Carolina Hallmans - Part 4 "The propriety of displaying the 'True Heilman Coat of Arms' without proof of descent from the grantee is a matter of personal decision. It is used by the American Heilmans who descend from the emigrant, immigrant John Adam Heilman, of Zuzenhausen, Baden, centered in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania. To use it is to imply kinship with them. Nevertheless, the South Carolina family has as good right to use it as the Lebanon County family has, for it would be very likely impossible to prove that either family is entitled to it, or not entitled to it. Americans are very lax in the use of Arms, many being satisfied to use the Arms belonging to any family of the same name. "From the statements in Dr. S. P. Heilman's article, it is evident that many of the Heilman families of Franconia produced men of out-standing accomplishments in many fields. The Christopher Sauer Almanacs for 1745 and 1746 show 'Heilman' in the column of Saints of the Church, as the Saint honored on the seventh of April. The Official Church Calendar includes no saint named Heilman, and modern almanacs show April seventh as the day of the Angel Gabriel, but it is interesting that as late as 1746, some Germans remembered a local Heilman saint of centuries past. Heilmans have been Protestants since the Reformation. Possibly the reference is to Ferdinand Heilman, who in 1488 was Abbot of St. Martins Cell, a monastery in France, under the jurisdiction of Cluny. "During the Middle Ages, the family was recognized as important enough to warrant the naming of towns and estates for them. Among such names are Heilmanseck, Helistein, Heilsdorf, and others, mostly in Franconia. "During this and later periods, prominent Heilmans appear; in 1465, Allarick Heilman was an important member of the German Knights at Margantheim, headquarters of the Master of the Teutonic Order. In 1509, Johannes der Heilman von Heilsdorf was deposed, and with his descendants declared infamous forever by the Emperor Maximilian, his 'crime' being opposition to the schemes of the Emperor to overthrow the Venetian Republic, and belief in the right of free men to choose their government and to conduct their affairs democratically. Therefore, Johannes der Heitman von Heilsdorf deserves, by our standards, not infamy, but recognition as a harbinger of the new spiritual Freedom which finally destroyed the Holy Roman Empire. "In the last years of the 15th century, Hieronimus Heilman was commander in chief of the Imperial Armies of Emperor Frederick. It is not a family made up of serfs and peasants. In fact, several branches of Heilmans have been lost sight of because their estates were so important that the owners became known by the names of their lands. Among such families is one in Bavaria whose founder in 1281 married the heiress Von Praunheim, and thereafter called himself Johann Von Praunheim instead of Johann Heilman. "Many Heilmans are mentioned by Dr. Heilman, his sources revealing that the Franconian family emigrated into other parts of Germany, into Switzerland, and into France, in which several lines still exist in Alsace. One Ludwig Heilman became famous for an acrostic, written in 1517. This poem was considered so remarkable, and so fervent an expression of the Reformation Spirit that it was printed alongside Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, and remained into the twentieth century as a hymn in the German Sunday School Hymnal of the Lutheran Church, being sung to a German chorale, 'Gott Gruss dich Bruder veite.' "Even more famous is an Andreas Heilman, a kinsman of John Gutenberg, who had a part in the printing of the first Bible produced by Gutenberg, and subsequently located at Strasbourg. His brother Thomas Heilman was the ancestor of the Heilman family which bought citizenship at Beil, Switzerland, in 1732, and is now considered Swiss. Yet from their marriages, it is clear that the generations between Thomas of Strasbourgh and Johann Cristoph of Biel moved up and down the Rhine from Leyden to the Alps. It was a tme of great ferment and movement. "Since both human nature and many other factors make it likely that related families and individuals emigrate from a vicinity more frequently than unrelated ones, and since Zuzenhausen, Baden, and Nordheim, Wurttenburg, are identified as the homes of three of the ten Heilmans who emigrated to Pennsylvania in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, special mention will be given the families from these towns as the most likely kinsmen of Andreas, Hans Wendel, and Conrad Heilman, whose families are the ones to whom this book is devoted. "Zuzenhausen, located twenty-seven miles from Heidelburg, across the border in Baden, on the Elsass stream, is an ancient town established before 800 A.D. Heilmans lived there before the Thirty Years War, when it had a population numbering thousands. It was so terribly ravaged during this conflict that at the end of the War, in 1648, only fifteen heads of families remained alive in it. One of these was Martin Heilman. In the History of Zuzenhausen, by Rev. John Philip Glock, mention is made of the following Heilman residents: Martin, 1617; Jakob, 1659; Hans Jakob, 1670; Margaretha, 1682; Jakob, 1682; Rev. Paul Chnstian, 1686; Hans Jakob, 1692;Jakob, i705;and John Adam, 1738, who migrated to Pennsylvania. Within one mile of the latter settled John Peter Heilman, from Wurttenburg, who emigrated at the age of twenty, in 1732."