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by David H. Leebrick (Author)
This is a story of knights, secretary of dukes and signers of treaties, the Protestant Reformation, guild masters and Burgermeisters. It is the story of pioneering spirit, of small town merchants, of boys at war and of broken romances. It is the story of Depression era hardship and the love of art. It is the story of the Liebrich/Leebrick family of central Germany, their immigration to Pennsylvania in 1754 and their successes and failures in rural America. This is not just a record of dates, places and names. Instead, it tells the story of who these people were and what they did as they moved about in Germany and the US. This extensively footnoted American biography may even encourage you to look into your own family's remarkable story. The story of the Liebrich/Leebrick German roots was very slow to unfold. The primary reason was an 1872 biographical gazetteer that listed the Liebrich city of origin as Manheim, Germany. However, it always seemed to be too much of a coincidence that a family in Germany would relocate to a town in Pennsylvania of the same name as their prior home in Germany. So when I was contacted by Dr. Winfrid Liebrich, an oncologist from Berlin, Germany, regarding the possibility of a world-wide Liebrich family reunion in 2000, my hopes ran high that finally our family could be linked up with the Liebrich family tree. To make a long story short, information shared there sent my research in a new direction, away from Manheim and toward Butzbach. I was able to locate church records in Butzbach with names and dates that match the family of our first immigrant ancestor. Confirming evidence was found shallowly engraved on the gravestone of our Revolutionary War ancestor, and so the connection to hundreds of Liebrich history in Germany was finally made. This initial immigrant family was followed by at least eight other German families, but this book focuses on that initial family, who arrived in Philadelphia in September of 1754. This initial family se
Author Biography
David H. Leebrick has been researching the Liebrich/Leebrick family for greater than 30 years. His engineering career informs the thoroughly documented style of this book. He maintains a web site of over 12,000 people who are connected to this family in some way. He and his wife are the parents of 5 children and grandparents of 7, at last count.
