Jacquie Buttriss knows the Mayer ancestors back to 'Rashi' and beyond. 

 

'Rashi' was born Shlom Yitzchaki in 1040 at Troyes, France. He became a highly revered Rabi and Talmudic scholar who founded a famous Rabinical academy in Troyes.  He wrote many seminal Jewish tracts and biblical commentaries, the most important of which are still in used in synagogues today, a  millennium later.  Rashi was one of a long line of Rabbis and Grand ERabbis, who were required to show evidence of their genealogy in order to become Rabbis.  This is the main reason why so many Jewish genealogies have been preserved.  In fact, there is a story that one of Rashi's forebears was, as so often happened, forced to leave a country (perhaps Germany or Russia) within 24 hours and the only treasured possession he was able to smuggle out with him (apart from his wife and children) was his genealogy, sewn into the inside of his garment.  Indeed, through this document we are able to trace a line back to Gamaliel and Hillel 'the Elder' in the Bible.

 

Jacquie was interested that I- Chris - have the Maier spelling, which is unfamiliar to me for this particular family, although I believe it was used by another extended branch of the family who lived in Rohrbach (now part of Heidelberg).  My grandmother's mother's maiden name was Mayer, as was her her grandfather Simon Mayer, and all the others in that line.  It appeared as Mayer too on my grandmother's and all her family's records and official documents, including an 1815  list of Jewish residents in Reilingen where our Mayers lived.