Map of the Hegnauers: every line at a glance

Variant harvest placed (27 Sep 2026)

The 1,748 variant-spelling records of 27 Sep 2026 are now mapped (offline, index-only; edits file edits/2026-09-27-map-variants.json, method as in Mapping every Hegnauer (family reconstruction, offline)):

• 1,227 placed — the 38 Igis entries placed earlier and 1,189 in this mapping (683 proven, 379 probable, 127 possible): 341 records to 190 people already in the study and 848 to 740 new people (H1450–H2189), of whom 512 are Hegnauers by birth or marriage and 228 their husbands and wives (one living person, counted, not named). Five duplicate people were merged (H0605→H0936, H0658→H0625, H0659→H0626, H1306→H0852, H1098→H1070) and ten older records relinked or placed (seven through the merges).
• 479 out of study (22 earlier and 457 now: 329 US Hagenauer — German, Austrian and Hungarian families, the Madison Co., Ill., Hagnauers, the Rorschach Hagenauer; 84 German Hegenauer of Baden, Württemberg and Franconia; 66 Swiss look-alikes — wildcard catches such as Hagenau and Hagenacher, the Catholic Hagenauer of St. Gallen and Rorschach, Hegnor, Hegnon, Hegnorf, the Aarau Hagnauer); 42 left unplaced (doubtful readings, or no names).
• New lines (family_line values in data/people.csv): Volketswil ZH (Hegnau's parish), 1590–1801. It was mapped first as the "'Schwyz' index series" (the index gives only "Schweiz", which FamilySearch standardizes as "Schwyz"). On 27 Sep 2026 its film was identified as the Volketswil register: DGS 8120584 = Film 889427, item 1, Taufen, Heiraten, Tote 1588–1801. The parish of Hegnau itself now has 161 people (126 of them Hegnauers) in about 20 households, with 149 entries harvested under the spelling Hegneüwer and others (Volketswil, the parish of Hegnau: the Hegnauer families, 1590–1801); Fehraltorf ZH "Hegnorer", 1548–1550 (to verify: the oldest church-book entries of the name); Illnau-Effretikon ZH "Hegnaucker", 1559–1624 (doubtful); Winterthur "Hegnower", 1562–1645 (may be the Winterthur Hegner); Bern / Seeland (Biel), 1592–1625; Stein am Rhein SH "Hagenauwer", 1590s–1762 (doubtful). Extended: Elgg now from 1553 (the Elgg "Hegner" of 1569–1636 are the Hegnauers: the same couples are indexed both ways), the Luzern Seetal from 1584 (Pfeffikon, beside Seengen AG), Bern from 1645, Uster.
• Main finds: the Uster line reaches back through Peter (bapt. Elgg 14 Jan 1672) to Andreas × Margreth Brännwald, m. Elgg 1669 (probable); Elgg's "Jacob (I)" is Hs Jacob × Elsbeth Stadelmann (m. 1656); Maria Elisabeth of Elgg (b. 1791) died at Königsfeld, Baden, in 1867 (proven); Friedrich × Susanna Wolf (1872) is the son of Jakob × Elisabeth Häusler (proven); a Jacob "Hagenauwer" at Stein am Rhein (daughter married 1721) shares the Igis founder's spelling — a lead only; nothing in the harvest names the Igis founder's origin. No record joins the Swiss centres; the nearest approach is geographic (Fehraltorf and Illnau beside Hegnau; Pfeffikon beside Seengen).
• Files: Elgg, canton Zürich: the Hegnauer families, 1553–1875 (section 1553–1700), Uster, Wetzikon, the Zürich Oberland and the Thurgau border, Swiss cities and other cantons: Basel, Bern, St. Gallen, Zürich city, Luzern, and entries without a parish, Volketswil, the parish of Hegnau: the Hegnauer families, 1590–1801 (Hegnau's parish, new 27 Sep 2026), Central Switzerland (Luzern, Zug): the Hegnauer families, 1584–1739 (now central Switzerland only: Luzern, Zug), Igis, Graubünden: the Hegnauer family from 1744 to the emigrants.

The name

Rewritten 27 Sep 2026 from Where the name Hegnauer comes from, which gives the full argument and references; the Volketswil families are in Volketswil, the parish of Hegnau: the Hegnauer families, 1590–1801.

• A name of origin: "the person from Hegnau". Hegnau is a village in the commune of Volketswil, canton Zürich (district of Uster), first written Hegenowa about 1150. Its name means "Hagino's Au", the land by the water that belonged to a man called Hagino or Hego (Zürcher Siedlungsnamenbuch), not "hedge meadow". It is the only settlement of that name in Switzerland. The -er ending makes a person of a place, as Zürcher is someone from Zürich. Every name book consulted classes Hegnauer this way: the Rätisches Namenbuch (III, p. 565), the Familiennamenatlas der Deutschschweiz (map 348, names of origin in -au) and the Igis citizens' corporation (Bürgergemeinde Landquart). Confidence: very high.
• From description to family name. In 1281 a man is written "C. dictus Hegenower" (Zürcher Familiennamen, p. 85), and in 1282 a man at Pfäfers is "Albertus dictus Ischener et dictus Hegnower" (RN III, p. 565): dictus, "called", marks a description, and Albert still had two bynames. The name was hereditary by the later 1300s: Johannes von Hegnau of Baden held a fief in 1363, and his son Wilhelm is von Hegnow in 1399 and Wilhelm Hegnöwer in 1413 (the Gessler documents, 1877). In the Zürich tax book of 1366 the clerk wrote "Johans Hegenower" over a struck-out "sin koch" (his cook). "Hans Hegnöwer von Hegnöw" follows in 1437, and in 1467–70 Herman Hegnauer was taxed at Hegnau itself, with other Hegnauer households at Wangen, Hirslanden, Oberhusen and in the city (Hegnauers in the Zürich tax books, 1366–1470). A man living in Hegnau who is still called "the Hegnauer" bears a family name. The tax books give no relationships beyond the household, so none of these people can be joined to the later lines on paper. In the church books the name is fixed from the first entries: Fehraltorf 1548 (to verify, below), Elgg 1553, Volketswil 1590.
• Hegnauers in Hegnau's own parish, 1590–1736. The study's former "'Schwyz' index series" is the Volketswil register (DGS 8120584 = Film 889427, item 1: Taufen, Heiraten, Tote 1588–1801). Hegnauers appear in it from 1590, two years after it begins, in about 20 households, written Hegnauwer and Hegneüwer. The last Hegnauer male-line entry is the burial of Hans Jacob in 1736; Hegnauer mothers appear until 1801 (Volketswil, the parish of Hegnau: the Hegnauer families, 1590–1801). Volketswil became a parish in its own right in 1638; before that its villages, Hegnau among them, belonged to the parish of Uster (HLS "Volketswil").
• The lords "von Hegnau" are not linked. A 13th–15th-century family of ministeriales (of the counts of Rapperswil, then of the Habsburgs), later citizens of Baden and Zürich, was itself called Hegnauer (Wilhelm, 1399/1413). The Dictionnaire historique et biographique de la Suisse treats "von Hegnau" and "Hegnauer" as one family, but says it is not known whether it is related to the Hegnauers of Elgg and Seengen. No record ties any study line to it. The surname did not need the lords: ordinary villagers were also called "von Hegnau" (Bela 1366, Hans Gul 1483), and the Pfäfers man of 1282 was plainly not one of them. That the Volketswil Hegnauers descend from the lords, who settled in the village as farmers before 1553 according to the DHBS, is a hypothesis only.
• Spellings: which are the same name. Hagenauwer, the Igis founder's spelling of 1715, is the same name (confidence high): the e of Hegnau is an old umlaut of the a of Hagino, and the village is said Hègnau with an open e; strangers wrote Hegnauers with Ha- in the Sempach lists of the fallen (1386), at Elgg (1667, 1689, 1691), at Uster (1816–48) and at Fehraltorf (1636); and the Igis register itself moves to Heg- within Jacob's lifetime (1731, 1734; his sister Elsbeth as Hegenauerin), and writes Hegnauer from 1744. Hagnauer (the Zürich city family from 1357 and the Aarau citizens) and Hagenauer (from Hagenau in Alsace, Hagnau am Bodensee and other Hagnau/Hagenau places; the Catholic Hagenauers of St. Gallen and Rorschach) are different names, though clerks confused them with Hegnauer early on. At Elgg, "Hegner" (1569–1636) is a short form of Hegnauer; elsewhere Hegner is a separate name.
• One founding ancestor? Not proven. The Familiennamenbuch der Schweiz lists only two old (pre-1800) citizenships of the name: Elgg ZH and Seengen AG; every later citizenship (Aarau, Basel, Mettmenstetten, Zürich, Kandergrund) derives from one of them (FamilySearch research, 27 Sep 2026: Igis before 1744, Seengen, Elgg before 1695, the Familiennamenbuch). Igis is not listed because the book records only citizenships held in 1962, and the Igis citizen family had died out (a member in London renounced it in 1924). The Igis Hegnauers arrived about 1715 (below), most likely from the Zürich area. Both old citizenships lie within 40 km of Hegnau (Elgg 19 km, Seengen 36 km), as do nearly all records before 1600, so no other home for the Swiss name is needed. But one place does not mean one ancestor: a name meaning "from Hegnau" could be given to several unrelated people, and the tax books already show several Hegnauer households in 1450–70. Y-DNA from direct male-line Hegnauers of Elgg or Uster, Seengen and Igis is the only test.
• The harvest gap, closed. The first record extract was taken under the spelling Hegnauer and missed Hagenauwer, Hegenauerin, Hegnauwer, Hegneüwer, Hognouwer, "Hegner" (Elgg 1569–1636) and others. The variant-spelling harvest of 27 Sep 2026 imported 1,748 such records, now mapped (section above), and the Volketswil film was then searched as a whole (149 more entries). They push Igis back to 1715, Elgg to 1553 and put Hegnauers in Hegnau's own parish from 1590.
• Fehraltorf, 1548–1550 (index only, to be verified): two baptisms at Fehraltorf, 6 km from Hegnau, are indexed for children of a Jacob "Hegnoren" / "Hegnorer" (6 Aug 1548 and 2 Mar 1550; O05132, O05063). If the images confirm the name, they are the earliest church-book entries of it, older than Elgg's 1553 (see the list of variants).

The lines

(People counts include wives and husbands who married into the line; the number in brackets is the Hegnauer-named people. 294 further people are spouses and relatives not assigned to a line.)

How the lines connect

graph TD
  H["Hegnau (Volketswil ZH) — the name's place, c.1150<br/>dictus Hegnower 1281–82 · Zürich tax books 1366–1470"]
  V["Volketswil ZH (Hegnau's parish)<br/>Hegnauers 1590–1736"]
  E["Elgg ZH<br/>from 1553 · old citizenship"]
  U["Uster ZH<br/>from 1647"]
  T["Thurgau parishes"]
  W["Brackenheim, Württemberg (1877)"]
  I["Igis GR<br/>from 1715 (Jacob)"]
  S["Seengen AG<br/>old citizenship"]
  B["Basel 1607 · Bern 1673 · Zürich villages 1660–77"]
  L["Luzern Seetal (Catholic) 1643"]
  G["Germany: Baden 1665 · Zußdorf 1682 · Nuremberg 1910"]
  N["Newark NJ 1873 (origin unknown)"]
  US1["USA 1856: Missouri, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Ohio (Canton)"]
  US2["USA 1872: Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, Montana, Chicago"]
  US4["USA 1856: Outagamie Co., Wisconsin (Christina Hegnauer × Nicolaus Hermann)"]
  US3["USA 1884: Rochester, Buffalo, Cuyahoga Falls, New England"]
  H -->|same place: Hegnau's parish register| V
  V -.->|possible: Hans × Elsbeth Bosshart, m. 1684, children at Elgg 1689–91| E
  V -.->|possible: Jacob bapt. 1682, or a son of the Bosshart couple| I
  H -.->|name only; no documented link| E
  H -.-> U
  E -->|probable, 1730| U
  E -->|proven| T
  U -->|proven| W
  I -->|Luzius, proven| US1
  I -->|Peter, proven| US2
  I -->|Christina, probable| US4
  S -->|probable| US3
  E -.->|possible: Igis founder c.1715 probably from the Zürich area| I
  H -.-> S
  H -.-> B
  H -.-> L
  G -.->|no documented link| H

Solid arrows are documented links; dotted arrows mean "same name, no record connects them".

What the records say about one origin or several (H1, H2)

• Volketswil is the name's home parish: Hegnauers lived there, in about 20 households, from 1590 to 1736 (Volketswil, the parish of Hegnau: the Hegnauer families, 1590–1801). No record yet takes any of them to another line; the Bosshart couple of 1684 (to Elgg?) and Jacob of 1682 (to Igis?) are possible only.
• Elgg + Uster + Thurgau are one family cluster within 20 km of Hegnau: the oldest continuous line in the church books (from 1553).
• Igis is separate in every record: Graubünden given names (Nutt, Luzius, Christian, Georg, Luzia) and Graubünden spouses (Krädtli, Radig, Pleisch, Luzi, Berri). Its founder Jacob, first at Igis in 1715, very probably came from the Zürich area: Hagenauwer is the Igis pastor's spelling of Hegnauer, he married in the Reformed church, and his family's Zürich names (Hans, Jacob, Elsbeth, Hans Heinrich) fit Elgg and Volketswil. Which family he left is undocumented; the three candidates are possible only (Where did Jacob Hegnauer come from?).
• Seengen, Basel, Bern, the Luzern Catholics and the German families have no recorded link to Elgg or Igis.
• In America the clusters collapse to three lines: Igis (1856, 1872), Seengen (1884) and Neuchâtel/Newark. No record links them. The FamilySearch full-text search of 27 Sep 2026 (FamilySearch Full-Text search, 27 Sep 2026: Hegnauer in machine-read deeds, wills, court and other records, about 3,500 machine-read pages) found no American record naming Igis; the nearest is Leonhard (H0003) "b. Canton Graubunden" in his son's 1909 university record. It did add a third Igis emigrant family (Christina Hermann, Wisconsin 1856), Peter's death before 1883, and Luzius's Gasconade farm 1857–1870.

What would join the lines

1. The images of Jacob's 1715 Igis marriage (DGS 8014188, image 159), his sister's 1717 marriage (image 160) and the Igis burial of Hans Heinrich, 1729 (image 225), the Volketswil baptism of Jacob, 1682, and marriage of Hans × Elsbeth Bosshart, 1684 (DGS 8120584, images 356 and 430), the Igis Hintersassenbuch 1792 and Gemeindeakten (DGS 8482680, 8482682), and the Elgg Haushaltungsrodel of 1721 (DGS 8015187): whether Jacob is entered as a newcomer ("von Elgg", Hintersäss) and whether a Jacob is missing from Elgg. These films are viewable only at a FamilySearch Center or affiliate library — a visit by the owner, or a record-lookup request, would settle the owner's line.
2. Done: Familiennamenbuch der Schweiz — old citizenships only Elgg ZH and Seengen AG; Igis not listed.
3. Zürich Bevölkerungsverzeichnisse (1634–1780; Staatsarchiv Zürich, E II 700) for Elgg, Uster and Volketswil, which list absent members: a household leaving for Graubünden or Aargau.
4. Y-DNA: one direct male-line Hegnauer from each of Igis, Elgg/Uster and Seengen (a Rochester descendant). A match would point to a common ancestor, probably from Hegnau in the 1300s–1400s; no match would mean the name arose more than once.
5. Seengen registers: Jacob's birth (c.1825), his marriage to Verena Siegrist and the children's baptisms 1846–70 (the indexed Aargau entries appear as "Baden, Aargau").
6. Newark: Louis Arnold's parents and Wilhelm's origin.

Files

• Switzerland: README · Volketswil (Hegnau's parish) · Elgg · Uster and Oberland · Igis · Seengen · Cities
• Europe: README · Germany and other
• Americas: README · Rochester NY · Buffalo NY · Cuyahoga Falls OH · New York City · Canton OH · Peter's branch · Missouri · Minnesota–Washington · Illinois · New Jersey · Other states · Canada and Latin America
• Data: each folder's map.csv (record → person), people.csv (the mapped people) and key-to-hid.csv (mapping key → study ID in data/people.csv).