Frank Oberle

The Oberle Family: from Dabo to Baltimore 1711-1975 Frank Oberle

On the night of 27 January 1726, Anna-Maria Anstett, the wife of Johann Oberle of Dagsburg in Lotharingia, took shelter in the Mauri Monastery while traveling in Alsace. With the help of a midwife, Anna-Maria delivered her fifth child, also named Johann, who is believed to be a younger brother of Balthassar Oberle, who was born in about 1711. More than a century later, on 17 July 1855, Balthassar?s great-great-grandson Seraphin was born in the town of Engenthal-le-Bas in Alsace. The Oberle family had already lived through the climatic disasters of the middle eighteenth century, the French Revolution with its bizarre calendar and politics, and had seen the Napoleonic era come and go. After an almost eighty year period of stability, however, Seraphin was to experience the Prussian invasion of France, and he himself was to end up ?drafted? into the Prussian military. Before too long, he encountered a young figure skater at his posting in Emden, a bustling shipping town on the Ems River in the northern reaches of the Prussian Empire. He and Sarah eventually made their way to the port of Baltimore, where they stepped off the ship and began a new life. With historical context provided as background, this book traces the history of Seraphin?s family from Balthassar?s birth in 1711 to brief discussions of the lives of his son Joseph?s four children and the death of their mother in 1975. The book includes copies of many original records ? the first of which is from the Mauri Monastery mentioned above, as well as photographs (including a few from the mid-nineteenth century) and examples of U. S. currency signed by Joseph Oberle during his banking career. A number of appendices are included ? including tips on reading and interpreting early records, suggestions for those wishing to undertake further research or visit the areas of Alsace and Lorraine mentioned in the book, and well as a list of seven generations of Balthassar Oberle?s family.