Irmtraut
Encyclopedia
Irmtraut is an Ortsgemeinde – a community belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde
– in the Westerwaldkreis
in Rhineland-Palatinate
, Germany
.
between Siegen
and Limburg
at the boundary with Hesse
. Irmtraut belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Rennerod
, a kind of collective municipality.
donated holdings here to the St. Severus Monastery
in Gemünden
.
in a municipal election on 13 June 2004.
54, leading from Limburg an der Lahn
to Siegen
. The nearest Autobahn interchange
is Limburg-Nord on the A 3 (Cologne
–Frankfurt), some 20 km away. The nearest InterCityExpress
stop is the railway station at Montabaur on the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line.
.
"It means Friend of the Valkryes. The name lives on in America, it became Ermentraudt then Armentrout. -Daryl Armentrout"
The best source on this topic is the Armentrout Family History, 1739-1978 compiled by Russell S. Armentrout and published in 1980 by the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, U.S.A.. According to ship's records, 340 passengers sailed on the Samuel, under Captain Hugh Percy. They sailed from Rotterdam, stopping at the English port of Deal for supplies, en route to arrival in the port of Philadelphia and William Penn's colony of Pennsylvania. Anna Elizabeth Ermentraudt was about forty and traveling with seven children and her younger brother, Peter Hain. The fate of her husband is unknown. Her elder brother, George Hain, was already established on farmland near Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the family first established itself in what is now known as "Pennsylvania Dutch" country (a corruption of the German "Deutsch").
She lived in that area from 1739 until 1752, when she accompanied her sons to Virginia and settled in the home of her second son, Johan Phillip, where she died in 1775. It is likely she is buried in Peaked Mountain Church (a.k.a. Pinquit Moundyn)cemetery, in McGaheysville, VA. But there is no grave marker to verify this and the church has been torn down, leaving only a marker at the old cemetery to commemorate its site on US Route 33. Virginia descendants still live on the western side of Massanutten Mtn., referred to as the Peaked Mountain by Shenandoah Valley Germans, from north of Keezletown to the town of McGaheysville.
The Armentrouts were farmers who followed the American frontier and American Indian treaty lines across the entire country. Amongst their many identities, they have included a US Navy admiral in California, the head of the Audubon Society in Texas, a well-known radio newscaster in Chicago, the wife of an Indian Agent in Oklahoma, and farmers everywhere among the many branches of this old and deeply-rooted German-American family tree. Today, the descendants of the seven children: Johannes, daughter Anna Elizabeth (who married her first cousin, Johan Frederick Hain), Johan Phillip, Johan Friedrich, Christopher, Johan Heinrich and Johan Georg constitute a single family tree.
Russell Armentrout's genealogy was compiled based upon written records (births, deaths, deeds, ship records, etc.) and upon extended-family informants. The result of extensive use of oral records is that, wherever a lack of written records exists, there is the likelihood of many errors, small and large, in the seven individual siblings' genealogies provided by distant relatives over many years' correspondence with Russell Armentrout, who lived in Michigan.
"This book ain't no good. Your Uncle Gail never owned no gas station," said my Aunt Sis, who introduced me to the book at her home in Lake Charles, LA some years ago. Her censure illustrates the dangers of such a compilation. Her youngest brother, my Uncle Gail, was a West Mansfield farmer who also managed a "Victory" gas station in Mt. Victory, Ohio, but never owned it. And several family names were misspelled, including my Italian immigrant mother's maiden name. Russell Armentrout's source was a first-cousin in Kentucky. Multiply my family entry by several hundred and you begin to see how fragile is this work as history. It must be read with care and cross-checking. But where Aunt Sis found frustration, I found a treasure trove of extended identity that allows my children to track backwards through eight generations that preceded them to the "New World", and beyond that to the family's Protestant origins in the German Rhineland and the historical events, like the Thirty Years' War and religious persecution they fled. For that, every Armentrout in America owes Russell S. Armentrout a debt of gratitude.
(This section added by Fred Armentrout of the Johannes Ermentraudt branch, which eventually moved from Virginia to the Ohio Territory in an area taken over by farmers after the military defeat of the Shawnee Nation).
On August 27, 1739, Anne Elizabeth Hain Ermentraudt and her sons arrived in America aboard the ship Samuel in Philadelphia. They quickly made their way to Wernersville PA, then after some years moved to The Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Today, many Armentrouts live near Harrisonburg, owning great stretches of farmland. A road called Armentrout Way stretches about 5 miles and is home to Armentrout Farms, run by Kevin Mark "Babe" Armentrout. On this road a cemetery can be found which holds the graves of early American Armentrouts, and nearby are two other churches, one of which is home to the grave of Anne Elizabeth, though it sits in ruins next to, and under, Brown Memorial Church. Trinity Church sits next to a graveyard with many Armentrouts buried within, and is well taken care of.
The Armentrout name has various spellings: "Armentrout", "Armentraut", "Irmentraut", "Irmentraudt", "Irmtraudt" Armontrout", "Armintrout". Today, the descendants of the Irmtraut name can be found all over much of the midwest and the south. - Allan Armentrout
Verbandsgemeinde
A Verbandsgemeinde is an administrative unit in the German Bundesländer of Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt.-Rhineland-Palatinate:...
– in the Westerwaldkreis
Westerwaldkreis
The Westerwaldkreis is a district in the east of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...
in Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of and about four million inhabitants. The capital is Mainz. English speakers also commonly refer to the state by its German name, Rheinland-Pfalz ....
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Location
The community lies in the WesterwaldWesterwald
The Westerwald is a low mountain range on the right bank of the River Rhine in the German federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is a part of the Rhine Massif...
between Siegen
Siegen
Siegen is a city in Germany, in the south Westphalian part of North Rhine-Westphalia.It is located in the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein in the Arnsberg region...
and Limburg
Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.-Location:Limburg lies in western Hesse between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn....
at the boundary with Hesse
Hesse
Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...
. Irmtraut belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Rennerod
Rennerod (Verbandsgemeinde)
Rennerod is a Verbandsgemeinde in the district , in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The seat of the is in .The Rennerod consists of the following :...
, a kind of collective municipality.
History
In 879, Irmtraut had its first documentary mention when Gebhard, Count of the LahngauGebhard, Count of the Lahngau
Gebhard was a mid-9th-century count in the Lahngau and the first documented ancestor of the dynasty later known as the Conradines. He was a "leading man of the [East] Franks" and a brother-in-law of Ernest, margrave of the Bavarian Nordgau...
donated holdings here to the St. Severus Monastery
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
in Gemünden
Gemünden, Westerwaldkreis
Gemünden is an Ortsgemeinde – a community belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde – in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.-Location:...
.
Community council
The council is made up of 14 council members, who all belong to the Wählergemeinschaft ("Voters' Community"), and who were elected in a majority votePlurality voting system
The plurality voting system is a single-winner voting system often used to elect executive officers or to elect members of a legislative assembly which is based on single-member constituencies...
in a municipal election on 13 June 2004.
Transport
Running right through the community is BundesstraßeBundesstraße
Bundesstraße , abbreviated B, is the denotation for German and Austrian national highways.-Germany:...
54, leading from Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn
Limburg an der Lahn is the district seat of Limburg-Weilburg in Hesse, Germany.-Location:Limburg lies in western Hesse between the Taunus and the Westerwald on the river Lahn....
to Siegen
Siegen
Siegen is a city in Germany, in the south Westphalian part of North Rhine-Westphalia.It is located in the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein in the Arnsberg region...
. The nearest Autobahn interchange
Interchange (road)
In the field of road transport, an interchange is a road junction that typically uses grade separation, and one or more ramps, to permit traffic on at least one highway to pass through the junction without directly crossing any other traffic stream. It differs from a standard intersection, at which...
is Limburg-Nord on the A 3 (Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
–Frankfurt), some 20 km away. The nearest InterCityExpress
InterCityExpress
The Intercity-Express or ICE is a system of high-speed trains predominantly running in Germany and neighbouring countries. It is the highest service category offered by DB Fernverkehr and is the flagship of Deutsche Bahn...
stop is the railway station at Montabaur on the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line.
Other
“Irmtraut” is also a woman’s name in GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
.
"It means Friend of the Valkryes. The name lives on in America, it became Ermentraudt then Armentrout. -Daryl Armentrout"
The best source on this topic is the Armentrout Family History, 1739-1978 compiled by Russell S. Armentrout and published in 1980 by the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, U.S.A.. According to ship's records, 340 passengers sailed on the Samuel, under Captain Hugh Percy. They sailed from Rotterdam, stopping at the English port of Deal for supplies, en route to arrival in the port of Philadelphia and William Penn's colony of Pennsylvania. Anna Elizabeth Ermentraudt was about forty and traveling with seven children and her younger brother, Peter Hain. The fate of her husband is unknown. Her elder brother, George Hain, was already established on farmland near Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the family first established itself in what is now known as "Pennsylvania Dutch" country (a corruption of the German "Deutsch").
She lived in that area from 1739 until 1752, when she accompanied her sons to Virginia and settled in the home of her second son, Johan Phillip, where she died in 1775. It is likely she is buried in Peaked Mountain Church (a.k.a. Pinquit Moundyn)cemetery, in McGaheysville, VA. But there is no grave marker to verify this and the church has been torn down, leaving only a marker at the old cemetery to commemorate its site on US Route 33. Virginia descendants still live on the western side of Massanutten Mtn., referred to as the Peaked Mountain by Shenandoah Valley Germans, from north of Keezletown to the town of McGaheysville.
The Armentrouts were farmers who followed the American frontier and American Indian treaty lines across the entire country. Amongst their many identities, they have included a US Navy admiral in California, the head of the Audubon Society in Texas, a well-known radio newscaster in Chicago, the wife of an Indian Agent in Oklahoma, and farmers everywhere among the many branches of this old and deeply-rooted German-American family tree. Today, the descendants of the seven children: Johannes, daughter Anna Elizabeth (who married her first cousin, Johan Frederick Hain), Johan Phillip, Johan Friedrich, Christopher, Johan Heinrich and Johan Georg constitute a single family tree.
Russell Armentrout's genealogy was compiled based upon written records (births, deaths, deeds, ship records, etc.) and upon extended-family informants. The result of extensive use of oral records is that, wherever a lack of written records exists, there is the likelihood of many errors, small and large, in the seven individual siblings' genealogies provided by distant relatives over many years' correspondence with Russell Armentrout, who lived in Michigan.
"This book ain't no good. Your Uncle Gail never owned no gas station," said my Aunt Sis, who introduced me to the book at her home in Lake Charles, LA some years ago. Her censure illustrates the dangers of such a compilation. Her youngest brother, my Uncle Gail, was a West Mansfield farmer who also managed a "Victory" gas station in Mt. Victory, Ohio, but never owned it. And several family names were misspelled, including my Italian immigrant mother's maiden name. Russell Armentrout's source was a first-cousin in Kentucky. Multiply my family entry by several hundred and you begin to see how fragile is this work as history. It must be read with care and cross-checking. But where Aunt Sis found frustration, I found a treasure trove of extended identity that allows my children to track backwards through eight generations that preceded them to the "New World", and beyond that to the family's Protestant origins in the German Rhineland and the historical events, like the Thirty Years' War and religious persecution they fled. For that, every Armentrout in America owes Russell S. Armentrout a debt of gratitude.
(This section added by Fred Armentrout of the Johannes Ermentraudt branch, which eventually moved from Virginia to the Ohio Territory in an area taken over by farmers after the military defeat of the Shawnee Nation).
On August 27, 1739, Anne Elizabeth Hain Ermentraudt and her sons arrived in America aboard the ship Samuel in Philadelphia. They quickly made their way to Wernersville PA, then after some years moved to The Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Today, many Armentrouts live near Harrisonburg, owning great stretches of farmland. A road called Armentrout Way stretches about 5 miles and is home to Armentrout Farms, run by Kevin Mark "Babe" Armentrout. On this road a cemetery can be found which holds the graves of early American Armentrouts, and nearby are two other churches, one of which is home to the grave of Anne Elizabeth, though it sits in ruins next to, and under, Brown Memorial Church. Trinity Church sits next to a graveyard with many Armentrouts buried within, and is well taken care of.
The Armentrout name has various spellings: "Armentrout", "Armentraut", "Irmentraut", "Irmentraudt", "Irmtraudt" Armontrout", "Armintrout". Today, the descendants of the Irmtraut name can be found all over much of the midwest and the south. - Allan Armentrout