Irmtraut

Irmtraut
Municipality
Coat of arms
Location of Irmtraut within Westerwaldkreis district
Irmtraut Irmtraut
Coordinates: 50°33′20″N 8°03′41″E
Country	Germany
State	Rhineland-Palatinate
District	Westerwaldkreis
Municipal assoc.	Rennerod
Government
• Mayor	Alfons Giebeler
Area
• Total	4.52 km2 (1.75 sq mi)
Elevation	360 m (1,180 ft)
Population  (2022-12-31)
• Total	804
• Density	180/km2 (460/sq mi)
Time zone	UTC+01:00 (CET)
• Summer (DST)	UTC+02:00 (CEST)
Postal codes	56479
Dialling codes	06436
Vehicle registration	WW
Website	www.irmtraut.de

Irmtraut is an Ortsgemeinde – a community belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde – in the Westerwaldkreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.

Geography

Location

The community lies in the Westerwald between Siegen and Limburg at the boundary with Hesse. Irmtraut belongs to the Verbandsgemeinde of Rennerod, a kind of collective municipality.

History

In 879, Irmtraut had its first documentary mention when Gebhard, Count of the Lahngau donated holdings here to the St. Severus Monastery in Gemünden.

Politics

Community council

The council is made up of 14 council members, who all belong to the Wählergemeinschaft ("Voters' Community"), and who were elected in a majority vote in a municipal election on 13 June 2004.

Economy and infrastructure

Transport

Running right through the community is Bundesstraße 54, leading from Limburg an der Lahn to Siegen. The nearest Autobahn interchange is Limburg-Nord on the A 3 (Cologne–Frankfurt), some 20 km away. The nearest InterCityExpress stop is the railway station at Montabaur on the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed rail line.

Other

“Irmtraut” is also a woman’s name in German.

"It means Friend of the Valkryes. The name lives on in America, it became Ermentraudt then Armentrout. -Daryl Armentrout"

The best source on this topic is the Armentrout Family History, 1739-1978 compiled by Russell S. Armentrout and published in 1980 by the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, U.S.A.. According to ship's records, 340 passengers sailed on the Samuel, under Captain Hugh Percy. They sailed from Rotterdam, stopping at the English port of Deal for supplies, en route to arrival in the port of Philadelphia and William Penn's colony of Pennsylvania. Anna Elizabeth Ermentraudt was about forty and traveling with seven children and her younger brother, Peter Hain. The fate of her husband is unknown. Her elder brother, George Hain, was already established on farmland near Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the family first established itself in what is now known as "Pennsylvania Dutch" country (a corruption of the German "Deutsch").

She lived in that area from 1739 until 1752, when she accompanied her sons to Virginia and settled in the home of her second son, Johan Phillip, where she died in 1775. It is likely she is buried in Peaked Mountain Church (a.k.a. Pinquit Moundyn)cemetery, in McGaheysville, VA. But there is no grave marker to verify this and the church has been torn down, leaving only a marker at the old cemetery to commemorate its site on US Route 33. Virginia descendants still live on the western side of Massanutten Mtn., referred to as the Peaked Mountain by Shenandoah Valley Germans, from north of Keezletown to the town of McGaheysville.

The Armentrouts were farmers who followed the American frontier and American Indian treaty lines across the entire country. Amongst their many identities, they have included a US Navy admiral in California, the head of the Audubon Society in Texas, a well-known radio newscaster in Chicago, the wife of an Indian Agent in Oklahoma, and farmers everywhere among the many branches of this old and deeply rooted German-American family tree. Today, the descendants of the seven children: Johannes, daughter Anna Elizabeth (who married her first cousin, Johan Frederick Hain), Johan Phillip, Johan Friedrich, Christopher, Johan Heinrich and Johan Georg constitute a single family tree.

Russell Armentrout's genealogy was compiled based upon written records (births, deaths, deeds, ship records, etc.) and upon extended-family informants. The result of extensive use of oral records is that, wherever a lack of written records exists, there is the likelihood of many errors, small and large, in the seven individual siblings' genealogies provided by distant relatives over many years' correspondence with Russell Armentrout, who lived in Michigan.

"This book ain't no good. Your Uncle Gail never owned no gas station," said my Aunt Sis, who introduced me to the book at her home in Lake Charles, LA some years ago. Her censure illustrates the dangers of such a compilation. Her youngest brother, my Uncle Gail, was a West Mansfield farmer who also managed a "Victory" gas station in Mt. Victory, Ohio, but never owned it. And several family names were misspelled, including my Italian immigrant mother's maiden name. Russell Armentrout's source was a first-cousin in Kentucky. Multiply my family entry by several hundred and you begin to see how fragile is this work as history. It must be read with care and cross-checking. But where Aunt Sis found frustration, I found a treasure trove of extended identity that allows my children to track backwards through eight generations that preceded them to the "New World", and beyond that to the family's Protestant origins in the German Rhineland and the historical events, like the Thirty Years' War and religious persecution they fled. For that, every Armentrout in America owes Russell S. Armentrout a debt of gratitude.

(This section added by Fred Armentrout of the Johannes Ermentraudt branch, which eventually moved from Virginia to the Ohio Territory in an area taken over by farmers after the military defeat of the Shawnee Nation).

On August 27, 1739, Anne Elizabeth Hain Ermentraudt and her sons arrived in America aboard the ship Samuel in Philadelphia. They quickly made their way to Wernersville PA, then after some years moved to The Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Today, many Armentrouts live near Harrisonburg, owning great stretches of farmland. A road called Armentrout Path stretches about 5 miles and is home to Armentrout Farms, run by Kevin Mark "Babe" Armentrout. On this road a cemetery can be found which holds the graves of early American Armentrouts, and nearby are two other churches, one of which is home to the grave of Anne Elizabeth, though it sits in ruins next to, and under, Brown Memorial Church. Trinity Church sits next to a graveyard with many Armentrouts buried within, and is well taken care of.

The Armentrout name has various spellings: "Armentrout", "Armentraut", "Irmentraut", "Irmentraudt", "Irmtraudt" Armontrout", "Armintrout", "Ermentrout". Today, the descendants of the Irmtraut name can be found all over much of the midwest and the south. - Allan Armentrout

References

2. Armentrout Family History 1739-1978 by Russell S. Armentrout, Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society (1980)

External links

• Irmtraut
• Webpage about Irmtraut