ABSTRACT
The Ban de la Roche lies within the old province of Alsace near its border with Lorraine and in the present departement Bas-Rhin of the Republic of France. In the Ban de la Roche of today one is never far from the sound of running water. Remote and isolated though it is in its geographical location, the Ban de la Roche has had to suffer more than its share of military destruction and pillage. The upper reaches of the Bruche and all its tributary valleys with the exception of the Ban de la Roche were settled by Alemanni. John Frederic Oberlin's initial response to the proposal that he should go to the Ban de la Roche was hesitant and tended toward the negative because of his prior commitment to the military chaplaincy. The earliest documentary evidence of its existence dates from the middle of the fourteenth century, when the knights of Ratsamhausen occupied it as feudal lords of the Ban.
