The marriage of Maria Barbara Lieb to our Johannes Schwenk in 1828 in Dettingen (on the Erms River) and, of course, the children born of this union, is our connection to the Lieb Family. Let us now step back to a  time about 230 years before that wedding and very close to four centuries prior to the writing of this story.

     Wildberg lies about 35 kilometers west-southwest of Stuttgart on Hiway 463, the Schwarzwald Bäderstrasse. Laichingen lies at a distance of 75 kilometers east of Wildberg. This community was under the rule of the House of Württemberg as were all those we have talked about earlier.
     All we really know of this ancestor Johannes Lieb comes from the church marriage book entry made in Pfullingen in 1659, when his son Johann Christoph married. The clerk/scribe or pastor referred to the father of the groom as, "Herr" Johann Lib, member of the village court in  Wildberg. Keep in mind that the title or form of address, Herr, was not applied loosely in those days - unlike our term, Mister, used rather indiscriminately today in America. A Herr so-and-so was a burgher of high social standing. Note the spelling of this family name. Was that the way this family spelled it in 1659, or did the man recording this event simply spell it as it sounded? The latter is more likely.
     The surviving church records of Wildberg begin with the year 1558; that book contains the marriages. The death record book begins in 1615; the recorded births begin in the year 1646. It is likely that the births and deaths were recorded earlier - probably beginning back in 1558 - but were lost or destroyed, perhaps during the madness of the 30 Years War.
     Johannes Lieb was born in all likelihood around 1600 and probably there in Wildberg. The search for his death date, with the hope of determining his birth year, was unsuccessful, however this did yield some information. An entry made on July 4, 1635, reads, "Johannes, Johannes Lieben's  seven week old baby died." In March of the preceding year another infant, whose father was shown as Johann Lieben, died. This was about two years before baby Johann Christoph Lieb, our ancestor, was born. It seems very likely that the above recorded father of the two dead infants was our Johannes Lieb. The pastor did not take the effort to record the name of the mother!; because  of that omission, we may never have learned the name of our "Matriarch" were it not for a death entry to be mentioned in the following paragraph (this really was no omission; the mother of the deceased was, by custom, simply not listed, unless the deceased were born out of wedlock. Beginning in around 1808,  a standardized form included/required the listing of both parents). A search through the marriage book, from 1618 through 1640, did not reveal the name of Johannes Lieb and his bride. It is possible the marriage took place elsewhere, in his or her home village.
     While searching the registers of the Wildberg Lutheran Church, a few "Lieb-like" family names were observed. There was a Hans Lieben or Liebe living there; he was then Burgermeister (mayor). And there was a Johannes Löblin who married there in September of 1635. There was no family name spelled "Lieb" observed, but that means little in view of the haphazard ways of spelling in those days - remember how this name was spelled in Pfullingen in 1659! Also, the given name Johannes was often spelled and spoken as Hans or Johann; and so it may be that the above recorded Hans, the Burgermeister, was indeed our Johannes Lieb. And then a death entry on April 15, 1641 tends to support this probability and at the same time reveals the name and birth year of his wife - our matriarch Lieb; on that date, a Margarethe, 40 year old wife of Hans Liebe, Burgermeister, died.

     Entries made in the death book reveal much about the times. The Pest - the Plague  - was taking a horribly heavy toll in the years around 1635 throughout this part of Germany as well as the results of the 30 Year's War. Often, entire families died within a short time of this dreaded infectious disease. A man of about forty years of age and close friend of the pastor died on the same day as did one of his children; they were buried together. Another married couple died during the same day on a particular date; the pastor noted that the one spouse "was feeling just fine during the morning", then died suddenly that evening not long after his spouse had died a lingering death. Many soldiers appear in the death entries - most recorded as "unknown." Many babies were recorded only as "Soldats Kind", or soldier's baby. It is little wonder that the death book entries were so brief; the pastor had his hands full trying to cope with so many funerals and the grief and despair of the survivors. This time period was surely one of the darkest hours in the history of this part of Europe.

     Johann Christoph Lieb was born in 1636 in Wildberg. How do we know that in view of the birth records not beginning there until the year of 1646? This would have to be extracted from his death entry, but this was never uncovered by this descendant. It seems that someone in America was searching his/her Lieb roots about ten years ago, then entered this data into the vast computer files of the Morman Family History Library in Salt Lake City. A computer printout from what is called the International Genealogical Index contains the name of this ancestor, his year and place of birth and father's name. It does not show the place of death. It is likely the same researcher, who found the marriage entry of our J.C. Lieb in the Pfullingen Church microfilms of the Morman Church. It was this information which provided the clue to this writer to order the same microfilm from the Morman Family History Library in Salt Lake City. We owe this unknown-to-us person (though the name and address can be obtained) much gratitude. The I.G.I. computer printout shows just the basic data: names of Johann Christoph Lieb and his bride; the date and place of the marriage. The microfilm reveals much more. We will come to that soon.
     What do we know about the life of this man up to the date of his marriage in 1659 at the age of twenty-three? Practically nothing! But that too can be said for one of his descendants, our John Schwenk, born about two centuries after this Lieb's birth in Wildberg. The paper trail is scanty. We are left with little choice but to speculate
 It is likely that his father, Herr Johannes Lieb, was a prosperous man. It is also probable that he sent this son to the University of Tübingen to study theology. Tübingen is located about 30 kilometers south of Stuttgart and a two hour brisk walk west of Pfullingen where he would later marry. It is probable he met his future wife in Tübingen, for she was born there on Feb. 14, 1642. It could be that they met in Pfullingen, however,  while he was serving as Diaconus in the Lutheran Church. Her father, Herr Joachim Christoph Bansovius, was a prosperous financial adminstrator in Pfullingen at the time of the wedding. One wonders if Johann was still a student at the University of Tübingen (founded in 1477 where also our ancestor Wolfgang Fridrich Blifers studied theology in the early 1700s before taking over the pastorate in Mundingen in 1719) while serving as Diaconus in Pfullingen when he married?
     The following is the translation of the marriage entry in the Pfullingen Ehebuch:

 "Anno 1659  "on the 31st of October  a wedding was held. Herr M. Johann  Christoph Lib,  local Diaconus, the lawful son of Herr Johann Lib, member of  the court in  Wildberg: with Maria Margretha, the lawful daughter of Herr  Joachim Christoph  Bansovius, local financial adminstrator."

     The reader may have noted the letter "M" before the groom's name. This denoted his educational attainment, a degree of sorts conferred onto the theological student who had passed his final exams.
     One year after those vows were said, the first baby arrived. This was our Samuel  Christoph Lieb, and the event occurred on October 22.  The pastor entered the parents' names beneath the Eltern column, which was the normal thing to do, but he added beneath those names the date of their wedding; that was very unusual! Beneath the heading, Gevatter Leut (Godparents) appear the names of many important-sounding people. There is a Herr Rumnehn who has something to do with "the highness of Württemberg"; there is an  M. Johann Wilhelmus, the head pastor of this church; there is a Frau ( title for wife of a man of  status) Regina Susanna, wife of Ludwig Weber who has an important position (untranscribable for this student of Altschrift) in Tübingen; and a Anna Susanna someone.
     Two years later, on October 21, a baby girl was born and named after her mother  Maria Margaretha. Once again, the Gevatter Leut were influential people in the surrounding communities. With both entries, the family name was spelled, Lieb.
     The search for other children born to this couple through the years to 1681 yielded nothing except names of children born to a Simon Peter Lieb and wife Anna Johanna. Was this a brother of our Johann Christoph? Probably not. Poor Simon carried no title of Herr before his name, but this does not exclude the possibility of sibling kinship. This was the only other Lieb name observed in the church books.
     Did Johann and Maria Margaretha have other children? Probably. It is likely they moved to another community not long after 1662 where he may have taken over the pastorate of a church. A search in the Tübingen church birth records between the years of 1663 and 1670 revealed not one Lieb name. Because Tübingen is such a large city, the church there created an index system for births and deaths. This aids the inquirer  greatly. Only two Lieb family names appear in the birth index of this large city - a Hans Ulrich and Johann Ulrich, the fathers. Incidentally, the name Schwenk was not seen in the Tübingen records, nor earlier in those of Pfullingen.
     Where and when the life of our Johann Christoph Lieb ended, we do not know. Perhaps those answers lie in the files of that researcher who sent data about these Liebs to the Morman Church archives.  We do know, however, a little bit about what happened to the wife of J.C. Lieb. For that we owe our gratitude to Herr Fritz Braun, current pastor of the church in Schopfloch, who so graciously sent several photocopied documents in July of 1994 to this descendant of one of his predecessors!  But you must read on.

     Samuel Christoph Lieb was born on October 22, 1660 in Pfullingen. Where he grew up remains an unswered question. It is likely he too attended the University of Tübingen. The record of the date and place of his marriage rests on a page of a book in a parish church somewhere in the Stuttgart region. Sometime around the middle of 1690, he arrives in the village of Dürrwangen and introduces himself in the Taufbuch, birth register, as the new pastor of this church (see that reproduced document and his beautiful penmanship directly below). Following his signature, he adds the name  Pfullingen. This may have meant to indicate the community of his prior pastorate. A search in the marriage register of Pfullingen disclosed nothing regarding his marriage.
     He was a married man when he arrived in Dürrwangen, for his wife Anna Margaretha, born Eberhardt, delivered their first child in November of that year (here is his signature entered in 1690 into the birth register of Dürrwangen). It is likely they married in 1689 or early 1690. A clue as to where was again provided by some nameless researcher. An International Genealogical Index printout shows that an Anna Margarete Eberhardt was born in Nürtingen (not far north of Dettingen/Erms) on 3 January, 1660, whose parents were Hans Jacob Eberhardt and Anna Dorothea Schopper. This is most probably the same Margaretha who married our Samuel Christoph, although her later death entry indicates she was born in December of 1664. The microfilmed parish records of Nürtingen were not sent for.
     In the years between their arrival in Dürrwangen to March 13, 1699, five babies were born to this couple; three girls and two boys. One of the latter was our Johann Friderich; he was born 18 March, 1692. He takes center stage in the following chapter.
     On Dec. 29, 1700, the pastor M. Samuel Christoph Lieb of the  Dürrwangen parish is replaced by Sub Ministero (a title appearing in most of the church books meaning, minister) M. Georg Conrad Nietsamen. And so now the question arises to where did our Samuel and family move? Fortunate for our search, someone in that parish church made an entry in a Family Register book. Samuel, his wife and the five children appear in this very early-developed precursor of the Family Register concept. Written on the right hand side of this entry were the words. "Pastor hier, 1690-1700, dann remotus in Diaconiam Ebingensem."  A map of this region shows an Ebingen located 10 kilometers east of Dürrwangen, hence a microfilm of that parish was ordered.
     There in Ebingen on Oct. 6, 1701, a sixth child comes into this family, a Jonathan Martin Lieb. We will see more of him later in the next generation chapter. In the meantime, our Samuel C. Lieb was serving as pastor or assistant pastor there in Ebingen.  In 1705 on Feb. 8, in the Ebingen death book, there appears a lengthy and reverential  description of the death and funeral of one of the highly respected members of this community. And this was Anna Margaretha, wife of the pastor, Samuel Christoph Lieb. Some of the words are smudged and illegible, but her age at death - 40 years and 2 months - is readable. She died of an illness, and was buried on  the 11th. The handwriting of the entry appears to be that of the grieving husband.
     Three months later, in the Schopfloch parish birth register, the same handwriting appears - that of our now widowed Samuel Christoph Lieb. He introduces himself as the new  pastor before writing in a birth entry on May the 11th.  And before very long, and through the next 10 years, he would also be entering the names of his own children. On Sept. 26, 1706, the first child ever born in this village bearing the family name, Lieb, was born. This was Johann Erhard; the father was our Samuel C. Lieb.
     Thanks once again to the efforts of another unnamed researcher and the facilities of the Morman Church, we know that Samuel C. Lieb remarried four months after taking over the pastorate in Schopfloch. This took place on Sept. 15, 1705 in Esslingen, a city  some 15 miles northwest of Schopfloch. The bride was Dorothea Magdalena Weber. She was then age 27. How they met, the scanty paper trail does not reveal.
 It is little wonder that our clergyman ancestor remarried so soon after the death  of his first wife; here he was with five children (the first born child died in 1698) under the age of thirteen. He faced the same problems which our Bernhard Schwenk did in 1707 over in Feldstetten when his young wife died suddenly in childbirth.
     As mentioned above, a baby boy was born to this couple in 1706. Dorothea bore four more children, all these dying in infancy. Then on July 16, 1716, shortly after giving birth to her fifth child, she passed away. The death entry lists no cause of death. She was age 38 at time of death.
     As far as could be determined, Samuel C. Lieb did not marry again. His youngest child was then age ten. It is probable that his mother, Maria Margarethe, was living with him then and helping raise the children. As you may recall, we did not find any death date for her husband, Samuel's father, but it is very likely she was a widow by the year 1716. And it was her name which would be entered into the death register of the Schopfloch parish church five years later. This occurred on July 16, 1721:
      "Frau Maria Margaretha Lieb, widow, as my most dearly beloved mother,  deceased.  Age 79 years, 2 weeks. Aeternum Triumphat. Body and soul" Then  a one-line quote  from the Bible; "What a parent! Herr Reinhard M. Leer,  pastor  in Guttenberg."
    In the year 1731, the life of our Pastor Lieb came to an end. The death register in Schopfloch contains the following words, quilled on Jan. 17, 1731:
 "Died, the right reverend and learned Herr M. Samuel Christoph Lieb, age 70. For  26  years  pastor  and spiritual leader of the local community of Schopfloch.  His funeral text  was Romans 8....... Herr  M. Denzel D. Mahlinger  in the  neighboring community of  Guttenberg."

     And so ends the third generation of our Lieb ancestry. He had served the Lord as  pastor in three, perhaps four different communities for just over 40 years. He fathered eleven children; three of these are documented to have married and fathered children. The most important one, from our point of view, was Johann Friderich Lieb. He takes center stage in the following chapter, but we will also learn something of his two brothers, Jonathan Martin and Johann Erhard.

     As we already know, Johann Friderich Lieb was born on Mar. 18, 1692 in the village of Dürrwangen. He lived there until 1700 when his father took over as pastor or assistant pastor in nearby Ebingen. He was age 13 when Schopfloch became a new home for his family. He apparently served in the military before the age of 23, for when he married in 1715, his occupation was listed as Feldscher, which translates roughly to assistant medical officer in the military. And in the many subsequent birth entries of his children, he was always addressed as "Herr Johann Friderich Lieb, surgeon."
     At the age of 23 in the town of Dettingen/Erms, where 113 years later one of his female descendents would marry a Schwenk, J. Friderich entered the holy state of matrimony. This occurred on May 14, 1715. His bride was Agnes Gwinner, born there in Dettingen only 17 years earlier. That was a very young age for a bride in those days! Her father was Johannes Gwinner, a member of the village court in Dettingen. Thus, J. Friderich and Agnes married within their social stratum. Her mother was born Anna Maria Gollmar, another prominent family name in that community.
     Between April of 1718 and April of 1733, nine little Liebs would be born of  this union. The first child was a Maria Agnes, born Apr. 21, 1718. She was the first Lieb child born in the town of Dettingen, or at least since 1554 when the recording of births in this parish was instituted! Their fourth child was named Christoph Adam, born in 1723. He married and followed the footsteps of his father, becoming also a surgeon.  Their fifth child was given the name of his father and was born in 1725. He married and became a glazier, a glass installer.  On May 6, 1727, twins were born. The girl, Sophia Margaretha died at birth. Her twin brother, Johannes survived, married, and also became a surgeon there in Dettingen. And what is even more remarkable is that this Johannes later had a son, Johannes, who likewise practiced his father's and grandfather's profession! And learning these facts in this  summer of 1995 recalled words heard while visiting Dettingen in May of 1994, "Oh yes, the Liebs are rich people!"
     The last-born child - most important for us - was Samuel Christoph Lieb;  yes another one! He made his appearance on Apr. 10, 1733. Much more about him later.

     Two brothers of our Johann Friderich Lieb. Let us for now travel back to Schopfloch, about 8 miles east of Dettingen. Back in 1728 on the morning of Dec. 16, our Johann Friderich's younger brother, Jonathan Martin Lieb, was about to tie the knot. His father, our Samuel Christoph Lieb then age 68, would officiate the ceremony. The bride was Maria Agatha Gollmar, almost certainly a close relative of the mother of Agnes, J. Friderich Lieb's wife. The bride's father was Johannes Gollmar, mayor of Dettingen in 1718  and member of the village court. This same Johannes served as Godfather at many of the christening ceremonies for Johann Friderich and Agnes. It may be that Agnes was his sister.  The recording of this nuptial event was entered by someone other the the father of the groom, our pastor S.C. Lieb, because the name of the groom's father was entered as, "Herr M. Joh. Christoph Lieb, local pastor". We, the readers, can see the obvious error here. The "father of the groom" was Samuel Christoph Lieb, who was officiating the ceremony. Some clerk/scribe wrote in the name of the grandfather of the groom, instead! Apparently, the pastor/father never noticed this clerical error; in any event, it never was corrected. So what's the big deal the reader may well ask? Well, one must keep in mind that the search down the ancestral trail moves from the present, so to speak, to the past. When this document - and several others - was first received from the Rev. Fritz Braun, present pastor in Schopfloch in the summer of 1994, and studied by this writer, the records of the children born in Samuel Christoph Lieb's first marriage had not yet come to light. The conclusion drawn from that marriage entry is that Jonathan Martin Lieb had to be a brother of Samuel C. Lieb, albeit a much younger brother. And so the relationship between these two Lieb men remained a confusing puzzle for nearly a year. The Ebingen microfilms, viewed on June 20, 1995, revealing the birth of Jonathan in 1701, with the proud father being our Samuel Christoph Lieb cleared up this little mystery in a most satisfying way!
     Jonathan Martin Lieb's occupation was shown as expert saddler on this marriage entry. He and Maria had let things get a little out of hand some nineteen months earlier; as a result, a baby Christian Martin was born 10 months before the wedding; this occurred  in Dettingen, the home town of Maria. And this only proves that this kind of thing happens in the best of families! After the wedding, this couple moved to Dettingen. All eight subsequent children were born there, with the exception of Johann Erhard, who was born in Schopfloch. This son followed the occupational footsteps of his father. He married in Dettingen. His name was seen as being a Godfather at a christening in 1768 for a child born to his cousin, Johannes Lieb, surgeon, son of our Johann Friderich Lieb. Maria Jonathan's wife died in Dettingen on Feb. 11, 1777. Jonathan joined her spirit on Jan. 9, 1778.

     The youngest brother of our Johann F. Lieb was Johann Erhard Lieb, born in 1706 in Schopfloch. He married there in the village of his birth on Oct. 25, 1729. His father again conducted this ceremony. The bride was Anna Maria Fischer. Her father was Johann Fischer, Schultheiss in Schopfloch. The marriage entry listed his occupation as barber. He and Anna brought five children into the world. She then died sometime around 1742-1743. He remarried in around 1744; this second wife's name was Anna Catharina. Five children were born in this marriage. Only the last one, a Johann Christoph, born in 1752, survived infancy; he died at the age of 35.
     It is interesting that J. Erhard was always addressed as "Herr Lieb" in the various church book entries; interesting in view of his occupation. We need, however, to keep in mind that a barber at that time in history not only cut hair and trimmed beards, he also let blood and  applied leeches for those who were ailing. The barber was "kind of a doctor" and can be considered the precursor of the physician of today. In any event, Johann Erhard Lieb had garnered the respect of this community, and was  addressed by its citizens as, Herr Lieb! A  search was not made to find his death date, but he probably died there in the village of his birth.
     The chapter of this generation comes to an end in 1755 in Dettingen on the Erms River, in the Duchy of Württemberg. The words entered into Dettingen's death register some 21 years before the American Colonists would cry out for independence and some 154 years after the birth of our Conrad Schwenk "the Great" were rather terse:

 "18 Dec. 1755 Herr  Johann Friderich Lieb, Surgeon, died of tuberculosus  age 63  years, 9 months."

Ten years later, on Aug. 22, 1772, his widow Agnes died at the age of 73 there in Dettingen.

     Before we get into the life of this ancestor, let us take just a glimpse into the history of Dettingen (80 K picture of it's townhall). It was a settlement founded perhaps as early as the Third Century A.D. Its age, then, is about that of the "Schwenk villages", which we visited earlier. Its population, today around 9000, is nearly that of Laichingen and much larger than that of Feldstetten and Mundingen. It lies in a fairly narrow valley cut out by the Erms River. The old city of Urach lies a few miles eastward up the river from Dettingen.
     Dettingen, like the communities where the Schwenks had lived, suffered greatly from the Thirty Year's War. The population just before a great battle in November of 1634  stood at 2140. After that battle, the village was nearly totally abandoned. Of 296 buildings before 1634, only 108 survived. Eighteen years later, the population was still only 515. It was not until around 1800 that the population, economy and the buildings were restored to the conditions before 1634. The source of this information comes from a very informative booklet published in 1990 by the community of Dettingen. It was written and published to help celebrate this town's 900 Year Jubilee;  it was in 1089 when this community was first mentioned in a preserved document and hence the celebration.
     We can see from the above that when our Johann Friderich Lieb settled in Dettingen in 1715 this village was just beginning to recover from its devastation. And now to his youngest son, our Samuel Christoph Lieb.
     He was born on April 10, 1733. He grew up with three older brothers and perhaps one surviving sister, Maria Magdalena. As mentioned earlier, he saw his brother Christoph Adam and Johannes become surgeons in the community. He, instead, chose to work the  land. On June 5, 1755, he married Maria Agnes Magdalena Häring there in Dettingen. He was age 23, she age 22. Her father was Georg Adam Häring, a local farmer; her mother was born Katharina Haas. Between the years 1756 and the end of 1774 they had nine children. The Godfather for the first two babies was the father's brother, Herr Christoph Adam Lieb, surgeon. The last-born was our Johann Friderich Lieb - yes, another one! The second-born was a Christoph Adam, born in 1758, died 1827. We know that five others died in infancy. As to the outcome of the remaining two, one would have to search the marriage and death registers of Dettingen. This is because the pastor or clerk would enter the cross symbol beside the name of the child in the birth register after its death. If the death occurred one year or more after its birth, the exact date of death might or might not be entered in the birth register - it seemed to be at the whim of the pastor or clerk in those days.
     On Nov. 14, 1790, our "great-grandmother" Maria Magdalena died in Dettingen. The death entry showed her to be the wife (not the widow) of Samuel Christoph Lieb, farmer. It also showed her age as 56 years, 3 months, and 29 days. That very detailed age at death gives us her precise date of birth.  And also from this death entry can be concluded, that our Samuel was still living. A persistent search through the death register in the years following her death brought nothing to light as to his death date. This was apparently missed/overlooked by the searcher. Though we don't know exactly when this "chapter" ended, we will now move onto the next.

     He was born on Dec. 2, 1774, two years before the Declaration of Independence. He, like his father, was the last-born of nine. He was age 25 as he stood before the alter in the ancient church in Dettingen; his betrothed, standing at his side, was only 16. The date was Jan. 28, 1800. Her name was Maria Agnes Handel. Her father was the late Herr Jacob Friderich Handel, keeper of the Hirsch Inn in Dettingen and local judge who had died two years earlier. Her mother was Maria Agnes Weber, then still alive. Wishful thinkers might wonder whether this Handel family was related to the renowned composer George Friderich  Handel, born in 1685 in Halle, Saxony, some 275 miles NE of Dettingen.   Beginning in January of the following year, and ending in April of 1824, fifteen children were born of this union. Only six survived infancy and  childhood and grew up to marry. Only one of those six was a male; he moved and married in Entringen just west of Tübingen in 1840. Thus, anyone carrying the family name of Lieb living in Dettingen today most likely did not descend from this Johann Friderich Lieb, but rather from his grandfather of the same name, or from his great uncle Jonathan Martin Lieb, the first Liebs to settle in Dettingen. **
     When the first child was born in 1801, our J. Friderich Lieb was shown simply as "farmer". In 1808 with the birth of our Maria Barbara, future wife of our Johannes Schwenk, the words, "town council member" followed his name. The same was true in 1810 with the birth of daughter Eva. Incidentally and interestingly, Eva married there in Dettingen, but ended up in the tiny village of Mundingen, where she died in 1848.
     In 1816 with the birth of daughter Christina, the father was addressed as "Herr Johann Frid. Lieb, Gemeindepfleger" which translates approximately to town hall administrator or assistant mayor.  In only one christening entry was there any reference made about an innkeeper occupation, and that was made with the words, des Wirths (the innkeeper's) and nothing about the Hirsch Inn.  As mentioned earlier in the Johannes Schwenk chapter, Johann Frid. Lieb was referred to as "former Hirschwirt in Dettingen" when Johannes and Maria Barbara married. The following is partly conjecture, but probably fairly close to fact: It is very likely that Johann Friderich inherited/purchased the Hirsch Inn from his mother-in-law, the widow of Herr Jacob Friderich Handel, the former judge and Hirschwirt. This may have been a small, not very profitable local watering hole/lodging place in Dettingen. Perhaps farming was the principal source of income for this Lieb ancestor rather than the inn. We do know that our Johannes Schwenk in 1828 took over this inn after the death of J. Frid. Lieb and then moved away from Dettingen in circa 1835. This writer recalls seeing no inn with the name of Hirsch on his two day visit there in 1994. Perhaps the doors,  swinging on rusty hinges, closed for good with the departure of Johannes Schwenk in 1835?
     It appears from the meager information preserved in the church books of Dettingen, that this Johann Friderich Lieb was a hard working, competent man. It is interesting to observe his growing prestige within the community as reflected in the birth register entries. He and all his Lieb predecessors, with the exception of his father, were honored  in their communities with the envied title of Herr.
     He did not live a long life. A search in the death register was not made because his date of death was recorded on his Family Register. The latter never shows the cause of death; that is found only - and not always - in the death register. He was 53 and one-half  years upon his  death on June 13, 1828.
     His widow Maria Agnes, my 3xgreat-grandmother, remarried in 1840 to a Jacob Müller in Rosenau near Tübingen. She was then age 57. Her death entry appears in the Dettingen death register on April 22, 1853. She died as a widow. "Old age" was cited as the cause of death. And so with her death we have come to end of the Lieb line - but only from our perspective. As we already know, the Lieb ancestry is transmitted down to us through the children born to Maria Barbara Lieb and Johannes Schwenk, saddler and innkeeper from Mundingen.

 **  Since writing the above chapter, it has been learned that our Johann Friderich Lieb (1692-1755) does indeed have descendants - our cousins - living in Dettingen and the region today.  They descended from his son by the same name, the glaser and surgeon born in 1725.   DES 3/96.