Hickengrund, Germany

The Hickengrund is made up of four villages Niederdresselndorf, Oberdresselndorf, Lützeln, and Holzhausen.  Today these villages are in the municipality of Burbach in the Siegen-Wittgenstein district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Detlev Kretzer has an excellent website www.hickengrund.de written in German about this area.  His informative copyright website contains information on the history, genealogy and dialect of the area.

The German Wikipedia also has a short article about the area:  Hickengrund.

Church Records

The records in the FamilySearch Catalog are found under Germany, Preußen, Westfalen, Niederdresselndorf

Under church records are found two listings:

Kirchenbuch, 1588-1919, and

Kirchenbuchduplikat, 1826-1874

The Niederdresselndorf church books were begun on 21 November 1587 by Pastor Jacob Juncker. At first he only recorded baptisms. Marriages were recorded beginning in1590, followed by communicants starting in 1598. The recording of deaths was not begun until 1658. In 1587 the parish of Niederdresselndorf included the Hickengrund villages of Niederdresselndorf, Oberdresselndorf, and Lützeln. Holzhausen, the fourth Hickengrund village, was in the parish of Haiger until 1607.

Emigration

This area provided immigrants to the British colonies in North America, some of whom are listed in the following books:

Gerber, Adolf. The Emigration from Nassau-Dillenburg to America in the Eighteenth Century : The Conduct of the Governments Towards It and The Ensuing Fates Of The Emigrants. Translated by Lissy L. Weirich. Privately published, 1984.

Goebel, Julius. Briefe Deutscher Auswanderer aus dem Jahre 1709. Illinois: Nachdruck aus dem Jahrbuch der Deutsch-amerikanischen Historischen Gesellschaft von Illinois, 1912.

Jurisdiction

1323-1606	Nassau-Dillenburg
1606-1620	Nassau-Beilstein
1620-1662	Nassau-Dillenburg
1662-1676	Nassau-Schaumburg
1676-1739	Nassau-Dillenburg
1739-1806	Orange-Nassau
1806	Grand Duchy of Berg
1813	Orange-Nassau
1816	Prussia
1816–1817	In 1816–1817, the two districts of Siegen and Wittgenstein were created as parts of the Prussian province of Westphalia. In 1974, the two districts were merged, and in 1984 named Siegen-Wittgenstein
1871	Germany
1946	The State of North Rhine-Westphalia (German: Nordrhein-Westfalen) was formed in 1946 as a merger of the northern Rhineland and Westphalia.

Ortsfamilienbuch

Ortsfamilienbuch Hickengrund a very important resource, a "local family book" of the people with their vital statistics who have lived in the Hickengrund since the 16th century.

Bibliography

Braun, Otto. Burbach in alten Bildern ( Burbach Gilsbach Holzhausen Lippe Lützeln Niederdresselndorf Oberdresselndorf Wahlbach Würgendorf). Neunkirchen: Druck und Verlag Otto Braun KG Neunkirchen, 1981.

Fromme, Fritz. Geschichte des Freien Grundes und des Hickengrunde's. Neunkirchen: Otto Braun, 1969.

Ludorff, Albert, editor. Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Siegen. Volume 12 of Die Bau- und Kunstdenkmäler von Westfalen. Münster i. W.: Kommissions Verlag von Ferdinand Schöningh, 1903.