Ancestry.com comes through for me again. The massive data archives of this website have been a rich treasure-trove for me and well worth the money. They have been augmenting their European databases and I have been impressed so far. I received an e-mail from them notifying me that they are beginning to post the World War I military Muster Lists for the German soldiers of that war. Not surprisingly, it was easy to find several members of my family, and many with my family names. For starters these include over 24 images of actual family members with the names Hasselbacher, Bayerl, and Gnugesser.
For each name, there were several possible entries representing different kinds of ledgers. Some of the information is easily understandable even by me: name; birthday and place;occupation; current home; name of spouse and number of children; name, occupation, and home of parents; etc. However, even more voluminous are entries of military significance loaded with abbreviations. These latter were hard to interpret, with some exceptions. For some of the names, a list of the locations of battles is also given.
As is usual, the volume of information is more than I can comfortably deal with. There are two Hasselbachers from Eschenbach that I hope will help me understand the families from that village and nearby Markt Erlbach. There was a Gnugesser from Affing. There were also three brothers from the Bayerl family of Affing: Max, Johann, and Joseph. I will break this information out into different pages in their respective sections of this website.
I also wait with great expectation for the remainder of the posting by ancestry.com. My grandfather, Conrad was a cannoneer in that war. I have his unpublished wartime diary that is wonderful to read, but we have not been able to determine where in France he was fighting. These military records should make that very clear.
Peter Hasselbacher
13 November 2009