members of the family lived
