This is a one-name study of the name Zanzig. I've puzzled over Zanzigs most of my life. Both my great-great-grandparents, Johann Friedrich Ludwig Zanzich (Fred or Fritz) and Johanna Sophia Henriette Zanzich (Henriette) were born Zanzig, so the descendants of their sons Wilhelm and Charles Frank are double Zanzigs (and in 25 years of research I still don't know how they're connected.) Study dates are currently from the Thirty Years' War (1649) to WW II.

My first knowledge of the name outside my family was the music teacher A. D. Zanzig. He was credited for a song in the Camp Fire Songbook—I was about 6 years old. My dad certainly knew of other Zanzigs--he was born in Milwaukee but grew up in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and had non-Zanzig cousins in Appleton. There were Zanzigs in Appleton, but we didn't know how they related--now we do! Check the Connections page for the Milwaukee to Appleton chart.

This is a RESEARCH tree. It has the best information I have at any given time but it's by no means complete or 100% correct, and you'll find that it has a lot of detail in places and none in others, as I gather information to prove hypotheses over time.

The best place to see what's happening in the study is on the Latest Changes page and on the charts. Be sure to refresh the pages.

The Patriarchs

There are three distinct Zanzig lines and about 100 unconnected family fragments. There is a descendant chart in the Charts section for each man below.

Aids to Navigation

A person is included if their birth surname is Zanzig or a variant, or they are married to a Zanzig.

I collect children whose mother's name was Zanzig, but they're not published. Ask if you think you have a Zanzig wife in your tree.

The chart "Zanzigs with unknown parentage" shows all the unconnected Zanzigs.

"Latest Changes" lists the Zanzigs I've most recently worked on, and they're flagged in yellow on the descendant charts.

I use research codes to track research completeness as of Dec. 2019; they are the bracketed symbols (such as [BC]) after a name and you can ignore them.

Use the search page to find your people. I've tried to record every variant name I've encountered, which in some peoples' cases are many.

I estimate dates to help in placing people.

  • Estimated dates are given as "say" or "s" dates, which should be read as "guessed". They may be off by 20 years or more.
  • "Circa" or "c" dates are better than "say" dates and are based on some evidence.
  • Birth is estimated 20-22 years before marriage and marriage 1-2 years before the first child, and second marriages are unaccounted for until enough evidence accumulates. The country of an event is also guessed. Anywhere that is "possibly" or "probably" someplace is a guess.

Immigrants are denoted with a ship icon on their detail page.

Acknowledgements

I'm extremely grateful to Wendy Zanzig Jenkinson, who kept pushing, and my stepmother Sue Zanzig, who carefully collected so much information in Wisconsin.