1. HANS JACOB1 WASSUM was born 1624 in Kirch-Brombach Zent, Germany, and died 1685 in Kirch-Brombach Zent, Germany. He married KATHARINA.
Notes for HANS JACOB WASSUM:
The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) brought violence, damage, sickness, hunger, poverty and death to the Kirch-Brombach Zent and its little city. BENEDIKT WASSUM was District Administrator there for years but died in an epidemic of 1623, leaving behind his family. Records were destroyed during this war and there is nothing known about how and where the family survived.
The first post-war records of the Lutheran Church at Kirch-Brombach mention as single survivor of the family HANS JACOB WASSUM b ca 1624, died 1685. Only his death is recorded and birth is derived by backward calculation. No proof yet that Hans Jacob is son of Benedikt but all individual WASSUM families in the Odenwald can be traced back to Hans Jacob who was adopted as a full citizen of the Kirch-Brombach Zent in 1654. He was a black-smith, a craft which was continued in the family through generations. Sometimes this was parallel with the business of keeping a wine-tavern where domestic wine was served. Hans Jacob Wassum was married to Katharina and they had five children, three girls ANNA, ELISABETHA and MARGRETHA, and sons CONRAD and THOMAS.
CONRAD moved to Vielbrunn, a village east of Kirch-Brombach, to marry GERTRAUD HEYD, a widow in 1687. This couple founded the WASSUM family Vielbrunn branch.
The first Wassum mentioned in old documents of Erbach County in Germany for 1553 is CONRAD WASSUM, Financial Administrator of Erbach's Reichenberg District. In 1582 Conrad was succeeded by his son? JOHANNES as Keller at Reichenberg Castle. Shortly before 1600 a part of the family moved to Kirch-Brombach in Breuberg Dominion which was nearby.
The data herein was compiled Shirley Wolfe Wassom,412 Standing Oaks Lane, Sealy,TX 77474, 409 885 6610 in late 1994, 1995, 1996 & 1997 with a lot of help from others & personal research since 1964.
The Wassum family originates in the Odenwald, a mountainous wooded region in Southern Hessia mainly consisting of two territories in the old times, Erbach County and Breuberg Dominion. The first members of this family who came to America arrived in 1752, when four brothers (1) JOHANN CONRAD WASSUM, (2) JOHANNES WASSUM, (3) LEONHARD WASSUM AND (4) JOHANN GEORG WASSUM, emigrants from the Village of Ober-Kinzig in the former Breuberg Dominion in Southern Hessia in Germany, landed at Philadelphia. They came on the ship PHOENIX, John Spurrier, Commander, from Rotterdam in Holland, and they took the usual oath of allegiance to the British Crown at Philadelphia, PA, November 2nd, 1752.
There was another emigrant from Germany bearing this name, JOHANN MICHAEL WASSUM, who came on the ship NEPTUNE, with John Mason, Master, also from Rotterdam. He took the oath of allegiance on the 24th day of September 1753, also at Philadelphia. Have not found any further "tracks" on this Michael Wassum.
A John Wassum and Michael Wassum arrived in America in 1860 timeframe and settled in Clarion County Pennsylvania. They are numbers 6 and 7. Peter Wassum family is number 5. Most of Peter's descendents that I have found are in the New Jersey area.
