Vitus "Veit" Bach was a Hungarian miller

Miller

A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents in other languages around the world...

 who, according to Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

, founded the Bach family

Bach family

The Bach family was of importance in the history of music for nearly two hundred years, with over 50 known musicians and several notable composers, the best-known of whom was Johann Sebastian Bach...

, which became the most important family in Western musical history. Veit's son, Johannes Bach

Johannes Bach

Johann or Johannes Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque. He was the father of the so-called "Erfurt line" of Bach family musicians....

 (ca. 1580-1626) was the grandfather of Johann Ambrosius Bach

Johann Ambrosius Bach

Johann Ambrosius Bach was a German composer, father to Johann Sebastian Bach.The son of Christoph Bach , Ambrosius was born in Erfurt, Germany as the twin brother of Johann Christoph Bach...

, J.S. Bach's father, which makes him J.S's great-great-grandfather.

Evading religious persecution in the Kingdom of Hungary, then under the control of the staunchly Roman Catholic Habsburgs, Bach, being a Protestant, settled in Wechmar, a village in the German state of Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

. His descendants continued to live there until Christoph Bach

Christoph Bach

Christoph Bach was a German musician of the Baroque period. He was the grandfather of Johann Sebastian Bach....

, grandfather of J.S. Bach, moved to Erfurt

Erfurt

Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...

to take up a position as municipal musician or Stadtpfeifer (lit. "town piper").

Bach's son Johannes studied music with the town's head piper.