For over 100 years after the Reformation, life had been very difficult for peasant farmers.   Authorities and laws were strict, taxes were a burden, and wars were continually waged over religious differences, dynastic rivalries, and challenges to the power of the Holy Roman Empire.   The Thirty Years’ War involving all of these issues was waged from 1618 to 1648 involving most every western European nation, although primarily fought in Germany.   The war was devastating for the German states.   Populations were reduced in some areas by more than 20%.   Small villages were destroyed and declining economic activity was the result.

So it was that in 1652 the Bishop of Speyer, along the Rhine in the German Palatinate, issued a plea to all emigrants who had left during the war to return to their lands to help reconstruct and reactivate the war-torn villages and their economies.   The plea was circulated throughout Europe, including Switzerland, also inviting other peasants to emigrate from their homes to the lands surrounding Speyer.   The promise was of opportunity due to the need for people to work the farms.   The situation grew desparate by 1660 when a second appeal was sent out.

The Voegelins in Switzerland had survived on their Vogelberg farm, the current family being the one of Hans Voegelin who had 7 sons and 3 daughters by 2 wives.   The first Ulrich, by his first wife, probably died young because the next child, by his second wife, was also named Ulrich.   Being the eldest male, he was probably destined to be the main inheritor of the family property.   This was a common occurrence in those days and one of the main reasons for the emigration of younger males.   Although emigration from Switzerland to other European countries was very common, it was not at all welcomed by the authorities who discouraged it as much as they could.   A ruler is never happy to lose a taxpayer.   Written permission to leave had to be obtained and there was a special tax and an emigration fee that must be paid.   If they did not ask for permission and simply ran away, their property or future inheritance of property would be seized.

So the conditions were such that five of the sons, probably the youngest, decided to leave.   They each immigrated to different countries including to eastern Europe.   The shocking thing was that they each sold their interests in the family inheritance to outsiders in order to raise money for their journeys.   This was, of course, unheard of to give up their legacy in the farmland that had been in the family for centuries, and quite a shock to their father and the remaining son.   It’s been said because of this the family almost lost the property entirely, but frantic steps were taken to track down all the buyers in order to buy back their interests so that the family land was whole once again.   To this day there has been bitterness over this split.

Basel, Switzerland sits on the Rhine River at the tri-country border with southern Germany and France. The Voegelin farm was another 12 miles south as the crow flies.   Heinrich Voegelin, our 7^th great-grandfather, was the son who opted to take the 140 mile journey north to Hoffenheim in the Palatinate, Germany shortly after 1660.   It is on the east side of the Rhine River, almost exactly the same distance from Speyer, 18 miles, as from Speyer to Mörzheim, our Heckmann village to the west.   He lived there the rest of his life, dying in 1705. He and wife Elisabetha no doubt had several children but we only have record of one, Hans Heinrich Voegeli, our 6^th great-grandfather.   The name was now spelled Voegeli rather than Voegelin since that was the customary spelling convention in the German states of that period.

In the years following their move to Hoffenheim, conditions had improved considerably over what they were during the Thirty Years’ War.   This continued for a while but then the inevitable changes began to occur.   As the population increased, the amount of land available for each family again decreased.   Parish boundaries had previously been neglected but now there were heated arguments over them.   Actions of the nobles returned to their former oppressive ways.   But the primary reason that so many people began to think about emigrating in the first part of the 18^th century, particularly to America, were the hopes of better economic conditions and the letters from family and friends who had left, describing their experiences in the New World.