For a year now I've thought, due to some info I received a while back, that Dillenburg was a part of Hesse-Kassel. I've finally found some decent maps of the area from my ancestors time period there (1710-1845) and it looks to me like this town is a part of what was during that time (pre Hesse-Nassau) Nassau, not Hesse-Kassel. Am I right? There doesn't seem to be much out there are far as info on Nassau. If I am right, or even if I'm not, I have something else that's confusing me. I've got a copy of my 6th Great Grandfather's marriage record (20 Dec. 1710) from Dillenburg. Part of it states that he's "a rider with the Hessen Darmstadt Cavalry under Mr. Dahsoldt". Seems odd to me that he'd be in Dillenburg, whether it was part of Hesse-Kassel or Nassau, and be a part of the Hesse-Darmstadt military. Did that region share a military in some way? Did Nassau "rent" troops from Hesse? The same marriage record says my 6th Great Grandfather Johann Georg Eberling was born "close to Heilbronn" in Wurttemberg. That seems like an awfully long way for a 20 year old man to have come from in that time. Did people usually move around that much in the late 1600s/early 1700s? I'm wondering if it might actually be Herborn, which is near Dillenburg, and not Heilbronn. The Heilbronn church books show no Eberling's for the proper time period, but of course "close to" could mean lots of things. The translation was done by Marion Wolfert and given her credentials I trust her reading of the nearly 300 year old record, but thought I'd ask. Sorry for the long winded message. Thanks in advance, Brian Z. Eberling Crystal, Minnesota, USA

Hello Brian, Dillenburg was originally the seat of one of the divisions of the ruling dynasty of the counts of Nassau. Nassau-Dillenburg was established in the 13th century and passed to Nassau-Dietz upon the extinction of that line in 1739. Eventually, all of the Nassau possessions were reunited under a single ruler. Your earliest known ancestor married in 1710 would have done so in Nassau-Dillenburg, but the territory probably would have been called Nassau-Dietz by the time he died. As for military service, if one wished to follow such a calling and his own small state did not have a regular standing army, there was no prohibition from going to a neighboring state and offering his services there. On the other hand, he may have been from Hessen-Darmstadt and married a young lady from Dillenburg in her home parish church. He may not have been from Dillenburg himself and could have been a native-born Hessian. As for people going from one place to another, i.e. from near Heilbronn to Dillenburg, the answer is yes. The straight-line distance between the two places is only about 185 km or 110 miles. People traveled greater distances all the time in the 17th and 18th centuries, usually walking the entire way. It was not unusual for people to walk from Frankfurt to Paris for example, especially if they were merchants or craftsmen. We have a different mode of thinking today and most people won't even walk a quarter of a mile to a store! Our ancestors were undaunted by distance, otherwise, they never would have made the long ocean voyage to settle in a new land. Doug Nicol -- Norman D. Nicol, Ph.D. Professional Genealogist/Family Historian Specializing in NE Pennsylvania, NYC, Scotland, England, esp. Cornwall