Johan Daniel Kieber

My 5th great-grandfather was born in Germanic Switzerland, specifically,  Erlinsbach, Aargau, Switzerland. Johan “Daniel” Küber or Kyburt. Erlinsbach is about 45 minutes drive or 58 km from Basel. and 50 km or 47 minute drive from Zurich.

Daniel was a farmer and CARPENTER born 17 Oct 1676 and his father, Hans Heinrich, (prolly born about 1650-60) whose name was Kyburt (Kyburtz). Hans Heinrich was born shortly after the Thirty Years War in which Alsace and the Palatinate regions were decimated by the continual fighting and destruction.

EMIGRATION from Switzerland:   The Swiss were experiencing population pressures due to their mountainous countryside and folks were offered incentives to move into the Alsace.

Another event that may have precipitated emigration was the FOREST ORDINANCE of 1669. The forests came under national management and peasants lost many rights. If the Kiebers were carpenters, they would have depended fairly heavily on the forests and perhaps they left in search of freer access to trees in Alsace.

And Fun Fact: Google translates “kieber” as “pine.” All you fellow tree lovers in the family should love that!!!

In addition, there were pressures on the Protestants that resulted in the Toggenberg War or the The Swiss Civil War of 1712. According to a wikipedia article, the Catholics from the inner cantons fought the Protestant cantons of Bern and Zurich. Erlinsbach is 87 km — a one hour drive — to Bern. While the Protestants did gain victory and there was a peace accord, the timing seems to coincide with the emigration of the Kiebers from Erlinsbach.

Emigration occurred sometime between our  (5th great grandfather) Johann Daniel’s birth in 1689, Erlinsbach (the last known birth in Erlinsbach of Hans Heinrich and his wife) and the  1713 marriage in Dettweiler, Bas Rhin of Hans Heinrich Kieber jr. and Anna Catherina Erni. So, though I am not sure why or how, I believe the Kiebers were fleeing religious or economic strife.

Since our folks were from the Aargau region in northwestern Switzerland, it is most likely that 200 years ago, they traveled up the Rhine river, which flows just north of Erlinsbach, and continues beyond Basel, and past Strasbourg in Alsace. Evidently, Hans Heinrich decided to start a new life with his sons in the beautiful village of Langensoultzbach, Bas Rhin.

They didn’t stay long in Langensoultzbach though, having moved to nearby Preuschdorf, Bas Rhin between 1709 and 1739 where Hans Heinrich’s 6th child and 4th son, (my 5th great-grandfather) Johann Daniel, died in 1739. The records are very difficult to read at that point. If you are interested in the direct line of our ancestors, please click on Daniel’s name.

The family is filled with farmers, laborers and tailors/weavers with very few exceptions. One grandfather who distinguished himself was Georges Frederic Kieber, b. 1768 in Preuschdorf, who, in 1807 married Juliana Magdalena Walter and moved to Oberhoffen-lès-Wissembourg, where he became the Deputy Mayor.

If you are interested in the direct line of Kieber/Küber/Kybert ancestors, please check out this page.

For the most part, the Kiebers were all Lutheran and the folks they married were Calvinists. Fred Kieber b. 1810 was very successful farmer and linen weaver. He made enough money to provide son, Fritz with funds to emigrate to America. Click on his name to read his story. Today, the house in Oberhoffen-lès Wisssembourg appears quite well-to-do with imposing private gates.

Fritz Kieber, great-great grandson of Daniel, was born close to France’s border with Germany, in the village of Oberhoffen-lès-Wissembourg, Bas Rhin, traveled to America about 1872 and settled on a farm in East Amherst NY.

If you’d like to delve into the life of Grampa John Kieber, click his name.

The story of Rev. Lavern Kieber, son of John, is told here. 

And the story of John Kieber’s youngest son, Robert, is here

Robert John Kieber’s service in the Air Corps is discussed here.    And the last part of Robert Kieber’s story is here.

The DNA for the Kieber paternal line belongs to Haplogroup R-Z8056 (  aka R1b1a1a2a1a1a) which originated in Europe, but is now spread out into West Asia and is predominant in Ireland and Wales. According to 23andme, a recent study of 3 direct male descendents of the Bourbon Kings, show a dna connection. This means King Henry IV (1589) and King Louis XVI (the last Bourbon King of France, who was beheaded in 1793) are our relatives! Unfortunately, for the 200 years or so that the Kiebers in our close lineage lived in Alsace, we were peasant farmers and weavers.

Here is a breakdown from fabpedigree website  of our KIEBER  lineage or our Y-DNA that began 2000 years ago:

The DNA for the Kieber paternal line belongs to Haplogroup R-Z8056 (  aka R1b1a1a2a1a1a) which originated in Europe, but is now spread out into West Asia and is predominant in Ireland and Wales.You can see that R-Z8056 is descended from  R-Y482, which was born in Central Asia 26,200 B.C.

Moving down a bunch of steps,  R-U106 is a “patrilineal descended family that descends from an ancestral R-L151 group located among or near the Yamnaya culture, north of the Black Sea.  The group rose to significance in the area of present Germany and the surrounding areas probably a bit before 3000 BC.  Although U106 is found all over Europe, and in countries that Europeans have migrated to, it is most significant in Germany and surrounding countries, Scandinavia, and Britain.

its time-frame of 3000 BC, U106 likely arose in the Corded Ware culture. Depending on which branch of U106 a member descends from, the people on that branch adapted to a variety of different cultures along the way, including various derivatives of Slavic, Latin, Celtic, Belgae, Saxon, Viking, and other cultural groups. U106 is a family, not a culture.”  this is a quotation from FTDNA’s RU 106 Haplogroup page. So, it may be appropriate to wear the twin-horned helmet of our Viking ancestors!

As I learn more about this line and where the mutations occurred, I will post them.

We’d love more male relatives who connect back on this line to be tested to take the research further and deeper. Please let us know if you’ve already had your DNA analyzed or if you are interested in doing so. If you’d like to learn more about our deep ancestry, please read this page. We really need cousins to get tested and to post their results to gedmatch.com so we can ferret out the lines a bit better. Special thanks to Greg Kieber for already testing!

Kieber was spelled Küber (with the umlaut over the u) in the early records. This is a German occupational name for a cooper or one who makes barrels for beer and pickles etc.It is derived from the word kuebel, which means barrel. However, the name was spelled Kyburt in the earliest records and we don’t know what that means in Switzerland. If you would like to financially back our research trip to Switzerland……. please contact me or name us in your legacy.

There are still many unanswered questions and pieces of the puzzle to fit together to build the story of our Kieber ancestors. If you’re curious (and hey, perhaps you’d like to donate to the research fund), I’ve put together some suggestions for future projects.