Johann Zieger

Life

1. 1797Born · Unknown — born outside Eltendorf parish (in-migrant to Heiligenkreuz)
2. 1833Died · Heiligenkreuz im Lafnitztal (Bergen), Burgenland, Austria

Their story

Johann Zieger is the oldest securely documented man on the family's direct paternal line — the Zieger (R-M167) Y-DNA lineage runs upward through him. He lived as a Söldner, a cottager, on the Bergen — the hill ground above Heiligenkreuz im Lafnitztal, then Rába-Szent-Kereszt in Vas county, Kingdom of Hungary, and today part of the Austrian Burgenland. The parish death register records his end precisely: he died on 22 January 1833, aged about 36, of a chest catarrh, and was buried two days later. That age places his birth around 1797 — yet no baptism for him appears anywhere in the Eltendorf parish books across their whole span, which means he was almost certainly not born here. He came into Heiligenkreuz from another Lutheran congregation and married into the village; his parents and his birthplace are not yet known, and finding them is the next frontier of this line. He married Elisabeth Peter, a local woman, and they had at least three sons: Johann (1824), Michael (1830) and Andreas (1833). The last he never saw — Andreas was born on 14 March 1833, some seven weeks after his father's death: a posthumous child. The same godfather, Georg Groller of Heiligenkreuz, stood at the font for the eldest son and the youngest. Reconstructed from the Evangelical registers of Eltendorf (Matricula-Online), 2026.

Family