Searching for Epgert


The roadside resturant named after our patriarch, on the Frankfurt-Cologne Autobahn.
Although there are relevant church records dating back to 1698, as reported by Henry Jones, I didn’t find any churches that old. His two books, More Palatine Families and Westerwald to America, are good starting places for the serious family researcher. The churches I found dated from the 1800’s and the oldest cemetery markers dated from the early 1800’s. No Apgards or Epgerts there, either. Had they all moved to America

I desperately wanted to find Epgert, the one village most closely aligned with our ancestor. Following the map, even at a scale of 1 to 25,000, proved frustrating. It was getting late in the afternoon and so I got back onto the Autobahn. I pulled off at the next rest station and found, to my surprise, that the roadhouse was named “Epgert”. The restaurant proprietor explained how the name came from a nearby town whose main road had been intersected by the building of the autobahn.