Hi Bernard,
Just stumbled across your postings searching for family members of Schaaf from Geiselberg.
My name is Otmar Jochum ,born 1943 in Heltersberg,neighbor village of Geiselberg.My mother is a born Schaaf. I have found lots of Schaafs from Geiselberg from different family lines.I have come back on my line to a Michael (Michel) Schaaf ,who was a miller at the Hirschalber Mühle (mill) between Geiselberg and Schmalenberg.The whole family seems to have been running different mills in the area.
I have found a source -reworked church books from the area which have been put together and sorted by name and church event.One author is Dietmar Meyer (from Schopp) who has published several books on that issue .The books are available at the" Zweibruecker Arbeitsgemeinschaft fuer Familienforschung".Can supply adress if wanted.They also help on such research ( maybe a donation helps).They have a small office in Zweibrücken (about 15 miles from Geiselberg) and have lots of knowledge of the families history and general history of the area.
By the way at the time Geiselberg belonged to Bavaria -later on this became Pfalz,respective Rheinland-Pfalz today.
The originals of the church books datin back to about 1660 rest in Speyer in the church archive.The mormons have copied all the filea on microfilm some yearts ago ,but I haven't been able to trace the content on family search.
I might be able to help you with some of your questions because I am planning to visit the Zweibrücken archive soon to find data on the Schaaf side of my family history.
Geiselberg belongs to an association of muncipalties and the registrars office is now in Waldfischbach.I have found that they are not very helpful and it takes ages to get an answer.Zweibruecken is probably a much better source.I have also found that there is a lot of stories on these families in local publications like year books ,but they are in German language.They contain a lot of background on the history of the area and migration to the States.
Let me know if I can be of help-we might even be related!!
Wish you all the best
Otmar