Anna Barbara Meili

Anna Barbara BAR

Notes from Janet and Robert Wolfe Genealogy Gateway

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   * Father: Osli BAR

* Mother: Barbara BIEDERMANN
* Birth: 29 NOV 1618, Hausen, Switzerland
* Death: ABT 1668
* Sources: Marriage Martin MEILI and Anna Barbara BAR
* Partnership with: Martin MEILI
Marriage: 1635, Switzerland
o Child: Elsbeth MEILI Birth: 1636, Stallikon, Switzerland
o Child: Verena MEILI Birth: ABT 1637, Stallikon, Switzerland
o Child: Jakob MEILI Birth: ABT 1639, Stallikon, Switzerland
o Child: Hans Peter MEILI Birth: 17 JUN 1642, Predigerkirche, Zurich, Switzerland
Ancestors of Anna Barbara BAR

                 /-Hans BAR

/-Osli BAR
| \-Katherina HUBER
Anna Barbara BAR

       \-Barbara BIEDERMANN

Descendants of Anna Barbara BAR

1 Anna Barbara BAR

 =Martin MEILI  Marriage: 1635, Switzerland

2 Elsbeth MEILI
=Hans Jagli KUNDIG Marriage: 1666, Zurich, Switzerland
3 Elizabeth KENDIG
=Anstett VOLKEN
3 Martin KENDIG
=Elizabeth BAR
4 John Jacob KENDIG
=Annali MOYER
3 Henirich KENDIG
3 Susanna Orendorff KENDIG
=Hans GROFF Marriage: 1700, Germantown, Pennsylvania
4 Peter GROFF
4 Hannah GROFF
=Peter GOOD Marriage: ABT 1728
4 Samuel GROFF
=Christiana HUBER
4 Fronica GROFF
=Henry LANDIS
4 Marcus GROFF
=Anna HUBER Marriage: 1733
4 Daniel GROFF
4 John GROFF
4 David GROFF
=Barbara MOYER
4 Mary GROFF
=John KRY
2 Verena MEILI
2 Jakob MEILI
2 Hans Peter MEILI
source:

email: bobwolfe@umich.edu;janwolfe@umich.edu

The Woman Who Had a Baby in Jail

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In 1637 they caught the minister, Hans Meyli, of the Horgerberg, in the snowcrowned Alps south of Lake Zürich in Switzerland. They tried him and threw him into the Oetenbach castle dungeon, but after forty-three weeks he escaped. The Protestant authorities (of Zwingli's reformed church) were furious. They did

continual house searches and harrassed the believers. Thirty Täuferjäger (Anabaptist hunters) found out where the Meylis lived and with bare swords and firearms stormed the house, hacking through doors and throwing things around to find the escaped minister. They cursed and swore and blasphemed God. When

they realized that he was not there, they took his two sons, Hans Jr. and Martin Meyli captive.

Martin was already married. They grabbed his young wife and tied her up tightly. Her name was Anna. She had a fourteen-week-old baby, which they took from her and gave to people from the state church to keep. They took the captives to Zürich, tried them and locked them up in the Oetenbach castle dungeons. They took off the men's clothes and chained them to the stone floor for twenty weeks. They tortured them with spiders and caterpillars. They gave them just enough food and water to keep them alive. But the prisoners would not recant. After one year the two men escaped "with undamaged consciences" and after two years, on Good Friday, 1641, Anna escaped as well. They fled from place to place, but the people betrayed them. Anna fell into the hands of the Täuferjäger again and was imprisoned, first at the Oetenbach, then in the Spital jail. This time she was expecting a baby. They left her shackled until the pains of labour came upon her. Then they loosened her to have the baby, and "with the help and grace of God" she escaped. After her husband found her they fled across the mountains and through the Black Forest to Germany.

Source: The Secret of the Strength, What Would the Anabaptists Tell This Generation? by Peter Hoover

http://www.gw.org/Sos/Sos.pdf