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The Pirmann - Bond Family History Page

Hi, and welcome to the Home Page of the Pirmann family of Barto, Pennsylvania -- husband and wife Greg and Suzanne and our daughter, Carrie. Why a Family Home Page? There are lots of reasons. The first, to paraphrase Sir Edmund Hillary, is "because it's there". What good's a World Wide Web if we can't clutter it up with family photos, stories about our lives, pictures of the cats, lists of the cool things we do and like, etc, etc, etc. Yeah, yeah, I can hear it now -- more wasted bandwidth. But it's our wasted bandwidth!!

There are actually a lot of good reasons for a Family Home Page. We are presently trying to construct a Pirmann Family Tree, tracing the family lines back to Germany on my father's side and to Ireland and England, the home of my mother's ancestors. Our search within the paternal line has focused on my great-grandfather, Christian Pirmann, a shoemaker who emigrated to America from Germany in 1865, when he took up residence in Philadelphia. Christian went on to father eleven children, seven of whom grew to adulthood. On the maternal side, our family traces back to Thomas McQuillin, who emigrated from Ireland in the early 1830's. Thomas and his wife Rose Diamond had at least three male children, Robert, Thomas, Jr. and Charles. My great-grandfather, Robert McQuillin, was born in Philadelphia in 1833 and served in the Union Navy during the Civil War. His Ninth (?) and youngest child was my maternal grandmother, Eugenia (McQuillin) Orme. Since creating this homepage, we have been able to reconnect with Pirmann and McQuillin descendants throughout the country. And the search goes on.We also want to trace the family lines even further, back to the village of Pirmasens, in the area of Germany known today as the Rheinland-Pfalz and to County Antrim in Northern Ireland. And that's not to forget Suzanne's ancestors, some of whom first reached America in the early seventeenth century.

If you are interested in reading a good, short history of the German Palatinate, check out the the Palatine History Page, part of the Olive Tree Genealogy Web Site. This site explains the great Palatine German emigration to America in the early 1700's. While this precedes Christian Pirmann's 1865 move, Suzanne's ancestry has been traced back to the family of Johann George Reith and Anna Catherine Reith, who, with their ten children, fled religious persecution in the Palatinate in 1709, landing in America in 1710. Several of the Reith children were among the earliest European settlers in the Tulpehocken Valley of western Berks County, where they are buried in the graveyard of "Old Reed's Church", which they founded in Stouchsburg, PA. (Reed is an anglicized version of Reith.)

But the Reed Family is a story for another day, one to be pursued once the Pirmann's are found. And when those roots have been traced, there are a lot more to be pursued, like the McQuillens, Ormes, Bonds, Wilbys and a lot of others. Since our page was mounted, we've heard from other Pimanns, folks who may be related to us, if not in the generations of the family since Christian's arrival in America, then in the generations that lived before him back in Germany. We've also heard from other folks whose search for their own family's roots are somehow intertwined with the story of Christian Pirmann and his descendants.

Another reason for this page is to connect to the world -- directly to folks we know and indirectly to folks we haven't met yet. These connections can be made in a lot of ways. Some happen simply by surfing. Some come from our hobbies, our love of cats, our love of music, what we do to afford all of these expensive computer equipment and on-line time.

Since the Pirmann family Page was inaugurated, Carrie and Greg have undertaken a major project -- The Unofficial Web Page for Washington Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania. Thanks to the generosity of David Pirmann and "Quuxuum.org", the Washington Township web site is presently under construction. Drop in and visit.

P.S. Except where noted otherwise, the text on this page has been composed by Greg [J. Gregory Pirmann, when assuming his real-world alter ego], so all references to "I", "me", etc. mean him. Does any of this make sense?

A passel of Pirmanns, July, 1995 - [left to right] brother Fred & his wife Barbara [scions of the North Jersey branch], Carrie, David & Matthew [sons of Fred & Barbara], Suzanne, sister Anne [last of this branch of the Pirmann Family Tree remaining in Philadelphia], & Greg ---- Not available for the group picture: Ken & Jean [Pirmann] Kemmerer, the Alaska contingent of the family --- Ken and Jean are pictured below on their sailboat Quinnot, docked at the Ketchikan Yacht Club, Ketchikan, Alaska. Quinnot was their home for more than fifteen years, until they "moved ashore" in 1995.

Genealogy Links

  • Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet
  • Everton's Guide to Genealogy in Pennsylvania
  • The Family Chronicle's Top Ten Genealogy Websites Nominees
  • GENCAP Home Page
  • GENCAP Genealogy Page
  • GENCAP Berks County Page
  • Genealogy Home Page
  • Genealogy Online
  • German Genealogy Home Page
  • Historical Society of Pennsylvania
  • National Genealogical Society
  • soc.genealogy.german - Newsgroup for German genealogical research
  • The Palatines To America Homepage
  • Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center
  • RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative

    Pirmann Family Links

  • Carrie Pirmann's Home Page
  • David Pirmann's Home Page
  • Ketchikan, Alaska Home Page - Home of Jean and Ken Kemmerer.
  • Abbi and Beau's Home Page - Our furry feline friends on the Web.
  • Lumawaki Lodge Homepage - A Very Strange Group
  • New York City Subway Resources - David Pirmann's underground world.

    Developmental Disabilities & Disability Rights

    The "Developmental Disability, et al" links have been moved to a separate page because of their increasing number. Please Click Here to access the new page. In addition to the page of disability links, Greg is now the "webmaster" of two sites which address disability-related issues. They are the Dual Diagnosis Forum Home Page and the electronic version of a new publication, the Pennsylvania Journal On Positive Approaches.

    Regional Links

  • Covered Bridges of Southeastern Pennsylvania
  • CyberLinks to Berks County & Beyond
  • Franklin Institute Science Museum
  • Joe's Links To Philadelphia Information
  • LibertyNet
  • Pennsylvania Destination of the Day
  • Philadelphia Online
  • PhillyLife
  • The Official MLB Home Page of the Philadelphia Phillies
  • Snapshots of Philadelphia
  • Suburban Cable Television
  • Voicenet
  • The UNOFFICIAL Washington Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania Home Page
  • WHYY -- Public Broadcasting for the Delaware Valley
  • WFMZ - TV69 -- Serving Berks County & the Lehigh Valley
  • WLVT - Channel 39 -- Public Television for the Lehigh Valley
  • WXPN - FM 88.5 -- The Best Radio Station In The World

    Music Links

  • Echoes
  • JAZZ Online
  • The Joni Mitchell Home Page
  • The Van Morrison Website
  • A Prairie Home Companion
  • Sleepy Hollow
  • World Cafe
  • Windham Hill Records

    Information Links

  • Amazon.com Books
  • The Gettysburgian - The student newspaper of Gettysburg College
  • How Far Is It?
  • The Internet Movie Database
  • The Internet Public Library - Be sure to check out the Exhibit Hall.
  • The Library of Congress
  • Lonely Planet Tour guides - Check the "Detours" Page for some really out-of-the-way destinations.
  • Public Radio International
  • Today in History
  • Weather Channel Home Page
  • The World Fact Book - A Service of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

    Comments, questions or suggestions? E-mail the Pirmann family at jgreg123@prolog.net. This site is a product of CMP WEB WORKS, Barto, PA. Conceptualization and realization by Carrie & Greg Pirmann. The authors are solely responsible for the content. [Now you know that this must be a real web site because it's got a disclaimer in it.] This page was last updated on July 4, 1998. Thanks and see you on the Web.