Arconti-King Family Tree

Jim Liptrack's My Genealogy web page:

Johannes Steinseifer (d. before 1612) is mentioned in the 1599 regional inventory (tax list?) of Oberschelden, 4 kilometers west of Siegen. In 1612, he is listed as the deceased father of Jakob at the baptism of one of Jakob's children. His known sons were:

. 1. Johann Steinseifer of Oberschelden (see below)
. 2. Jakob Steinseifer of Plittershagen, near Freudenberg.
. . . . his son Jakob Steinseifer (d.1645) married Enchen Harbach
. . . . . his grandson Henrich Steinseifer (1655-1722) married Margaretha Fries
. . . . . . his great-grandson Tillman Steinseifer (1703) immigrated to Georgia in 1738, and was then
. . . . . . reported to have moved to Pennsylvania and spelled his name Stoneker.

Johann Steinseifer (d.before 1619) was Godfather at the baptism of one of Jakob's children in 1612, and was missing from the tax list of 1619/20. His known sons were:

. 1. Johann Steinseifer married at Oberholzklau 1616 Christina Müller, daughter of Hans Müller.
. . . Three daughters were baptized in Mittelhees between 1616 and 1620. Unknown after that.
. 2. Christ Steinseifer of Oberschelden (see below)

There have been many guesses about the meaning of the name "Steinseifer." But records from the area west of Siegen, Nassau, Germany, in the first half of the 1600's point to a family that lived in a particular, small, rocky valley near Brachbach on the Sieg River. The family of "Johannes zum Steinseiffen," a miller in Brachbach, is mentioned in the churchbooks in Kirchen from their beginning in 1642. A more complete description would be a family from the "steinigen Seifen." "Steinig" means stony or rocky. "Seifen" is an old German word, not in current dictionaries, meaning a small valley off to the side.

Most German peasants in the area around Siegen first assumed family names in the late 1500's. So records of non-nobility are harder to trace before 1550. The residents of Eiserfeld, Seelbach, Niederschelden, and other nearby areas went in to the Nikolai Kirche (Evangelische/Lutheran) in Siegen for marriages, baptisms, and records of burials.