Stories
Findings as they land, newest first: 11 entries so far. Some are large, some are a single corrected date. Both count.
The study has a home of its own: a page for each of its 2,234 people and 6,524 records, a map of where the name has been, a tree of the whole study, and an archive you can sift by decade. It will keep changing. So, historically, did the spelling.
Hegnauer is a name of origin: "the one from Hegnau", a village in the commune of Volketswil, canton Zürich, first written Hegenowa about 1150. A "C. dictus Hegenower" appears in 1281, when it was still a description, and it had become a family name by the later 1300s. Whether every Hegnauer descends from one man is a question for Y-DNA.
The registers of Volketswil, the parish Hegnau belongs to, have Hegnauer baptisms, marriages and burials from 1590. That is two years after the registers begin, so the family was already there. The study has now read them from 1590 to 1801.
Jacob Hegnauer is the first of the name in the church registers of Igis, in the Rhine valley of Graubünden, where he married in 1715. Where he came from, and whether Igis ever made him a citizen, is not recorded; the name itself is a Zürich one. His sons Nuttin and Hanss Heinrich very probably headed the two Hegnauer families of Igis, and the family that sailed for America in 1856 would then descend from him.
Jacob Hegnauer bef. 1695–aft. 1734 Nutt Hegnauer 1725–aft. 1762 Johann Heinrich Hegnauer 1734–1801
Christina Pleisch, who married Jakob Hegnauer of Igis in 1808, was a citizen of Luzein in the Prättigau, the daughter of Leonhard Pleisch and Maria Nett. She stayed at Igis for the rest of her life and died there in September 1862, six years after her son Luzius left for America.
Christina Pleisch 1791–1862 Jakob Hegnauer 1783–1858 Leonhard Pleisch b. bef. 1770 Maria Nett b. bef. 1770
Schangnau's marriage register for 1833 names the groom, Christian Hirschi, son of Peter, as baptised at Thierachern on 28 August 1814. That is the baptism of Christian, son of Peter Hirschi and Maria Stutzmann, so his parents are proven. Peter's own baptism, at Reichenbach in 1779, adds a generation: Christen Hirschig and Maria Spring. Maria Stutzmann's parents, Hans Stutzmann and Anna Feller, are probable.
Christian Hirschi Sr. 1814–1885 Peter Hirschi 1779–c. 1851 Maria Stutzmann 1779–1828 Christen Hirschi bef. 1756–aft. 1790 Maria Spring bef. 1760–aft. 1790 Hans Stutzmann 1746–1822 Anna Feller c. 1750–1826
Susanna Katharina Hirschi, who married Leonhard Hegnauer in Illinois, was born on 15 May 1846 and baptised on 5 June at Amsoldingen, canton Bern. The entry also gives her parents' marriage: Thun, 26 October 1833.
Susanna Katharina Hirschi 1846–1918 Christian Hirschi Sr. 1814–1885 Magdalena Stocker 1814–1881
In November 1850 Christian Hirschi took up 160 acres in Madison County, Illinois. He paid with a military bounty-land warrant earned by John McCabe, a private in the Seventh U.S. Infantry, which had passed to Christian. The family had not long come over from canton Bern.
The German Evangelical congregation at Highland, Illinois, recorded the marriage of Leonhard Hegnauer, farmer, of canton Graubünden, and Susanna Katharina Hirschi, of Amsoldingen, canton Bern. The county licence is dated 26 June 1866 and the wedding 4 July. The clerk wrote him down as "Leonard Hagnauer", which was only to be expected.
Leonhard Hegnauer 1843–1916 Susanna Katharina Hirschi 1846–1918
A sweep of digitised newspapers added 616 mentions of the name to the archive, from Swiss cantonal gazettes to Missouri obituaries. Among them is the notice of Luzius Hegnauer's emigration, printed in the Graubünden gazette on 6 June 1856, eleven weeks before the family sailed from Le Havre.
Mary Christina Hegnauer Hammer is buried in the Prairie City Cemetery, Bates County, Missouri, under a stone she shares with her daughter Emily. The stone gives 1918 for both of them, but only Emily died that year: Mary's death certificate gives 27 April 1920. Stones, it turns out, can be wrong too.