Guten Morgen,
Today, Eleanor and I fly on Lufthansa to Frankfurt, to begin a three-week vacation. During this time, I will write no notes in this series. I might outline what we hope to do in this time, which will prove to be woefully short.
Tomorrow will be Eleanor’s sixty-eighth birthday, and we hope to spend it in Kettenbach, from where her Zerby ancestors left, 291 years ago. That would be Martin Zirbe, her great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, and his wife Anne Elisabetha Jüngel.
We will spend a few days in and around Siegen, and then we will return on the next weekend for church services in Kettenbach. From there we’ll go down to Heidelberg, where Eleanor spent her seventeenth birthday, at a time that civilians were not allowed in the town. Today, three hundred thousand visitors come every year, so she should see some changes. A young German student, who was our guest here, is promising to show us the town.
Just south of Heidelberg is the Kraichgau, where so many of my ancestors lived. In one day, within five miles of each other, we hope to visit the Wagenbach farm, home of George Utz and Michael Volck. Almost next door is the farm where Hans Herr lived. Very close to all of this is Asbach, the ancestral home of a friend. It just shows that one does not have to travel very far to find another village of interest.
On the following Sunday, we hope to be in the church at Illenschwang, where Andreas Gar worshiped. From there we will go down to the home of Jost Gudelius, a friend from the email. Possibly we will go from there to Gresten, Austria, but that remains to be seen. In any case, we expect to be back in the area in and around the Kraichgau for a few more days.
We have no hope of doing any research on this trip. (A German genealogist once said that the best place to do German research was in Salt Lake City.) But, we are taking two cameras and some sixty rolls of film.
My email bin will probably be overflowing before I return, so any messages you send to me in that time may be lost.
Auf Wiedersehen.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.