When we found there would be no Church Service in Illenschwang on Sunday, we put Plan B (for Blankenbaker) into action. We were not far from Mittelfranken, where there were mentions of Blankenbakers in the last half of the seventeenth century. I had a list of the place names from Cerny and Zimmerman, and we set out for these places. From the map book, I could see that these were not big places. My ancestors must have inherited a preference for small places from me.
It turned out these locations were not far from Dietenhofen, but we knew nothing about Dietenhofen at that time. On the final twenty miles, we took what we call the back roads. More than once we committed ourselves to a road only to discover that it was not what we had intended. It was common in our travels, while searching for some village, say, Kleinhabersdorf, that we would come to a junction in the road, and other towns would be listed but not Kleinhabersdorf. What would be listed were the towns farther on down the road. While I frantically searched the map for a clue, I would urge Eleanor to stop. But she would say there was traffic coming. So, our route was not always direct, but it was fun.
At Unterschweinach and at Oberroßbach, we found only a few farms. Herrnneuses was a little larger, with a church. Emskirchen and Markt Erlbach were slightly larger villages. We omitted Dottenheim, but later visited it. We learned nothing at any of these places. But, then, what is a vacation for? Very near by was a still larger town, Neustadt a. d. Aisch (i.e., Neustadt on the river Aisch), where we decided to spend the night.
Driving into town, we found a nice open space right downtown where we thought we could park. Almost immediately, a man came up and said that cars were not allowed in the Platz. We apologized, but before leaving we asked him if he could tell where we could get a room for the night. A discussion ensued, and he said he would go with us down to a Gästhaus that he could recommend. That was a failure for some reason, so he said he would take us to another. We went several blocks, and we did find one that was very nice. We then volunteered to drive him back downtown, but he said it would be no problem to walk, and he insisted on doing that. Such helpfulness is common in Germany.
We were stopped by the police twice on the same day. On one of the excursions from Schwaigern, the police had a road block, and were taking a survey of where one came from, and where one was going. Two policemen were in charge, but a Fräulein was actually taking the data. In answer to where we were coming from and to where we going, we said Schwaigern and Schwaigern. Thereupon she said, "What are you doing here?" Then we said we really were from the USA but that was not one of the towns on their list. Now we should have been the ones who were flustered, but the poor girl was a total loss as to what to do. So, she sought advice from one of the policemen, and he simply waved us on with a hearty smile. The second road block was quite similar, but we had caught on to what was happening, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We simply did not fit the pattern they were expecting.
(19 Jun 00)
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.