Giesbrecht (Giesebrecht) family
Giesbrecht is a Mennonite family name which was first found in West Prussia in 1607. Heinrich Giesebrecht was listed in Scharfenberg and Peter Giesebrecht in Reichenberg, both of which were Dutch villages in the Danzig Werder. In that year Peter Giesebrecht, a carpenter, received from the council of the city of Danzig the commission to build two sluices near Pasewark in the Danzig lowlands. He was promoted to the position of mill-builder, settled on a farm in the lowland, sold the farm two years later to a Mennonite named Bestvater, and moved up the Vistula into the neighborhood of Mewe. In 1612 an Abraham Giesebrecht was Schulze of the village of Scharfenberg in the Danzig lowland. His descendants can be traced in the village until 1763. The name was also found in other villages in the Danzig lowland. In 1623 a Peter Giesebrecht was one of a group of Mennonites arraigned before the Danzig city council by the Protestant pastor of Schönbaum for refusing to pay the required fees.
In 1680 an Abraham Giesebrecht of Schöneberg in the Gross-Werder entered the German preparatory school of the Elbing Gymnasium. Other Mennonites with this name were members of the Flemish Mennonite congregations in Danzig, the Gross-Werder, and Elbing. There were also isolated occurrences of the name in the Frisian congregation of Montau-Gruppe. In 1789, before the great immigration to Russia, the Giesebrechts were listed in the Mennonite register. In 1936 there was no longer a person with this name in West Prussia.
In Russia a Jacob Giesebrecht was one of the first members of the newly established Mennonite Brethren Church. His name is found as signatory of the applications to the government in Odessa and St. Petersburg. He later immigrated to the Kuban and in 1875 became Oberschulze of the Kuban Mennonite settlement.
Some bearers of this name immigrated to Canada and South America. This name was found among the Mennonites of the United States beginning in the 1950s.
Bibliography
Reimer, Gustav E. Die Familiennamen der westpreussischen Mennoniten. Weierhof, 1940.
| Author(s) | Henry Poettcker |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 1956 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
Poettcker, Henry. "Giesbrecht (Giesebrecht) family." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1956. Web. 25 Nov 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Giesbrecht_(Giesebrecht)_family&oldid=56742.
APA style
Poettcker, Henry. (1956). Giesbrecht (Giesebrecht) family. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 25 November 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Giesbrecht_(Giesebrecht)_family&oldid=56742.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, p. 516-517. All rights reserved.
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