BROYLES/BRILES Family History
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"He alone deserves to be remembered by his children who treasures up and preserves the memory of his fathers." Edmund Burke 1729-1797

" 'Honour thy father and thy mother' stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness."
�schylus 525-456 B. C.

"Days are scrolls: Write on them only what you want remembered."
Bachya ibn Pakuda, 11th Century

"Der Apffel fellt nicht germe weit vom Baume!"
(The apple doesn't fall far from the tree! - Old German Proverb.)

"He who lives without child knows no heartache.  He who dies without child knows no happiness."
Anonymous

"What has been blown away, cannot be found again."
-- Ethiopian proverb

"Not to know what happened before One was born is to remain a child."
...Cicero 106-43 BC

"No man's tongue nor no man's pen, makes me other than I've been."
Anonymous

"The only way to look into the future is by standing on the shoulders of the past."
Anonymous

Welcome!   You are visitor number to this site since 21 June, 1996.  Thanks for stopping by!

This BROYLES/BRILES Family History Web Page is produced and maintained for the tens of thousands of descendants of the immigrant Johannes BREYHEL (or John BROYLES, Johannes BREUEL and other variations of the name) and will originally be devoted mainly to his descendants.

We have established this Web Page so that BROYLES/BRILES researchers may have a place to access contributions from other researchers, and have a place to deposit their own GEDCOM files. We would like for you to drop us an e-mail. Let us know if you find anything of value here.

Once we get the main BROYLES/BRILES database up and running, we intend to include links to other related families: WILHOIT/WILHITE, BLANKENBAKER/BLANKENB�HLER, YEAGER/YAGER, KOPP/COPP/CUPP, FLESHMAN/FLEISCHMANN, WAYLAND, KINDLE, BIRD/BYRD, WALTERS, PAINTER, FOX, FILLERS/FELLERS/G'FELLERS, HOLT and others.

Index

  1. (Links to articles on this page.)

    1. The Story.
    2. The Researchers.
    3. Myths and Fallacies.
    4. GEDCOM Central.
    5. Credits and Authors.

  1. (Links to other pages.)

    1. John BLANKENBAKER's GERMANNA Colonies Page.  Information on all the GERMANNA Colonies, in the form of "Short Notes".  If you are interested in learning the history of our Germanna ancestors, this is "mandatory" reading.

    2. "The Great Palatine Migration".  An excellent treatment by Donald L. Spidell of the migration from the Palatine region of Germany to America.  Contains a short history of the migration and several excellent links to other sites with information on the same subject.

    3. Ancestors of Herman CUMMINGS, more fascinating history on the BROYLES/BRILES family;  all the other GERMANNA families of Virgina;  German origins and history;  Governor Spotswood; Madison Co., VA;  and much more. Very interesting reading.

    4. Click here to see A Map of the First Patents of Land in Madison County, Virginia, as of the Year 1740. This Map shows Land Patents obtained by members of the 1st and 2nd Germanna Colonies.

    5. Click here to see another Map of the First Patents of Land in Madison County, Virginia. This Map shows Patents to the West and South of the above Map, and includes, among others, Patents of King, Eddings, Holt, Batteley, Rucker, Taliaferro, Cave, Phillips, Rice, Dougharty, Bruce, and especially of our Proginator, John BROYLES (Johannes BREYHEL).

    6. Click here to see photographs of the Hebron Lutheran Church at Germanna; also some other photos of general interest to BROYLES and LOVETTE descendants.

    7. Click here to link to the BROYLES Coat of Arms Page.

    8. Cumberland Family Tree for Windows  Genealogy Program.  If you're looking for the Premier genealogy program, look no further.  It's here !!!

    9. Links 'n Things.  After you have read this Home Page, you are ready to take a tour of the fascinating links to the BROYLES/BRILES Family History.  You will find such things as the Databases, the German Church Records, some Tables, showing the German Villages our ancestors came from, some Web Pages and E-Mail address of Germanna Descendants, BROYLES/BRILES Famous Folks, many links to Germanna and Germanna-Related information, links to other Genealogy Sites, files for Downloading, and many surprising and interesting pages about BROYLES/BRILES and Germanna history

    10. RootsWeb Mailing Lists messages are now archived.  If you want to look through the Archives of past messages from RootsWeb Lists, go to this Link.  The Archives include not only most of the Germanna SURNAME Lists, but over 1000 other SURNAME Lists as well.  If you want to search through a specific List at RootsWeb for specific Words, Names, or Phrases, go to this Link.

    11. If you want to find existing Internet Mailing Lists that cover SURNAMES, States, Regions, Areas, Counties, Ethnic Groups, Country Origins, General Genealogy Subjects, etc., log on to John Fuller's web site.

The Story

Johannes Breyhel, son of Conrad and Margaretha (Schelling) Breyhel, was christened 1 May 1679, in
Du�lingen (Dusslingen), W�rttemberg (Wuerttemberg), just south of T�bingen (Tuebingen) in present day Germany. Tübingen, Germany For reasons unknown he moved about 50 miles away to �tisheim (Oetisheim), probably around 1700 where on 6 Nov 1703 he married Ursula RUOP, daughter of a local grave digger. It is in �tisheim that they raised their family. A number of their children died as infants: Conrad (who was a twin to Hans Jacob), Mattheus, and probably also Jerg Martin. In the tradition of the times they used the name Conrad again for their fourth child.

ImmigrationJohannes and family emigrated to Virginia in the summer of 1717, with about twenty other families from nearby villages. Gov. Spotswood of Virginia, who paid their passage in return for an indenture of seven years, settled them at "Germanna" where he had located an earlier group of German immigrants in 1714. (Germanna is located where Virginia Rte. 3 crosses the Rapidan River west of Fredericksburg.)

Johannes proved his importation to America on 2 May 1727, as John BRYOLL. It was about this time that many of the Germanna immigrants moved to present day Madison Co., VA, took up land, and founded the Hebron Lutheran Church. John's son Jacob (Hans Jacob) was the progenitor of the Broyles family, and son Conrad was progenitor of the Briles family.

It is believed that Johannes and Ursula had additional children on this side. They were certainly young enough. Based on the records of land sales, it is certain that Adam Wilheit's wife Catherine was a daughter of Johannes and Ursula. She would have been born circa 1720. One probable son, "Christley Browel", is mentioned in the 1739 tithable list of Orange Co., VA. From this it would be expected that he was born circa 1718. He must have died or left the area by 1744, the year Jacob and Conrad sold their part of their father's farm. Based on the order of tax taking and comparing it to the Carpenter map of original land patents in Madison Co. (nicely updated in a recent Beyond Germanna), Christley seems to have been living with Matthias Smith, or nearby.

Go Back To Index.

The Researchers

Researchers Pioneering work on the families of the second Germanna Colony including the Broyles/Briles lines was done by Dr. Arthur Leslie Keith, and published in several issues of the William and Mary Quarterly early in the 1900s. He was also the author of a full typewritten manuscript on the entire Broyles/Briles family. Running to hundreds of pages, a copy of this work is found at the Mormon Library in Salt Lake City, and it is available on microfilm from the Library of Congress.

In 1990, Johni Cerny and Gary Zimmerman of Lineages, Inc., Salt Lake City, located the ancestral homes of many of the Germanna colonists. They did this by searching the German church records of villages surrounding the known home of one of the immigrants. Fortunately for us, they found Johannes and Ursula! Booklet #6 of the series Before Germanna contains the information they found. The booklets can be purchased from Heritage Quest. (For an on-line listing of the books, you can check their catalog of Virginia books and look for the title.)

Steve Broyles has verified and extended the work of Cerny and Zimmerman. Be sure to check this out. Here you can see copies of the original church records of our ancestors, in the original German, and translated into English.

Go Back To Index.

Myths and Fallacies

The road to truth in genealogical research is seldom a straight course. Over the years a number of mistakes and mis-interpretations have been made, some of which persist despite the presence of new information.

Myths & Fallacies Some genealogies have John's wife as Ursula BLANKENBAKER. This error was the result of undocumented conjecture by an elderly researcher, who has since passed away and her errors have been corrected. Some researchers claim that a second John BROYLES proved his importation in November 1719. James E. Brown has debunked the "second John Broyles"" story in a recent article in Beyond Germanna (v.7, n.5, Sept. 1995). He has given the results of his studies of the importation records, in which he tried to find the supposed 1719 importation of John 2; he couldn't find a second John. Instead he did find a John Bell that sort of looked like John Broyles. This was apparently misread as a John Broyles, and led to the John 2 theory. (Another erroneous myth hopefully dispensed with, once and for all.)

Go Back To Index.

GEDCOM Central!

We'd like to know which branches of the BROYLES/BRILES family you are researching, and we would like to have your contributions in the form of a GEDCOM file. You may attach the GEDCOM to an e-mail to us and we will convert it to an HTML and add a link to it on this main page. Please include in your e-mail any information you would like to appear in the description for the link to your GEDCOM, e.g., your name, address, e-mail address, branch of the family, personal information, etc. For your convenience, we have provided the "Guest Book" so that you may sign-in and we may get to know you. (Any information you provide here will come directly to me, George W. Durman, and will not appear anywhere on the Web Site without your permission. It is for my information only.)

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This page is maintained by George W. Durman. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

( PLEASE ! sign our Guest Book.)

George's mailing address and phone number:

925 Kevin Rd.
Knoxville, TN 37923-2540
Phone: (865)470-4853
E-Mail: germannaresearch@comcast.net

(Copyright © 1996, 1967, 1968 George W. Durman.)

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