Being in lockdown (not in jail, but for COVID-19) has given me time to work on my genealogy. The new Burgenland Church Records have been very interesting to sort through. My Kappel family came from the village of Inzenhof, Burgenland, Austria. A new set of Catholic church records has now come online for Burgenland. Looking at who lived in the family village going back to the late 1600's is very interesting.
Sorting through the records there are gaps which have prevented me from actually tracing my direct lines any farther back. The early church records for Sankt Nikolaus parish, which neighbors Inzenhof, are missing. I believe some of my families were from that parish. Commonly used first names and surnames have also created a problem when it comes to tracing lines back.
Even though record gaps and common names have prevented me from extending my direct lines any further back than the late 1700's I have been able draw some conclusions. For instance the Kurta surname appears in Inzenhof in the late 1600's. The earliest instance I have found the name Kurta is in neighboring Kleinmurbisch (Kissmedves) in 1671, which is a neighboring village of Inzenhof. The first entries for Kurta families living in Inzenhof are in 1687.
Kurtas were likely living there earlier but village names were not always recorded in the books. Since the church books only go back to the mid to late 17th century period we don't know how much earlier Kurtas settled there? I've been able to reconstruct some of the early Kurta families living in the Inzenhof area, which you see below (you can get a better view of the spreadsheet at Google Sheets).
The earliest records for Inzenhof are recorded under the name Hinzenhoff and can be found in the Gussing parish books. According to The Best of Burgenland site in 1327 the Inzenhof area was controlled by Count Heinz. His subjects were called Hienzen which eventually morphed into the Inzenhof village name.
I've found early entries for my family surnames Wolf and Simitz recorded as being very early residents of Inzenhof. My paternal surname Kapple/Kappel/Koppel is first recorded in 1698 for Inzenhof. I'm not sure if there were Koppels in Inzenhof before that date. There were many Koppel families within a few miles of Inzenhof, however. I do see a number of my other family surnames showing up around 1698 so maybe there was a migration to that area around that time?
I've also attempted to reconstruct Kappel/Koppel family groups using the Catholic Church records (for a better view of the spreadsheet below you can view it at Google Sheets).
Many in my family believed Kappel to be a Ashkenazi surname. I have found the Koppels in Catholic Church records going back to the 1600's. If they were converts to Catholicism it would have occurred before the late 1600's. I did find mixed marriages between Lutherans and Catholics. Those marriages didn't seem uncommon. In 1600's Gussing books I found two baptismal parents described as Judea which I assume meant they were Jewish? I have not found many entries referring to Jewish parents other than the two below.
When I started doing my Burgenland research I was under the impression my family had been brought into the border area depopulated by war when the Ronok parish began keeping records in the late 1700's. Now I know the families were in the area much earlier.
DNA Segment Map
I've also had time to add DNA segments to my segment maps at Genome Mate Pro. When I first started DNA testing I had only one small segment I could trace back to my family in Burgenland. Other family members had several large segments so I wondered am a really a Kappel? A number of 2nd and 3rd cousins, and one 1st cousin once removed have now tested and I'm building a great segment map for my paternal grandparents.The 1st cousin once removed was anonymous for a time at 23andMe and only recently decided to participate in DNA Relatives. Her grandparents were Frank Kappel and Mary Kurta-Kappel from Burgenland.
The greenish segments (on the chromosome map below) would be the ones I got from my paternal grandfather Rudolph "Boots" Kapple, and the reddish are the ones I got from my paternal grandmother Dorothy Mason-Kapple. If my grandparents were alive I would've tested them and all of my paternal chromosomes would be filled with red and green. Of course we shouldn't see red and green overlapping to any degree unless our grandparents shared common ancestors. I saw a little bit of overlap between two segments, which really means nothing. My grandparents had clearly different ethnic backgrounds. This chart will help me figure out which grandparent a match is related to if I have their segment data but not tree. My mother DNA tested so I can tell which matches are maternal or paternal. I had an aunt and some cousins test to represent my father.
