In an area of wooded, rounded hills near the northern boundary of the Land or Province of Hesse, and some 110 kilometres east of Cologne, there lies the little village of Engelbach-- meaning Angels' Brook, or perhaps Anglers' Brook or Crooked Brook. The village was first mentioned, as Engelenbahc or Engelbahc, in 1237, and not long ago proudly celebrated its 750th anniversary. It is reasonable to assume that it was from here that the Engelbach family originated and took its name, for surnames when they originated in medieval times were often based on the locality from which a man had come, once he had moved to somewhere else and could therefore be usefully described as, for instance, "John, the man from Engelbach".

That this is likely to have been the case is indicated by the fact that the earliest probable Engelbach ancestor of which we know was from Biedenkopf, a small but ancient town no more than six kilometres west of the village of Engelbach. This was Joachim Engelbach, who is believed to have been a carpenter, probably born in the 1540's. Moreover, a Volpert or Volprecht Engelbach, presumably related to Joachim, was the "Pfarrer" or Lutheran Pastor in the village of Dautphe, with its Romanesque and Gothic perish church, about six kilometres south of Biedenkopf, and nine from Engelbach, some time during the period 1535-63, and more certainly in 1560. He was only the first of many Engelbach pastors over the next two centuries and more.

Joachim's son Johannes Engelbach was born in about 1565, and is recorded as having been a student in 1579 at the relatively new University of Marburg (founded 1527, and soon an influential centre of Protestant theology) 20 kilometres from Biedenkopf, where he earned the degree of "Magister" (Master of Arts?). He too became a pastor, and died in 1635 at Kleinkarben, some 80 kilometres to the south, and about 15 kilometres north of Frankfurt. It is not clear whether Kleinkarben was in Hesse; more probably it was at that time in the small imperial Grafschaft or county of Kaichen, a dependency of the imperial Burg or fortified city of Friedberg, 12 kilometres to the north.

Johannes had two sons: Konrad, a pastor in Kleinkarben and a series of neighbouring localities from 1624 to 1666, the approximate date of his death in Wöllstadt, six kilometres to the north; and, more important to our story, Johann Jacob Engelbach, born in 1596 at Kleinkarben, and deceased in December 1679 at Büdesheim, six kilometres to the east, also belonging to Kaichen. Johann Jacob was an "écoutète" or Schultheiss (a sort of village mayor or headman) and "Untergrefe" (which seems to be some kind of junior village magistrate); whatever the exact meaning of these titles, it is clear that we have here the first recorded example of another traditional Engelbach family occupation, alongside and indeed much more long-lasting than that of pastor, namely that of official or civil servant. His wife's first name we do not know, but her maiden name was Kern. Significantty, this name recurs: a great-great-granddaughter of hers and Johann Jacob's, Sophie Sibylle König married a Philipp Heinrich Kern of Bouxwiller in 1745- another civil servant, of course. A niece of this Sophie, Margaret Elisabeth Luise König was in Goethe's circle in Strasbourg in 1770-2 (see section lV below).

The small village of Büdesheim is set in the gently rolling, fertile countryside some twenty kilometres to the northeast of Frankfurt am Main, and traversed by the small stream of the Nidder. The history of the village may go back to the eighth century, but the village church of St. Andrew is not mentioned until 1233. It was converted to use by Lutherans by 1555 at the latest, and it was there, presumably, that Johann Jacob Engelbach and his wife had their son, the future Pastor Georg Engelbach, baptised in 1629. We know no more than this of the circumstances, because like so much else in this central part of Germany, the church was badly damaged in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648); most of its interior decoration is subsequent to that period, as is the small deserted manor house (Schloss) of the village.

No Engelbachs live in Büdesheim now, but there is one in Bad Vilbel, some eight kilometres towards Frankfurt, and others in Frankfurt itself (there is mention of one there as early as 1788). Several are to be found in Biedenkopf and nearby Bad Laasphe and Marburg.

From elsewhere in Germany came other pastors to join the gene pool of the Engelbachs and the web of their relatives. On January 28, 1598, in Augsburg, Paster Johann Wegelin (Weiglin, Woglin) married Eva Christian Seutter; daughter of a pastor and "surintendant", and their son, Pastor Michael Wegelin, was born there in 1599; three other sons, Matthias, Josua and Georg, were also pastors, as was a brother of Johann Wegelin's, Thoma Wegelin, dean of theology at the University of Strasbourg in 1623-6, at least. On Febnrary 17, 1626 Pastor Michael Wegelin married a merchant's daughter, Regina Peffenhauser, at Augsburg-St-Anna.

The scene then moves southward in the 1620's to Lower Alsace, at the time a largely Lutheran area, where Michael Wegelin, after studying briefly in Tübingen, studied and was ordained for the pastorate in 1625 at Buchsweiler (Bouxwiller)., later destined to be preeminent in the history of the Alsatian Engelbachs. He remained there as deacon till 1627, then moving across the Rhine to Kork (part of the same scattered feudal unit of Hanau-Lichtenberg) as pastor; he probably died there about 1636. His wife died in 1663 at an irnportant village and " bailliage" capital near Bouxwiller, Pfaffenhofen, where a daughter Eva Regina had married the local pastor Jacob Keller in 1652. (To illustrate the web of sacerdotal relationships, one can mention that their daughter married a Pastor Johann Jacob König, himself the son and grandson of pastors, and that the couple's pastor son married Christine Salome Engelbach, sister of two Engelbach pastors-- including the ancestor of our English line--and aunt of Goethe's friend, of whom more later.)

Bouxwiller or Buchsweiler, first mentioned in 734 as Puxuvillare, was from the 13th century the site of a manor of the Lords of Lichtenberg whose ruined castle still remains a few kilometres to the west, on a hilltop of the Vosges. After the death of Jacques II of Lichtenberg in 1480, the county was inherited through Philippe I by the Hanau-Babenhausen line, Babenhausen being a town not far from Hanau, mentioned above. At the beginning of the 16th century the town suffered in the peasants' revolt, and the whole district was devastated in the earlier part of the Thirty Years' War, with heavy depopulation. In 1630-33 the fortifications of the town, which had suffered during the period, were extensively repaired, and some time before 1634, the Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg placed his territories under French protection and obtained a French garrison, even though Alsace was still at least nominally part of the Holy Roman Empire. This did not prevent Bouxwiller being pillaged in May 1638 by Croats, presumably Imperial mercenaries. By the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the war, France in practice annnexed Alsace, which it had by then occupied, although most of it still remained technically in the Empire, and most of the rights of the German princes holding lands in Alsace, including the Counts of Hanau-Lichtenberg were to be preserved under the Treaty.

The Counts normally resided at Bouxwiller, (it is not clear how much time they spent on their German territory to the north), and although their lands were scattered in enclaves, or surrounding other lords' enclaves, in a confused patchwork extending over much of the Alsatian plain west and northwest of Strasbourg, they were regarded as one of the most powerful ruling families of lower Alsace. The county had nine (later more) 'bailliages" or, in German, "Ämter", administrative groupings of villages, and the most important was that of Bouxwiller itself, including no less than 26 villages; its importance was increased by its position on the main road from Strasbourg to Metz. There were also bailliages just across the river from Strasbourg, including Kork where Pastor Michael Wegelin, mentioned in the preceding section, had been based for a time.

Power was in practice shared with the French intendant of the province, but the Count, like his peers in other local territories, had many judicial and financial powers; and he was also head of the (Lutheran) church in his county, with a Consistory of ecclesiastical and lay officials meeting at Bouxwiller, and - important for our story - power, it would seem, to appoint pastors throughout his territory. The genealogical web of Engelbachs and other pastors, most of them related to one mother, and sons or fathers of other pastors or lay officials of comparable importance, implies that there was virtually a kind of state pastoral service in the county, with pastors moving from locality to locality, but always within the county, during their career., and probably favoritism in promotion for members of important local families.

The move of this branch of Engelbachs to Alsace came in 1649, in the form of Georg Engelbach's inscription at the University of Strasbourg already known as a centre of conservative Lutheran learning, where he studied in the faculty of philosophy under one Melchior Sebizius, rector. On October 30, 1655 came the first definite Engelbach connexion with Bouxwiller, when he married there Margaretha Wegelin, daughter of Pastor Michael Wegelin of Kork, originally from Augsburg as mentioned above. In the same year he became pastor at Ernolsheim, a small Hanau-Lichtenberg village some 15 kilometres west-south-west of Bouxwiller, where the Lutheran church, with a very old tower, is still to be seen. In 1666 he took over the pastorate at Neuwiller, seven kilometres west of Bouxwiller, where he remained till his death in 1678. There too the Lutheran church, St. Adelphe's, is to be seen--a bare, transitional Romanesque-Gothic structure without a choir, and with so few books or other fiunishings that its congregation is perhaps on the verge of disappearing, in contrast with the neighboring Catholic church of St Pierre et St Paul, with unusual superimposed chapels, music, and tapestries commissioned by a 15th century Count Philip III of Hanau-Lichtenberg.

When the first EngeIbach arrived in Alsace in 1699, the Bouxwiller area was still in a sorry state. A local register in that year said that "for want of seed and horses, the whole domain is deserted and empty, with no more accounts to be made, for there is no longer anyone in the villages, nor any cattle, there is no grain coming in, the villages are abandoned, there is no longer a soul at Hattmatt, Zobersdorf, Uttwiller, Obernodern, Griesbach..." (Georges Livet, L 'Intendtance d'Alsace sous Louis XIV1648-1715, Paris 1956, p. 536). Recovery and repopulation followed, but by the time of Gcorg's death in October 1678 the period of peace and prosperity in Alsace which had followed the Treaty of Westphalia was over, and the area was caught up in the war of 1672-78 between France and the Netherlands, with which the Hapsburg Emperor eventually became allied. The fortifications of Bouxwiller were tightly guarded in 1674 because of apprehensions arising from this war (probably Turenne's winter campaign of that year). In January 1677 the dowager princess of Hanau-Lichtenberg implored Louis XIV to have pity on her and her five orphaned children, pointing out the services she had rendered to the incoming troops, the contributions she had paid and the damage suffered in her lands. The King ordered that her territory be spared against the threat of a local general, Montclar, to raze Bouxwiller. Nevertheless in 1677-78, when hard fighting occurred in Alsace between Louis XIV's forces and those of the Duke of Lorraine and the Imperial armies, it was damaged; in March 1678 the French commander, Marshal Franois Créquy "pilla la ville, vida les caves, les granges, fit sauter en partie les murailles et le château..." Thus it was that Georg's burial on October 3, 1678 took place at night, because "on craignait les excès des troupes françaises, 'fanatisch katholisch"'.

Shortly alter this, there is other evidence that the French intendants of Alsace began to respond to the Catholicising policies of Louis XIV which were not long afterwards to culminate in France proper, although not in Alsace, in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Catholics of Bouxwiller were given possession of one of the churches that they had lost when the area became Lutheran, and in 1682, elsewhere in the county, the intendant saw to it that the "simultaneum" was introduced, whereby if a minimum of seven Catholics were found to reside in a given parish, the Protestants had to yield up part possession of the local church - often with the Catholics obtaining the main altar and Protestants relegated to transepts, with portable altars. The author was told by a local pastor that if necessary, the French of that time brought in war veterans to ensure that the quota of seven Catholics was attained. The simultaneum still exists in a number of local churches, with such bizarre phenomena as separate Catholic and Protestant organs, and special permission having to be obtained for one to be used at a wedding of adherents of the other faith.

Georg and Margaretha Engelbach had four children, including Catherina, who married a "durckheimien" pastor in 1683, Maria Salome (1666-1684), and Georg Jacob, who was born perhaps in the late 1650's at Ernolsheim, studied law in Strasbourg in 1673, and became "receveur de bailli et fabrique" (Rentmeister?) at Westhoffen or Westhofen, another Hanau-Lichtenberg "bailliage" in an isolated enclave some 26 km due south of Bouxwiller. There on November 13, 1679 he married Maria Magdalena Moller, described as "fille de bailli et trompette" and elsewhere as "Tochter des Burgvogts zu Lichtenberg" (obviously yet another civil servant, "Burgvogt" meaning "chatelain" i.e. of the castle). We have no date for his death, but in 1692, according to his son’s biography, he was "Amt- und Kirchschaffner", as well as "Stadt- und Amtschreiber" in Westhoffen. The following, from Livet, p. 713, gives some idea of what these titles meant:

"Corps financiers, les Rgences (he is probably translating "Regierungen", of which Bouxwiller was one) comprennent une Chambre des comptes et divers organismes spécialisés, comme á Bouxwiller, la Rentkammer ou Chambre des recettes. Lui sont subordonnàes die Amtsschaffnei, intendance ou administration du bailliage, die Fruchtverwaltung, administration des grains, die Kirchschaffnei, intendance ou administration des villages" (or does he mean the churches?)

Another historian of the period, Froitzheim, says he was also Amtsschaffner in Wolfisheim, another smaller bailliage about three-quarters of the way from Westhoffen to Strasbourg. Later he apparently also became "conseiller fiscal linangien", the county of Linange-Westerbourg being a nearby territory which disputed the adjacent lordships of Oberbronn and Niederbronn with Hanau-Lichtenberg in the mid-17th century, but passed by inheritance to Count Johann-Reinhard (Jean René) of the latter in 1701. Westhoffen has a large bare 15th century Lutheran church, St. Martin’s.

Georg Jacob had another civil servant brother, Johann Michael Engelbach (1659-1723), Kammerassessor and afterwards Rentmeister of the Palatinate Birkenfeld principality. He married an Anna Maria Long or Lange, from a family of pastors stretching back into the sixteenth century. He was the progenitor of a number of other Engelbach civil servants. Of particular importance is that one of these descendants, Friedrich August or Frédéric Auguste Engelbach (1772-1826), a Strasbourg lawyer born in Bouxwiller, is the ancestor of the present-day "French branch" of the Engelbach family.

Pastor Johann Jacob Engelbach, one of Georg Jacob’s three sons, was born in Westhoffen in 1692, went to the Gymnasium (grammar school) of Bouxwiller and then studied at the University of Strasbourg; in 1717 he received a master’s degree from Jena ("pietist"? asks a modern researcher suspiciously), was examined at Hanau, and ordained in the same year at Bouxwiller. Pastorates at Allenwiller (a dependency of Westhoffen) and Eckartsweier (in Hanau-Lichtenberg territory across the Rhine, and south of Kork) followed. From 1721 he was second pastor of Bouxwiller, and from 1736 till he died of a neck abcess on March 31 1737, he was first pastor and subsequently Inspector of all pastors and schoolteachers of the County--evidently a signal honour. Various other details about him are recorded, including the fact that he received a special fee for teaching oriental languages.

On May 6, 1721 Johann Jacob married Johanna Catherina Sophie Rischke, born in 1702 at the small village of Harnekop (140 inhabitants in 1910) in the Duchy of Brandenburg, i.e. Prussia, about 4 km from the small town of Wriezen on the "Old Oder" River. She was the daughter of Sebastien Rischke, a "bailli" (inevitably?) and his wife Anna Catharina Elisabeth Michaelis; her younger brother Christian Ludwig became a teacher and theologian at the Bouxwiller Gymnasium, after studying at Strasbourg. Johann Jacob and his wife had no less than ten children, including four daughters who married pastors or other church officials, a son who was a "pâtissier" at the court of Bouxwiller (and true to form, married the daughter of the local "conseiller fiscal"), and another who died at the age of 25 as a "laquais". The son who concerns us, another Johann Jacob, is discussed below. Johann Jacob the elder's widow received what sounds like an adequate pension and died at Bouxwiller in 1773.

Pastor Johann Jacob Engelbach had two brothers: Pastor Georg Jacob Engelbach (b. 1682 at Westhoffen, married Maria Sybilla Michaelis, no doubt a relative of the Michaelis mentioned above, became pastor at Auenheim, a Hanau-Lichtenberg village just across the Rhine from Strasbourg, and then at Obermodern 6 km from Bouxwiller till he died in 1711); and Johann Konrad Engelbach, Kammerrat ("conseiller") of Bouxwiller, who was the father of Goethe's friend (see below); and two sisters, one who married a Regierungsrat (government adviser) in Bouxwiller, and the other who married a Pastor König, son of another local pastor and father of a municipal official; their problems during the War of the Spanish Succession are mentioned below. Johann Jacob and Johann Konrad both had pietist convictions, as indicated in the family genealogy.

In the 1680's the County of Hanau-Lichtenberg, which had already suffered during the Dutch wars as we have seen, was exposed to the weaknesses of a regency and the minority of its ruler, the young Johann Reinhard, and there seem already to have been plans to have the territory pass to the important Landgraf of Hesse-Kassel in Germany. Meanwhile French control was gradually being reinforced in practice, and on 13 February 1698 we read of the peace of Ryswick being celebrated at Bouxwiller by a solemn service in the two churches, garlands of greenery in the form of the French royal coat of arms set up in front of the house of the "écoutète" Loyson (obviously French), and fireworks based on the words "Vive le Roy"- but, adds the local chronicler, without any real joy during any of the festivities. The September 1697 Treaty of Ryswick had ended the so-called War of the Grand Alliance or War of the League of Augsburg of 1689-1697 between France on the one hand and England, Spain, Holland and the Empire on the other; the war had seen the devastation of the Palatinate, including Heidelberg, and--of interest only to the author and his family--the capture of Port Royal, and thus of all Nova Scotio by an expedition from New England, but the peace more or less restored the status quo ante, including (for a few more years only) French possession of Nova Scotia.

In 1701 Count Johann Reinhard III, having attained his majority, obtained confirmation of his privileges from the French crown. French diplomats had mistakenly included his territory in a list of lands to be restored to the Empire, but he prudently decided not to try to avail himself of this. The letters patent which he received involved his relinquishment of certain rights, as indicated in Livet, pp. 822-3, but his hold on others was strengthened, including his control over the Lutheran church in his territory. "Les princes possessionnés, dôtés de biens importants en Alsace, continuent ainsi â former dans la noblesse une classe à part, d'un rang supérieur, tant par leurs revenus cue par les exemptions dont ils jouissent; l'intendant a intéret â les ménager le plus possible, la souveraineté du Roi etant reconnue de plein gré et devant entraîner l'adhésion des sujets."

The Hanau-Lichtenberg territories were nevertheless not spared from the next war between France and its neighbours, the War of the Spanish Succession, as family anecdotes confirm. In June 1704 the installation at Preuschdorf (bailliage of Wörth, 40 km north of Strasbourg) of Pastor Friedrich König whose wife Christina Salome was a sister of Pastors Johann Jacob and Georg Jacob Engelbach, was delayed by an invasion of Imperial troops, who sacked the village; Christina took refuge in Westhoffen where her parents lived, and gave birth there to a son, the next Johann Jacob. In 1706 Pastor König and his wife were at Pfaffenhofen, just east of Bouxwiller, when there was an "invasion des impériaux et badois, autel éloigné du choeur de l'église, remplacé par un autel consacré à Marie; König ne trouve nulle part on soutien pour défendre les droits de ses paroissiens." It is interesting to note that the non-French invaders are seen as more anti-Lutheran than the French rulers of Alsace.

Eventually peace returned to the area, and was not to be further disturbed until the French Revolution. At this time comes the next generation of Engelbachs, with the birth at Bouxwiller on March 21, 1722, of the first of Pastor Johann Jacob Engelbach's ten children, another Johann Jacob Eagelbach; he seems to have lived there all his life, except for studies in theology and law fiom 1737 to 1746, and died there on June 29, 1770. He was a "conseiller fiscal" (whatever that may have meant) in Bouxwiller, as well as being the local spiritual leader of the pietist movement, an effort at religious renewal within the Lutheran church which was prominent in the later 17th century and the first half of the 18th. He married a Sophia Dorothea Ammann, daughter of a local official, and they had four children. Like other Engelbachs in Bouxwiller, he is likely to have worked in the Chancery building of the county, a picturesque structure built 1658-63 which is now the town hall. He was eventually dismissed from his position, as the Prince was turning against pietism as a Lutheran heresy.

This was the period of the reign of the previously mentioned Johann Reinhard III, last count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (1688-1736), who spent his childhood and much of his reign at Bouxwiller, and much embellished its chateau and garden. He also studied at the University of Strasbourg. Like other great families of Alsace, the counts had a palace in Strasbourg which is now the city hall. Johann Reinhard and his wife, Princess Dorothée Frédérique of Brandenburg-Ansbach, had an only daughter, Charlotte Christine, whose marriage to Ludwig VIII (1691-1748), Landgraf (Count) of Hesse-Darmstadt, led to Hanau-Lichtenberg passing unexpectedly on Johann Reinhard's death to Ludwig's son and heir, later Ludwig IX (1719-1790) when he attained his majority in 1741. In other words Bouxwiller now became part of a major German principality, although still under overall French control. In that year Ludwig and his new wife Henriette-Caroline, daughter of Count Palatine Christian III of Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld, made their entry into Bouxwiller, which became her favourite residence, and where she lived, mostly from November to May, 1741-50 and 1758-65. The "grosse Landgräfin", as she was known, became the centre of a literary and artistic circle until her death in 1774.

Underneath it all, the Engelbachs continued on their bureaucratic course in the increasingly prosperous town of Bouxwiller. The son of the already-mentioned Johann Jacob and Sophie Engelbach, Johann Reinhard Engelbach (1745-1815), was born there, married Louisa Charlotta Ehrmann, daughter of a Bouxwiller official, and became "Hochfürstlicher Rent- kammer Secretarius". This couple can speak to us directly through the two affectionate letters they wrote to their English grandson when they were in exile in Darmstadt in 1815 and 1818 (the texts are to be found under their entries in the genealogy).

Religious tensions were still present in the area; in 1747 a Pastor Georg Heinrich Lange (whose pastor son was later to marry a daughter of Johann Jacob Engelbach the "conseiller fiscal") asked his religious superiors, from his church at Gaudertheim in the bailliage of Brumath, how he should react to the intention of the French authorities to introduce the ''simultantum" at Gaudertheim for five Catholic families; what should he do when the "Römischen" claimed the choir of the church? The answer he received was that he should remain quiet and calm, and submit himself to the intendant.

As the 18th century wore on we find Engelbachs no longer as pastors, perhaps because three eminent members of the family had been involved with the controversial doctrines of pietism, to the displeasure of the ruling Prince, but family members continued as senior civil servants within the Hanau-Lichtenberg regime right up to its end. Alongside them, bevies of their closely-related Lange, König and Petri cousins did serve as pastors as well as officials.

The Enlightenment began to influence elites in Strasbourg and spread thence into the countryside. One Engelbach-relevant sign of this was the literary salon established in Strasbourg about 1770 by an Engelbach cousin Margaretha Luise König, better known as Luise König, frequented by talented young men such as Goethe (who was studying law in Strasbourg), as well as his sister and the wife of the rising German author Johann Herder, and eventually the author himself. This was the time of the start of the celebrated Sturm und Drang literary movement, in which Goethe was a leader, and he even named a character "Lerse" in one of his plays of the period, Götz von Berlichingen, after a friend who was another Engelbach cousin, Franz Christian Lerse. Yet another of Goethe's friends and fellow students in Strasbourg as well as his academic coach there, was Johann Konrad Engelbach, from Westhoffen. Goethe took a celebrated ride with him and another friend to Bouxwiller in June 1770, and commemorated this excursion in his autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit (an extract is quoted under Johann Konrad's entry in the genealogy). Separately, historians tell us that England and Scotland were admired for their liberal traditions, and that some of the better-educated even studied English-- important to understand the surprisingly rapid integration of the "English immigrant", Gottlieb, into English life when he fled there after the Revolution.

We do not know whether the approach of the French Revolution was felt significantly in the scattered communities of the Hanau-Lichtenberg Grafschaft or County., although there was a complicated and perhaps widely resented web of heavy feudal dues (of which records exist) as elsewhere in France. However, the night of August 4 - 5, 1789, when the National Assembly in Paris voted the end of feudal rights, sealed the fate of Hanau-Lichtenberg. At the time of the Revolution according to an accounting of this prosperous little feudal unit made a few years later, in 1798, the territories west of the Rhine, i.e. under overall French sovereignty, comprised 12 bailliages, 7 towns, 4 "bourgs avec marchés", 138 villages, 114 mills and farms ("fermes", possibly tax units larger than individual peasant units of cultivation), and a total of 65,123 inhahitants. There were also three bailliages on the other side of the Rhine, under the authority of the Count but not of France; precise national frontiers did not matter quite so much then as they did later.

In the spring of 1790, as Revolutionary fever was spreading throughout France, the ruling Landgraf of Hesse visited Bouxwiller, bells were tolled in welcome, and the pastor husband of an Engelbach, Christian Heinrich Lange (see genealogy), participated in an address of loyalty to him by the "bourgeois" of the town. But by next year, 1791, the Hanau-Lichtenberg officials and their records had had to leave for Darmstadt, and by 1793 all traces of the old regime were erased. (But in 1802 the Landgraf got lands in Germany in compensation for what he had lost in Alsace). Accounts--all too familiar, unfortunately, to the modern reader--exist of revolutionary violence by the "sans-culottes" against reactionaries in Bouxwiller and elsewhere, and the genealogy shows that most members of the Engelbach family and other related people soon left. The departures at this time presumably included the young Gottlieb Ludwig Engelbach, who found his way to England and became the ancestor of the "English branch", and his parents, Johann Reinhard and Louisa (Ehrmann) Engelbach, who settled in Darmstadt. Gottlieb came there too at the end of his life. (There is still an Engelbach in Darmstadt, as well as others in nearby Pirmasens; the author does not know their descent). There were exceptions to the flight, of course; a cousin, Christian Friedrich Lange, became a pastor and teacher in Bouxwiller (1807- 1819), but this was already a post-Revolutionary era. Others found a new life in Strasbourg, and many remained there at least until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. But that is another story.

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