Simon Gilb and wife Maria and son Nickolaus emigrated from
Herxheim in 1836, leaving from Havre, France on the ship
Harriet Rockwell, arriving in New York on 21 Jun 1836. They
settled in Kentucky where Maria had three more sons, Frederick, Joseph and Valentine before she died bef 1846 when Simon remarried to Catharina Gilb 11 Nov 1846 at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Cincinnati. Catharina and her brother Theodore Gilb had just arrived from Herxheim on 1 Aug 1846, so her marriage to Simon may have been an arranged one. By the time that Theodore and Catharina's widowed mother came over in 1855 with another brother Mathias and his family, this group of Gilb's left the Catholic Church
because they felt the church had swindled their widowed mother out of their fathers property, and they joined the German Evangelical Church. I have only traced Simon's line
back two generations and there are no common ancestors to the line of Catharina Gilb whose line goes back to the 1600's, but most likely there is some connection back there.
Email me directly at
tomlking@juno.com for more information.