Ulrich Hagmann

  Noted events in his life were:

• Religion: Anabaptists.

• Dates & Events. ⁴⁵⁹
Ulrich Hagman was born at Eidberg, Canton Zurich, Switzerland and was baptized 2 October 1634. He had died by 1683.

Ulrich and his brother, Hans Jakob appear on a 1663 list of people from the Oberwinterthur area who had left Switzerland. This document specifically identifies them as sons of Matthias Hagman of Eidberg and states that they were staying at Muttersholtz in Alsace. It further states that the older brother (Ulrich) had a wife and child, but the other brother (Hans Jakob) was still single [Verzeichnisse von Augsewanderten aus Pfarrien Verschiedenen Kapital 1667-1663; Bevolkerungs-Verzeichnisse, E-II-270, (Staatsarchiv, Zurich), p. 223].

Muttersholtz is a village in the old Alsatian County of Rappolstein, north of Colmar. This area was severely devastated during the Thirty Years War and the local Lord, Count Rappolstein, allowed Swiss emigrants, including Anabaptist refugees, to settle in his domain. Some Anabaptists and other Swiss emigrants began moving to the area in the late 1640s. Amont them was Ulrich's and Hans Jakob's uncle, Jacob Nussli of Oberlangenhart, an Anabaptist who had been imprisoned and then expelled from the Canton with his wife and sons [Bevolkerungs-Verzeichnisse, E-II-270, (Staatsarchiv, Zurich), p. 284). Nussli went to Muttersholtz in County Rappoltstein and Ulrich's younger brother, Hans Jakob went there in 1656.

The jouney to Alsace would have been a route well traveled by many other Swiss emigrants and refugees. While located in the moutains of Zurich, Eidberg is only about fifteen miles from the upper Rhine at its nearest point. To travel to Alsace, Ulrich and Hans Jakob needed only to follow the local roads along the Toss, a Rhine tributary that originates in the hills above Eidberg, through Winterthur and then northwest to its juncture with the Rhine. From that poin, they would travel west about sixty miles to Basel, where the Rhine turns northward into Alsace, leaving Switzerland. Muttersholtz, in the County of Rappoltstein is about fifty miles north of Basel, easily reached by local roads over level land.

The first record of Ulrich and his wife in the Reformed Church records of Muttersholtz, which date from 1644, is the baptism of their son, Johannes, 29 November 1663. The baptismal entry specifically states that Ulrich and his wife were "Anabaptista". Since the 1663 emigrant list which mentions that Ulrich had a wife and child was drawn up much earlier, perhaps as early as 1661, this child born near the end of 1663 is at least the second child if not the third child of Ulrich and Maria. Another child was baptised at Muttersholtz in April of 1666 and this is the last record of the family in Alsace.

There were other Anabaptist families in the area. In addition to Jacob Nussli and some of his children at Muttersholtz, there were Brubachers,Gochenaurers, Baumanns, and Eglis in nearby villages; [Emigrants, Refugees, and Prisoners, Richard Warren Davis, 1995, pp. 5-7]. By the 1670s most of these families were living around Ibersheim, near Worms, on the Rhine in the German Palatinate. It can only be assumed that Ulrich Hagman and his family migrated from Alsace to the Palatinate with them. Ulrich's widow is named in 1683, with nine other people, as a hereditary leaseholder on a farm estate ("Hof") at Ibersheim. In 1685 a Mennonite census shows the Hagmann portion of the Ibershiem Hof was occupied by Hans Hagmann with four brothers and sisters with no mention of their mother; [Ibersheim Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. II, pp. 1-2; and Herman Guth, Palatine Mennonite census lists, p. 16).