Ruhland

The Ruhland’s hail from the Waldmünchen area in the District of Cham, in eastern Bavaria. It remains a sparsely populated, laid back environment, part of the Bavarian Forest, a landscape of lush forests and rolling hills a couple of kilometers from the Czech border. Today, Waldmünchen, sporting a population of nearly 7,000, is a  resort destination offering skiing, hiking, small boating, fishing, and golfing. The coat of arms depicts a lovely, spreading green tree.

In the mid-nineteenth century when our ancestors emigrated to the US, they were farmers. A 1902 encyclopedia mentions rye, oats and barley as the predominant grains grown in eastern Bavaria. Potatoes, tobacco, beets also largely cultivated on a three-crop system. Bavaria was known for cattle and as a large horse area.

 ******

To read about Anna Theresa Ruhland, who married John Kieber, please click on her name. Anna’s mother, great-grandmother Ana Ruhland, who married George Ruhland, has a story here.

Grab a cup of coffee and head over to George Ruhland’s story, the emigrant farmer from  the village of Hocha, a district in Waldmünchen. To learn more about his ancestors who were peasant farmers for many generations,  please click here.

To read about our immigrant ancestors from the village of Untergrafenreid, a district of Waldmünchen, great-great grampa, John Ruhland who married Eva Hetzl, mosey on over to their page. And to read about Untergrafenreid, click on its name. To catch a glimpse of John Ruhland’s ancestors, please click here.

The records for the Ruhlands are housed in the Regensberg Diocese and reportedly date back to 1592!

I am indebted to the folks involved in the Plain History Genealogy Group in Plain, Sauk County, Wisconsin for information on their website and dvd. DebbieBlau generously allows her photos of the Waldmünchen area to be posted and Gary Haas has his own website with even more info. on this side of the family.  I’d like to give a shout out to cousins Celeste, and Donna as well as the deceased,  Ruhland historian in Germany, Georg Ederer   for pointing the way and generously sharing the history. Our dna is shared and I am his cousin! woohoo….now if I can only figure out how we connect!!!!

Most of these folks, I’ve never met in person. Vielen Dank!

Note: cover photo (cropped) courtesy of Debbie Blau. Colored trees in Ast (4.4km west of Waldmünchen)

RESOURCES If you haven’t already checked out the Old Franklin Township Historical Society page on FB or online, you should head over there right now 🙂

For further information, particularly about the Waldmünchen area and early history, see Debbie Blau’s wonderful website. Debbie includes many useful links, espeically for those who might be considering a trip to our ancestral home.

And, while you’re digging around,  check out Marion Ruhland Burmeister’s genealogy website. It is great!!!! Marion does a particularly good job on portraying the early emigration of the Ruhlands to America. And includes tons of stuff on the Ruhland and Brickl families, including the original copies of Georg Edererer’s pedigrees. Georg was the historian from Waldmuenchen and to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude for so much of the early research on these families.

Here is a video Marion posted. It has great footage of Gramma Anna Theresa Ruhland’s ancestral village! Let’s GO….