Where the Domelle's Came From

So I recently obtained a new copy of the family book for the "home town" of my great-grandfather, William Domelle (my maternal great-grandfather), born in 1882.  This is my only photo of him, taken circa 1907 with his first wife Magdalena Tirjung, probably in Gattaja (the town where they married):

His home town is known by several names, it's modern day Tomnatic in Romania, but when he lived there it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was know as Triebswetter in German and Nagy Osz in Hungarian.

Although in Hungary, they were mostly all ethnic Germans (and some French) in the town as they were part of the great migration of Germans down into this area in the 1700s. 

William (and other Domelle's) came to America and settled in the Chicago/North East Indiana area.  William married again and had my grandfather.

The oral history my grandfather always told me was that the Domelle's came from the Alsace Lorraine region.  The wonderful news is that statement has been proved very well!!!

Using the church records transcribed in the Triebswetter Familienbuch, I was able to trace back to find all the other surnames that became part of my great-grandfather, as well as find where many of those family lines came from.

The Domelle's (also spelled Domele, Dommeley, Dumele, Tomule, Tomerle) were part of the migration of many German families southwest to modern day Romania/Serbia/Hungary.

So if you are a descendent of any of the kids of Adam Domelle/Domele and Christina Reiser/Reizer (William Domelle, Nick Domelle, Anna Tischler or Lena Bozung):

 Then these are surnames that are part of your ancestry:
 
ADAM
ALBERT
ANTOINE
BAUER
BETHLE
DETARD
DOPHING
FLAUSS
FLORENT
GEORG
GROSS-THIEL
GUINOT
HOULLE
HUBER
HUPPERTS
KELLER
KLEIN
LAUER
LEONARD
MARCHAL
MEYER
MORSCH
PELTE
PFAFF
PFEIFFER
PIERRE
REISER
SCHNEIDER
SCHREIBER
STROHOFFER
WOLF

Great names huh?  Definitely a mix of German and French in there which makes total sense once I show you a map of their origins.  I don't have the source town for every name, but I have a lot of them and here's where Adam and Christina's ancestors came (modern map showing the town names):

Nice grouping, right?  A ton of them came from what is modern day France - specifically the Moselle region in Lorraine, just like my Grandpa said.  :-)

But now, here's something to place it in context before you start saying, oh they're all French - remember this is the long, as in centuries long, contested Alsace-Lorraine region that went back and forth between France and Germany and was of course it's own region before there was a Germany.  Here's a historical map from 1648 that shows a red circle around the same area where the towns are marked above.  This is about 60 or so years before people first started making the move from this area down to Austria/Hungary:

Cool right?  SO COOL!

But wait, there's more!  So several years back my paternal Grandfather William Adam Domelle, grandson of Adam Domelle and Christine Reiser, humored me by allowing me to send in his DNA to familytreedna.com.  Here are his results showing origin:

See the darkest red area?  IT MATCHES!  Of course I can't separate out whatever DNA my grandfather got from his mom Elizabeth Obendorfer who is one of the most frustrating brick walls ever, but Grandpa's results are consistent with the map of the source towns.

So all in all I'm pretty pleased with where I've gotten with the Domelle side, this has been some great progress.  :-)