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HESSE

Germany

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introduction

Introduction

Hesse (COA).png

Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state. The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rheinisch Hessen in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state. The oldest and second largest Hessian city, Mainz, is in Rheinisch Hessen. The State of Hesse (German: Land Hessen, literally "Country of Hesse") is part of the larger cultural region. It has an area of 21,110 km² (8,150 sq mi) and just over six million inhabitants. The state capital is Wiesbaden. Hesse's largest city is Frankfurt am Main.

The English name "Hesse" comes from the Hessian dialect. The variant "Hessia" comes from the medieval latin Hassia. The term "Hesse" ultimately derives from a Germanic tribe called the Chatti, who settled in the region in the first century B.C. An inhabitant of Hesse is called a Hessian (German: Hesse (masculine) or Hessin (feminine).

Hesse-Kassel was elevated to the rank of an Electorate in 1803, but this remained without effect as the Holy Roman Empire was disbanded in 1806. The territory was annexed by the Kingdom of Westphalia in 1806, but restored to the Elector in 1813. While other Electors had gained other titles, becoming either Kings or Grand-dukes, the Elector of Hesse-Kassel alone retained the anachronistic dignity. The name survived in the term Kurhessen, denoting the region around Kassel. In 1866 it was annexed by Prussia, together with the Free City of Frankfurt, Hesse-Homburg and the duchy of Nassau, which established the province of Hesse-Nassau.

Hesse-Darmstadt was elevated to the rank of a Grand Duchy in 1806. In the War of 1866, it fought on the side of Austria against Prussia, but retained its autonomy in defeat, because a greater part of the country was situated south of the Main river and Prussia did not dare to expand beyond the Main line as this might have provoked France. But the parts of Hesse-Darmstadt north of the Main river (the region around the town of Gießen, commonly called Oberhessen) were incorporated in the Norddeutscher Bund, a tight federation of German states, established by Prussia in 1867. In 1871 the rest of the Grand Duchy joined the German Empire. Around the turn of the century, Darmstadt was one of the centres of the Jugendstil.

Situated in west-central Germany, Hesse state borders the German states of (starting in the north and proceeding clockwise) Lower Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. The principal cities of Hesse include Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Offenbach, Hanau, Gießen, Wetzlar, and Limburg in the greater Rhine Main Area, Fulda in the east, and Kassel and Marburg an der Lahn in the north. The most important rivers in Hesse are the Fulda and Eder rivers in the north, the Lahn in the central part of Hesse, and the Main and Rhine in the south. The countryside is hilly and there are numerous mountain ranges, including the Rhön, the Westerwald, the Taunus, the Vogelsberg, the Knüll and the Spessart.

Surname

The following are surnames of persons, found within our databases, as having been either

born, married or died in this ancestral location. Names in dark red denote direct ancestral lines.

McVicker; Moreland; Pinnell; Scruggs and allied families

Bozarth; Peiffer; Quigley; Rhubart and allied families

Dellinger; Knecht; Pfeffer; Silar and allied families

Attigh; Beyssel/Beissel; Mildenberg; Pfeffer; Reinhard; Steinmetz; Wambold; Zimmerman

Click on this link to find out more about each surname listed above as well as other surnames found within our three family databases.

This link will also lead you to surname resources at Rootsweb, and information about the world-wide distribution of a surname.

searching the web (gold)

Free Surname
Search Engines

searching the web (gold)

Use this free genealogy site to help you get the best genealogy searches from Google™ by using your family tree, for your research. It will create a series of different searches using tips or "tricks"

that will likely improve your results. The different searches will give you many different ways of using Google and the Internet to find ancestry information about this or any other Surname.

Looking for world (gold)

Where in the World do These
Surnames Come From?

Looking for world (gold) right

Click on the LINK to the right to see more information about the World distribution of any surname. You can get greater

detail for any of the maps by clicking on the area, i.e state, county that you are interested in.

Use the “verwandt.de“ LINK to find specific information about the distribution of over one million names in Germany. A color-coded map showing all of the districts (kries) in Germany will

display the absolute distribution of names in a county, as well as the relative distribution of that name indicating how many persons there are in proportion to the population of a county.

research location

Our Ancestral Districts

Researching the Districts (Kreis)

Gazetteer of Places

Where in the World

are My Ancestors?

1 = Bergstraße; 2 = Darmstadt-Dieburg; Darmstadt

3 = Main-Taunus-Kreis

See Below For Complete Listing Of Numbered Districts.

Our Ancestral Districts

Our Ancestral Districts (Kreis)

The following named districts are associated with the history of our DIRECT ancestors. To select a specific ancestral county, go to our ANCESTRAL LOCATIONS home page. Here you will find additional links to our district pages where you can obtain information about our family gen-sites, images of localities, and surnames of persons, in our database, who have lived in the selected district.

To find out more about each county listed here use the following LINK

County Research (General)

Kreis (District)
Research

Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based mostly on anonymous contributions. Clicking on a Link (below) will take you to the Wikipedia article about the county. Here you will find additional links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.