There are two possible origins of this name - that I can think of. One, a man from Hilsen became a baker. Beck (or Bek, Beckh) meant baker in German, or at least in the dialect of this region of Germany.  And the community then began calling him Hilsenbeck and the name stuck. The second possibility is that a man with the family name of Hilsen became a baker and then went under the family name of Hilsenbeck.  According to the online telephone listings in Germany, www. teleinfo.de , there is no community with the name of Hilsen in Germany today, but there are 18 Hilsen listings. As far as I know, the word hilsen has and had no meaning other than perhaps a place name.

In Laichingen, just 5 kilometers east of Feldstetten, an odd development in family name evolution was occurring among the the numerous Schwenk families in the 17th century. I won't go into detail here. You can read about the many Schwenk Clans in Laichingen in this Website on the page called The Schwenk Name. One of those clans is the Schwenkbeck.  A Georg Schwenk b. 1669 became a baker. The community began calling him Georg Schwenk, Beck. The name stuck, and by the early 1800s the beck part became fused with Schwenk, i.e., Schwenkbeck.

The question here is whether this same kind of name modification occurred with our Philipp Hilsenbeck's father or grandfather, or who knows how far back?  What is probably more important, however, is whether this family name arose in one place in Germany. If is did, and this was in the Stuttgart-Ulm region, this would support my contention that all Hilsenbecks in Germany and in America have a common Hilsenbeck ancestor. 

Early Hilsenbeck History
Philipp and Feldstetten
Brewers and Innkeepers
Moving to Surrounding Communities
Emigration to America