| Notes |
- The area of the Palatinate where the Anabaptist Oberholtzers lived is today known as the Kraichgau. This region was depopulated during the Thirty Years War. The Oberholtzers and other foreign families were needed in the area by landlords who sought to rebuild their manors and estates. In exchange, they were given some religious toleration. Consequently, the majority of the Anabaptists emigrated from Zurich, whose officials had resorted to execution, imprisonment, confiscation of property, and any other means of cruelty, in hopes of banishing them.
The Geneallandearchiv, Karlsruhe, gives this quote from the seventeenth century: "A number of the Wiedertauffer wish to settle here, which people practice their religious exercises partly in the forest, partly in their houses, and some have their land on the church support land. Many adapt well, among them is Marx Oberholtzer, who announced that he plans to marry his brother's servant, but does not intend to have his marriage announced publicly."
Marx Oberholtzer was among a group of 53 Anabaptists meeting for worship near Sinsheim on the evening of March 2, 1661. While they were singing, the meeting was abruptly ended by German authorities. Their names were taken, which included other familiar Pennsylvania names such as Groff, Hess, Landis, Meyer and Miller. They were to report for punishment on March 29th. Appearing on that date, they stated that they had come into the country from Switzerland in 1655 and had been meeting for worship secretly in the forests near Steinsfurt. The government fined them but they continued to meet. In 1662, Elector Karl Ludwig ordered that the Mennonists should no longer be forbidden to meet, but that every participant must pay a tax. Warfare, economic difficulties and religious suppression would later entice members of the Oberholtzer family to America. The Anabaptists in the Palatinate became known as Mennonists, for a group of Holland Anabaptists who took the name from an early leader, Menno Simons.
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1663 - 1724 (61 years)
