Herr Family Surname: Introductory Pagetd
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To 1st Generation America Herr: 
Bishop Hans Herr
To Pa and 
our Pennsylvanians
To Lancaster Co  and our Lancaster Countians
To Our American Immigrants
To Our Mennonites of Pennsylvania.
To 1st Generation Herr: Bishop Hans Herr
 
 
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The Herr family present Within the Vines is a mennonite one. It is our earliest known direct surname in the Swope and Allied Ascendancy. It owes its precense to the emmigration of Bishop Hans Herr and wife to Pennsylvania in the 7th decade of their lives and in 1710 with a small group of Mennonites seeking respite and new life in Penn's colony.  They were not the first Mennonites in Pennsylvania, but they were among its earliest, and so, were among its earliest Germans. The Mennonites were part of Anabaptist tradition of Switzerland and Germany, and had long been persecuted in Europe and it is small wonder this particular group, the second wave of mennonites [the first being the small group settling in Germantown, Pennsylvania who encouraged their brethren's emmigration] sought to settle deep within the Pennsylvania frontier.  Among our cluster of mennonites are several surnames  under the spiritual leadership of Hans Herr, among them Surnames  BRENNEMAN and  BRUBAKER   [and BAR, and KUNDIG for the female surnames amongst whom the Herrs married in Europe and whose own extended family groups were part of the Lancaster mennonite settlers of 1710-1717 accompanying Bishop Herr] -All these names were involved as a cohesive group and  in the settling of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in the second decade of the 18th century. Our Mennonites of Pennsylvania. are, long recognized as the first white settlers of that region. The Mennonite tradition ends in our direct line 4-5 generations down from Bishop Herr but only about 50 years after his arrival, the short time frame owing to the emmigration with their father of adult HERR children with children of their own  in whom our ascendancy is found. Anna Herr, the Bishop's Great Grandaughter, married Christian Brenneman, the grandson of mennonite Melchior Brenneman, who joined the Hans Herr Mennonites in Lancaster County in 1717. [After Christians's death, his widow Anna Herr Brenneman  married Christian's first cousin Isaac Brenneman] . Daughter Elizabeth BRENNEMAN lies buried with her husband John QUICKEL in the Lutheran Cemetery of the Quickel church her immigrant father in law Michael QUICKEL founded. Thus ends the mennonite infusion in our lines.

The Herr Line arises from the marriage of Anna Kate STAIR to Hon. Samuel McCurdy SWOPE. Bishop Herr is her 5th great grandfather through her maternal BENTZ surname.