Four grandparents, four Anabaptist streams, traced back to the 1500s: Swiss Mennonites and Amish from the Emmental and the Bernese Jura, Amish settlers in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and Low German Mennonites from the Vistula delta near Danzig.
This site is part of ramsei, a set of exercises in AI-supported research and development. The research was done with AI, working from parish registers, censuses, ship lists, family books and archive collections. Every person page shows how well it is supported, the questions still open, and the log of searches behind it.
The four grandparents
- Miller
D. Paul Miller
1917–2018
Amish to Mennonite: Northkill, Pennsylvania, to Holmes County, Ohio, to Kansas - Wiebe
Anna Bertha Wiebe
1914–2010
Low German Mennonite: the Vistula delta, the Volga, Nebraska - Ramseyer
Alvin C. Ramseyer Jr.
1921–2008
Swiss Amish Mennonite: the Emmental, the French Jura, Ohio - Neuenschwander
Ruth S. Neuenschwander
1922–2017
Swiss Mennonite: Langnau, the Bernese Jura, Berne, Indiana
Stories
- The Hochstetler massacre of 1757
- Nathan Smiley, the Irish orphan
- The Neuenschwanders of the Jura
- Where the Wiebes came from
- The Wiebe faith trail: Friesland to the Vistula
- Münster, the Dutch Mennonites, the 1711 Swiss and the Wiebes
- Edna Ramseyer Kaufman: a life of service
- Cornelius Krahn, the family’s historian of Dutch Anabaptism
- Lake Thun and the Oberland Anabaptists
- Double ancestors
- The Ramseyer farm fortune
- Hamburg, Altona and the Hansa
Explore
- People
227 ancestors and relatives, each with dates, places, evidence and sources. Also as a sortable table. - Families
81 couples and their children. - Places
129 villages, parishes and counties, from Bern to Kansas. Also as a table. - Sources
103 registers, censuses, books and archive collections. Also as a table. - History
45 events and movements, from the first adult baptisms in Zurich in 1525 onward. - Congregations
16 churches and meetings the families belonged to.
Background
- Faith traditions
- 1525 First adult baptisms in Zurich
- 1693 The Amish split
- How many Anabaptists were there
- Ships and journeys of the immigrant ancestors
- How far back each line goes
How to read the evidence
Every person page carries an evidence label for how well their identity and dates are supported:
- Documented: a consulted record names the fact or relationship.
- Strong inference: no single record says it, but several independent records agree.
- Family compilation: family-made books and trees; strong family evidence, not proof.
- Compiled lead: a published genealogy or public tree whose underlying records still need checking.
- Unresolved: sources conflict or no adequate link has been found.
Pages also list their open questions (where sources disagree) and a dated research log of what was searched and found. In names, fl. means a person is known to be alive in that year, and c. means about.
About this research
Supporting documentation is linked throughout. This project is an exercise in AI-assisted research and development, and I haven’t manually verified every link or conclusion. All transcriptions and translations of Swiss parish records were made with AI, and their accuracy should be treated accordingly.