| The Leibenguth family is of Swiss origin, the earliest records available, dating back to 1590, disclosing
that our Swiss ancestors formerly resided in the Canton of Bern, Switzerland. They were German-speaking
Lutherans. In the seventeenth century some of them migrated to German Alsace, where they resided for seventy
years, among other places, a small hamlet of Schalkendorf, twenty-five miles northwest of the city of
Strassburg. In 1680 a great part of Alsace was seized by the French, and in 1689 a vast territory known as the
Palatinate was desolated. In the years 1710 and 1733, they left their fatherland to find a haven of
protection in the Colony of William Penn.
William Penn, whose mother was a German, offered religious freedom to all, and here the refugees found
a land of peace, contentment and opportunity. These rugged pioneers, it is stated in the records, were the best
farmers in the world.
Possenssing a natural migratory tendency, more or less hereditary perhaps, the descendants of the Leibenguth's
(includes other spelling variations), scattered in later years to many of the counties of Pennsylvania. Berks,
Lehigh, Lancaster, Northampton, York, Northumberland, Lycoming, Tioga, Cambria and other counties in which
sections of the family still reside. My branch of the Leibenguth tree settled in Northampton County. |
