The names Guckenbiehl, Guggenbühl etc. in the USA

Searching on social networks like Facebook for people named by a variant of Guckenbiehl or Guggenbühl returns quite a few persons living in the United States. It seems that they descend from different families that left Europe to settle down in the United States. In the following I will present information about one of those families from the Palatinate in Germany. Doris Guggenbühl from Switzerland and Jean-Louis Guggenbuhl from France have information about families that left Switzerland and France for the USA.

Jacob Guckenbiehl and his wife left Europe by ship from Le Havre on April 28^th, 1850 and arrived in New York on Mai 15^th. Jacob was born on October 4^th, 1832 in Morlautern near Kaiserslautern (Palatinate) as son of Maria Elisabetha Linz aus Morlautern (born December 20^th, 1791 in Katzweiler, Palatinate) and Sebastian Guckenbiehl (born June 18^th, 1778 at Althütterhof near Otterberg, Palatinate). The sources differ on the name of his wife. While the files in the [PfGV] call her Regina Schlandecker, born on February 3^rd, 1833 in Rülzheim, Palatinate, other sources call her Rachel.

Jacob and his wife where 17 years old. It is therefore quite likely that they joined Jacob's older half brother Johannes, who fled the Palatinate three years before leaving behind debts of sixty guilder. Johannes was the illegitimate son of Jacob's mother and the nephew of Jacob's father. That nephew was also named Johannes and was born on April 20^th, 1806 at Althütterhof.