This is a special blog entry of our recent three-week Family History visit to Germany. I will include a chronological summary of our trip, but I want to especially focus on the hand of the Lord before, during and after this trip. Debbie and I have done all that we have known to do as we prepared for and worked as hard as we could during this visit. I believe that our efforts were well intentioned and very beneficial. However, I learned once again that the Lord's ways are higher than our ways and much BETTER.
As we prepared for this visit, promptings were clear and the Lord directed our efforts in unplanned, but unforgettable ways. His adjustment to our plans brought many blessings that we would have missed. As we arrived and began working on "our priorities", we quickly learned that even though our intentions were good, God had other and better plans. As we struggled along the way, he gave us encouragement and performed "wonders" for us, especially for our health. As in the past, new ideas and opportunities appeared that will bless this important work in a much more significant way than we had imagined.
We first scheduled this trip to Germany early in February when the Coronavirus impact in the U.S. was finally lessening. This is something that we planned to do in 2020 but was cancelled due to the Coronavirus implications. As we pondered this trip, Debbie and I negotiated. She agreed to go if we kept the trip to three weeks. This was based on a few things. She doesn’t like to get substitutes for our temple shift or her organ playing and it made our support, while traveling, of her nonfunctional bladder more reasonable. Keeping it at three weeks, we would schedule around the two week maintenance closing of the Jordan River Temple and find substitutes for only one week. With this, we agreed to skip the temple trips to Cape Verde, Lisbon and Rome and focus only on Family History in Germany. We agreed to try to do the temple trips at a later date, perhaps tied to a visit of German Christmas Markets during the Christmas season.
With this decided, we went ahead and made reservations, using our Sky Miles. Everything looked reasonable at this time of year. Then we began communicating with parishes to make sure we could visit them. We started with Eisenach, which was our priority and biggest reason for going back to Germany. We were told that the ‘Eisenach archive was closed due to Coronavirus until February 28. We were hoping that the surge in Covid cases in Europe would also be subsiding as they had in the U.S. and waited to see what happened. The closing in Eisenach was eventually extended to March 18. I had come to the conclusion that we would probably have to postpone this trip, since the archive wasn’t open. Finally on March 23, I sent another email to Eisenach and learned that they were now open on a limited basis. As I communicated back, they agreed that we could visit them on the dates that we wanted. The private regional genealogical society in Nurnberg (GFF) also agreed to give us a reservation on the date that I had outlined to visit.
I was still hesitant as to whether this could happen. On March 24, I sat in the celestial room of the temple pondering how we should proceed. By this time the war in Ukraine had been going for one month with a lot of uncertainly on how that would impact our trip. As I pondered these uncertainties, the spirit spoke clearly to me. It said that if we could visit the parishes, we should move forward. That is the purpose of the trip. With that thought we moved forward with our plans. We were able to get confirmations from most of the parishes that we wanted to visit, including the Protestant Nurnberg archive. When I sent the request to the Magdeburg archive, we were informed that their schedule was filled up for May. However, they told us that we could come in on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday when they would normally be closed. We accepted, since those are days that we normally cannot visit parishes or archives. Some parishes would not allow us to visit (Thamsbruck) and others had recently moved their books to the Nurnberg archive (Plech) and the Ergersheim parish would not be open on the Thursday that I had planned for. We reshuffled our dates around, stayed in Bavaria longer so that we could be in Ergersheim the following Tuesday and tried to schedule a visit with the Bad Tennstedt parish. These arrangements continued until just a few weeks before our visit, but it gave me an idea of where we could visit.
I spent the month before this visit, preparing with every ounce of my energy. I had lists and folders of ends of lines that needed attention. I identified every end of line on my grandfather’s line and all on Debbie’s father’s ancestors ends of line. I think that my expectation was that I would solve all of the missing information in our family history on this one trip. I was excited because it appeared that we would have access to many records that we had not previously found. For each archive or parish, I came with a list of priorities, making sure that we could focus on those lines that had more needs or opportunities.
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| Folders of notes and backup for each parish. The two yellow pads are full of the notes that we took relating to the images that we were able to take. |
During these preparations, we also scheduled some time to support the family history research of my grandmother's line which has been the priority of my cousin Gloria. Gloria is an amazing family history expert. Her knowledge of German and her ability to read the old German script and use existing tools to solve problems is totally amazing. As we communicated back and forth on her priorities, she mentioned that she would be happy to help if we had challenges in interpreting records.
One line that I had prioritized was the line of Johann Georg Sickel. He was identified as the father in a marriage record, which was the first original Church Book that we had ever seen early in our mission. We had some miraculous help on this line months later, but had been stuck ever since. Now as I prepared to try again on this line, I found his marriage record attached to him in Family Search. It had come from indexed records in Walschleben, which were added to his record in January of this year. I was astounded. I sent it to my cousin Gloria and asked to see what more she could find out about where I should search. She sent me back a birth record for Johann Georg Sickel which she had found in the on-line records that were available in Family Search. I wanted to stop everything and start searching these records, but I didn't have time if I was to prepare for this trip. However, Gloria continued this research on her own. Soon she had given me much more information about Debbie's ancestors and a few additional places to search. I continued to receive more information from her, even while in the JFK airport on the way to Germany.
As I researched each end of line, I tried to include copies of any records that were available. On some of the most difficult ones I would send them to Gloria and she would quickly interpret them for me, adding more direction for our research. Her assistance at this time was one of the greatest miracles of our trip. It continued throughout our trip. Every time that we got stuck, we would send an image to Gloria and she would respond, usually while we were sleeping to help us the next day. She was and is a very special angel, assisting us in this research in so many ways.
In this process, I found several lines that had been improved by work provided by others during the Coronavirus. This included from some of Debbie's cousins and by others whose names we don't recognize. In each case, we were closer to finding better answers.
As we had decided to move forward, I continued to contact parishes, arranging scheduled visits. This kept resulting in changes to my original schedule. As we look back on it, each of these changes resulted in a much better research visit than we would have had otherwise. For example, I had wanted to visit the Ergersheim Parish on our first Thursday. I had thought they were open on Thursdays. It turns out they are only open every other Thursday but every Tuesday. Therefore, we stayed in Bavaria a few extra days, so that we could visit them the following Tuesday. Since the Passion Play was not starting until after the day we had planned to attend, that required another shift, which allowed us to visit other parishes that fit into our schedule perfectly.
As I tried to contact the parish that Gloria needed more information, I received no response. Finally, I tried one more time and received an email from the pastor. He told me that he was leaving the parish at the end of April but that the Church books had been sent to the Nurnberg archives at the end of March. The archive list had not even been updated yet. This opened up an opportunity that was amazing. These books that we had never had access to were now available for the first time, just weeks before we were to arrive. Since we needed to stay in Bavaria for a few additional days and were not attending the Passion Play, we had a few extra days to spend at the Nurnberg archive, time that ended up being priceless.
Besides the cooperation of the Eisenach archive, we certainly wanted to return to the Magdeburg archive which has access to so many microfilmed Church books that we needed to research. As I had mentioned earlier, we were able to schedule a visit on our second weekend. With this change, this opened up more time to visit Muhlhausen and Bad Tennstedt which proved very beneficial. Every step of the way, the schedule kept improving. I know that the Lord's hand was heavily involved in these changes and improvements to my original plan.
Change in my priorities to what the Lord had in store for us:
As I mentioned, Eisenach was our primary reason to go to Germany. There were several lines for which we had not made progress. Indications were that these ancestors came from parishes whose records are now included on microfilm that is available in Eisenach. With this in mind, we started our research in Eisenach on Monday, May 9. I thought that I would have Debbie work on our number 4 and 5 priorities relating to her Möller paternal line. I would begin with the exciting opportunities in Greussen (Johann Gottlieb Leidof), Feldengel (Johann Christian Bauersfelt) and Kleinfahner (Martha Maria Schmid). As I got started in Greussen, I found one record of a Leidolf, but not the one that I was looking for and nothing else. Discouraged, I jumped to the Feldengel files and found nothing for Johann Christian Bauersfeld. I then turned to Kleinfahner and found that the years we were searching had not yet been filmed and were not available. I could not believe it, my dreams were going up in smoke. Meanwhile, Debbie found the birth of her Great Grandmother, Martha Barbara Hendrich in Herbsleben but her parents were not married there. She also had no success searching for a possible birth or marriage of Gottlob Möller in Herbsleben. My priority number 6 was Bellstedt. We found out that the correct location of our ancestor was Bollstedt, which was available in Magdeburg, but not in Eisenach. Priority number 7 was Bischleben, which only had limited years of Church records, more was available in Magdeburg.
With that, we finished my highest seven priorities and had found only one birth record. We were really discouraged. With a little time left in the day, we jumped to the priority 10 and 11 which were from the same parish, Grossfahner. Nothing new in number 9, we had visited this in person 4 years ago. Finally in the same parish as our priority 10, we found the Thalaker line and found several new ancestors and relatives. This gave us hope.
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| Our original list of 13 priorities for the Eisenach Archive. We only had significant success with three of these priorities (Numbers 8, 10, and 12) but were delighted to find many records for five other parishes that we identified after the priority list was prepared. |
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| The 1689 marriage of Nicol Thalaker, our prize success of the first day. This led to almost 20 others images of births, marriages and deaths related to this ancestor. This gave us hope to go forward. |
The next day we had great success tracking back the Sickel line in one of the locations provided by my cousin and found additional records for the Hendrich family in a different parish that my cousin helped us identify. This kept us busy the rest of the day. We eventually found great success with the Schuchardts in Bollstedt in Magdeburg and found new locations for the family of Johann Gottlieb Leidolf in Eisenach. This we learned after finding records for his wife in Magdeburg. Some of these lines that I was so excited about will continue to be on our to do list. In the meantime, we learned so much more during our trip, finding new parishes to search in Eisenach. We still needed three more days at the end of our trip in Eisenach to finish most of what we were looking for. I learned that I couldn’t just rush in and find everything really fast, but that the Lord would guide us to many records that were waiting to be found. We never had a time during our visits that we didn’t have anything to research. We never finished our lists, but we continued to discover many more ancestors that had never been previously identified. As we returned to Eisenach, we had great success in those items that I had listed as my priority 8 and 12 lines, and two lines that we had added to our list at the last minute. This was the Lord’s list, not mine.
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| Taking photos of the Sickel relatives in Eisenach |
As we spent 2 and a half days at the Nuremberg Archive, I had a list of possible research to do. Once again, most of the items that I wanted were not available. However, our number one priority was my grandmother’s lines that went through the Plech parish. Five years ago we had tried to see these records and the guardian of the Church books would not let us have access. For a fee he did agree to do some research on certain surnames that we gave him. We liked what we got, which was a long list of marriage information, but we were not able to tie it together without seeing the actual Church books to identify the fathers in the marriages. Since these amazing books were now available, I put aside my other priorities, which were very old and difficult end of lines. We focused on these amazing books from the Plech parish. Actually, the work previously done by Heinz Stark was a great starting point for us. Debbie went in and took images of all of these marriages, four typewritten pages of them. While she did this, I researched our specific ancestors that were on this list. The first day, another lady was in the archive looking at the same books. We ended up taking turns with these books with her. However, we noted that she had four boxes of “cards” identifying all of the names and details of the births, marriages and deaths in these five Church Books that covered from 1600 to 1800. These cards became a treasure to help in my research, trying to tie families togather. When Debbie finished taking pictures of each of the marriage records previously identified, she proceeded to take pictures of all the cards, organized alphabetically, that related to the surnames of our ancestors. This took her the most part of the two remaining days in the archive. Once again, much more valuable research than we even knew was available. God is good!
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| Five old Church books that included the births, marriages and deaths recorded in this parish from 1593 to 1800 |
Taking photos from these special old books
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| Working in the Nuremberg Archive. For two of the days, we had this entire room to ourselves. We used every bit of the space to to our benefit. Debbie is taking pictures of the four pages of marriages at this time. |
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| One of the images of the marriages that had been previously identified, leading us to a few more generations of grandparents for my great . . . grandmother |
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| Searching through the many books of cards for those surnames that we are researching |
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One of the image of the cards. Each has the essential information from the Church books. This is of one of my great . . . grandparents' marriage identified during my research
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| In front of the Nuremberg Archive |
On the Friday of our first week, we stopped at the Sülzbürg parish and tried to identify as many Schlerf relatives that we could in the oldest Sülzbürg Church Book. We will pass this information onto my cousin who is the expert on Grandma Schlerf’s family history.
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| In front of the parish office of the Sülzburg Parish with the Church house in the background |
We then spent the weekend relaxing, and visiting with our friends Cristian and Marianne. We stayed with them in the house built by my great grandfather back in about 1870.
In the middle of our work in Nurnberg we visited the GFF regional genealogical archive and started printing out all of the Familienregisters that I had identified for our ancestors and relatives. They only wanted to allow us 100 pages of printed material, but I convinced them to allow us 137 pages, which was the total that we had identified.
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| Identifying Familienregisters and printing them at the GFF |
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| 137 pages of selected Familienregisters printed in one afternoon |
On Tuesday, May 17, we finally visited the Ergersheim parish.and our prayers were answered. They allowed us to take photos of the printed Familienregister books for Ergersheim (more than 500 pages) and Buchheim (more than 200 pages). These were the books we had first seen back in 2016. We had found my 11th generation grandfather and 38 families coming out of his posterity. What happens is these Familienregisters only follow the paternal name. Therefore, we are not able to find the other descendants of my great . . . grandparents that came through the daughters and granddaughters, etc. With these books we will be able to tie many of these families in these two villages together. This was a strategic visit that we rearranged our schedule to make. We accomplished our goal in less than one hour.
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| Taking photos of the 500 page book, full if "Familienregisters" |
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| The two books that we were able to photograph, over 700 pages of "Familienregisters" |
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| A sample of one of the pages of these Familienregisters, families and linked in a genealogical chart |
That same day, we went to visit the Bad Tennstedt parish, a three hour drive to the north. This is where we have been able to identify more than 100 ancestors in the last six months from limited records available in Family Search. With access to the original books, Debbie started taking pictures of all of these marriages that we had identified. There were so many books and records that I didn’t know where to start. The actual research to find children and birth records could take days and weeks of research. In the two hours that we had, I decided to take a copy of the entire book of baptisms for about 20 years, and then our time ran out. We were allowed to come back the next afternoon. We later found out that we would only have one hour. I wondered what we could do that would be meaningful for one hour. As we drove over there, I was impressed to take copies of all the name registers in the back of each of the books. Each of these pages identified individuals by name in an alphabetical listing with page numbers of the related records. In one hour Debbie finished the the photos of the marriage records and together we completed all of the name registers within the one hour, perfectly. That night I tried to identify the pages that we would then photo when we got to Magdeburg which had the microfilm of these Church Books.
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| The vault of Church Books in the Bad Tennstedt parish. |
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| Taking photos of these old Church Books right in the old Church building, next to the "vault" |
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| One of the pages of alphabetical indexes. They are easier to read when we enlarge the photo |
On Wednesday morning, before returning to Bad Tennstedt in the afternoon and on Thursday, Dr. Kublik had reserved time for us at Muhlhausen. I had wondered what more we could do there, since he has helped us so many times to identify more family lines. I decided again to identify ends of lines and see what else we could accomplish. A couple of our first priorities again didn’t work out, we could not find more information. However, we looked into one line, the Wernerburgs, and spend all of our time on Wednesday extending this line. With Dr. Kublik’s help, reading and identifying the script and accessing the Church books from six different parishes, this works out very well. Even with all of these advantages, it still takes time to find records one by one and identify ancestors in earlier years. On Thursday, we found another line, the Bischlings, and spent most of the day taking this line back a few generations. I realized that we could return several more times to Muhlhausen and still have plenty of research to do.
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| Working with the assistance of Dr. Kublik in Muhlhausen. he spent more than 8 hours of his time helping in the research, especially in reading the old records. |
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| The best looking baptismal record from 1600s that we have ever seen. Not only is it in red and perfectly readable, it includes Debbie's great . . . Grandmother, Anna Catherine, born to Bastian Hefprecht |
By the time we went to Magdeburg, we had accumulated quite a list of parishes to research. We could probably spend a month there without running out of research to do. Once again, we started on our top priorities and had limited success. We decided that getting the baptism records relating to the 100+ ancestors that we had identified was the most important work to do. Even though this was not our original priority, this came from the impressions we received driving to Bad Tennstedt two days previously. This became Debbie’s job for most of the three days there. In those days she took images of all of the baptisms between 1630 and 1780 for the identified names. This again will take months of work to identify and link to families, but it will bless us in many ways different from our original thinking. Again, this was God’s thinking. While Debbie kept on this project, I researched several other lines, including the Family of Johann Gottlieb Leidolf and his wife that we could not access in Eisenbach and the family of Schuchardt that was in Bollstedt instead of Bellstedt. In fact, once I got into this line, it primarily came from Hollenbach instead, which is also available in Magdeburg. In some of the other lines we had limited success and were able to move back in forth to new parishes that were identified in our research. We had over 20 priorities for this archive, clearly more than we had to time to research. We had good success with the first priority and several others that we added to the list. We had very limited success with the other priorities and still have work to do. Again, we feel like the Lord led us to those that were most important at this time, especially from Bad Tennstedt.
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| Working in the Magdeburg Archive which we had all to ourselves for three days, following the Lord's plan |
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| Debbie taking images of one of the hundreds of Tennstedt Baptismal records |
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The marriage record of Johann Gottlieb Leidolf, our top priority, finally found in the Gangloffsömmern parish at the Magdeburg archive where his wife was born. This led to more success on his and his wife's line. It was a constant priority throughout the trip and the source of much satisfaction.
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| A beautiful alphabetical index for the Gangloffsömmern parish. identifying births of the Müller family (Johann Gottlieb Leidolf's wife). Debbie's great . . . grandmother born in 1774 and her father born in 1744. This makes research much easier. |
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| Photo in front of the Magdeburg Archive |
We finished our research with 3 more days at Eisenach. This is when we continued the work on the Sickel line and took it back into the 1600s. When we find these names, our hearts are full of joy. One example, Debbie had been searching through these really old births, looking for the birth of her great . . . grandfather Hartmann Sickel. We knew from his marriage record that his father was Dietrich Sickel. The records were so hard to read, but she did find a few Sickels born to Dietrich, but not Hartmann. The next day we looked at death records and identified the deaths of both Dietrich and Hartmann. Based on ages noted in the death records, Dietrich was born before records were kept in that parish, but Hartmann was born in the timeframe where Debbie had been searching. With a more precise birth period, we went back and looked again. This time we identified his birth record that ties them all together. When we find these type of records, indescribable joy fills our hearts.
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| Death record of Hartmann Sickel, identifying him as 65 years old . . . |
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| . . . leading us to finding this difficult to read birth record for Hartmann Sickel in 1708 |
We also worked with the Allmenhausen parish, which we had visited four years ago. At that time, some little old ladies let us look at some of the records but would not let us take pictures. Now that the records are available on Microfilm we were able to take the pictures that were missing and found that we had read some of them incorrectly four years ago. We were also able to take the Helldrung line back a few more generations from books that had not been made available to us previously. There were some neighboring parishes that had some records that were critical to this research, but those additional lines didn’t go very far.
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| For the most part we were also alone in the Eisenach archive. Plenty of space to work. |
As I had mentioned, I was back working on the Johann Gottlieb Leitholf line. In one of the marriage records of his child, we had seen two parishes noted. The first was identified by my cousin as one in Eisenach. The other was a parish that didn’t seem to match anything that we could find in Magdeburg. So we went back to Eisenach. I found nothing in this new parish. I had worked so hard on this line, I knew that I needed God’s help. As I prayed and pondered the information that I had, I decided to try to identify this other parish in the Eisenach parishes. The first parish that seemed like the name was Niederreißen. When I looked into this Church Book I finally found Johann Giottlieb’s birth and significant information about his mother and father and his maternal grandparents. I was elated! Again, I found a reference to another parish (identified as Heressen by my cousin) for his father, Johann Gottfried Leidhold. As I looked at that parish, I found a Leidhold family that very likely is his, but I could not find his birth record in this family. The mystery continues, but we know a lot more than we previously did.
Note: As I was putting photos into the blog, I came across the birth record of Johann Gottfried's first child and found that Georg Leidhold, from Heressen, was a witness to this birth. This is the person that I had identified in Heressen, that I thought was his father. He appears to be a witness to his granddaughter's birth. I think that I found the verification of this relationship. Now I can link him to his father and mother and many siblings born in Heressen. I had taken images of all of their records. I am thankful that God had directed me to search out these records.
Finally, in the last hour of the last day we got to the last priority on our Eisenach list. Immediately we found the marriage record of the parents of Debbie's great . . . grandmother. What joy! Debbie was able to go back and find the birth of her great . . . grandmother and a few siblings. In the last five minutes, we were able to find the marriage records of the grandparents of this same great . . . grandmother. This was a wonderful way to finish our research, still wanting more but with success the way that the Lord wanted us to do it.
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| Our last image captured, two minutes before the archive closed. It is the second marriage in 1680 of Heinrich Sigmund, Debbie's great . . . grandfather. |
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| Leaving the Eisenach Archive at the end of our Trip |
In summary, I learned that this is not a work to just do and check off. It is of individuals who lived in this country 300 and 400 years ago. Each has a story and as we research their records a small part of that story becomes part of us. For example, as I found the birth records of Johann Gottlieb Leidhold, I found 10 siblings. His father had married and after having four children, his wife died in childbirth of twins, who also died. I then found that he continued to have additional children with a wife having the same last name, but a different first name. After checking other death and marriage records, I discovered that the first wife's sister stepped in and married her brother in law, raising the four children and bearing 6 more children of her own. These families become real people. I am so thankful that the Lord allows us to be involved in this great work. I am grateful that he guides this work, even when my priorities may have been different. As He has done so many times before, He provides additional resources that we were not aware of and a way to identify many more relatives than we had thought possible during this visit to Germany. Family History is never done, but we are getting pretty deep into the 1700s and 1600s in most of our family lines. The records are harder to read and the information is more limited, but they are still our ancestors and we thrill with each one that the Lord helps us to identify.
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| 'Death Record of First Wife - December 1783 |
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| Marriage record of second wife with husband of first wife 1784 |
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| Seven generations of ancestors for my father. After this trip, we are only missing a few. |
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Seven generations of ancestors for Debbie's father after this trip. Only missing a few on the 7th generation. These were the end of lines that we did not progress. Two are due to births to single mothers.
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Discouragement and then a miracle:
As I had mentioned previously, on our first day at Eisenach we couldn't find what we thought were our highest priorities and we got quite a bit discouraged. The Lord did bless us with some successes at the end of the day that gave us hope. After that first day at Eisenach, I started feeling sick, with a strong cold, including a headache. I wondered if I had contracted COVID and worried about our scheduled visits. I also knew that our plans were based on good health as we had a strenuous schedule of research. I also knew that we should not visit archives and parishes if we had COVID. That night I poured my heart out to the Lord in prayer. I told the Lord that I would do whatever He wanted me to do but felt that we were following His guidance in coming to Germany. I pleaded for His healing power. I found two old Grippostad pills from our previous visit to Germany and I took them.
That night I had a recurring dream, which is uncommon for me. The Lord repeatedly told me that I was healed and repeated the words “Holiness to the Lord”. I believe He also said “I am the Lord”. I had a clear head throughout the night as I woke up various times. When I awoke in the morning, I told Debbie that I had been healed. That morning I walked to a pharmacy, bought some more Grippostad and continued to feel better the rest of the trip. The next day Debbie was attacked by the same cold. With Grippostad and prayers she was also able to continue her work as she overcame her cold within a few days. we continued with our planned activities with full assurance from the Lord that we would be okay. I know that this was a "wonder" of the Lord.
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| This medication helped us overcome lingering symptoms. The Lord healed us through prayer! |
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| We had to have negative Coronavirus Test to catch our flight back home. Here we were tested and thankfully came out negative. No COVID! |
Next Step - Temple Work:
As we finish this wonderful family history trip we know that there is much work ahead to perform temple ordinances for these dear ancestors. We were able to get started with temple ordinances in the Frankfurt Temple before returning home and baptisms in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple with our grandchildren the week after we returned.
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The two days after we left the Eisenach archive we were able to go to the Frankfurt Temple and perform endowment and initiatory ordinances for these same ancestors who had been previously identified in Bad Tennstedt. Two of the couples have now had their endowments performed and are ready to be sealed as a couple.
 | | Another view of the Frankfurt Temple and the beautiful gardens behind the temple |
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| The week after returning to the U.S. we were able to have our grandchildren help us perform baptisms and confirmations for 30 of the direct ancestors that we had identified, including Johann Gottfried Leithold. |
Other experiences while in Germany:
Visiting ancestral sites:
While doing family history research we are also blessed to be in the land of our ancestors and to visit ancestral sites. The following are a few that we were able to visit:
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| Debbie in front of the apartment building where her father lived before immigrating to the U.S.A. This is in Erfurt, Germany |
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| Debbie sitting on the steps where her dad used to sit, waiting for his father to come home from work |
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| Debbie in front of the prison where here great . . . grandfather was born while his single mother was a prisoner in Bad Tennstedt |
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| The evangelical Church in Muhlhausen where Debbie's grandmother was baptized as an infant, very close to where we did our research |
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| Sunday after Church we visited some of Tom's ancestral sites. This sends us to the homes where Tom's great grandmother and great grandfather lived before their marriage, just 1 kilometer apart. |
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| The home in Bergsthofen where Tom's great grandmother was born |
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| The home in Hochbach where Tom's grandfather was born |
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| In front of the home built by Tom's great grandfather. This is where my grandfather and great grandmother were taught the gospel. This is the home where we stayed for 4 nights with our friends Cristian and Marianne |
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| Breakfast served to us by Marianne in great grandfather's house |
Friends and Relatives along the way:
We have been blessed with friends and relatives in Germany who are dear to us. We did manage to visit with some of them:
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| With Cristian and Marianne, the owners of great grandfather's house and our gracious hosts for 4 nights. They treat us like royalty and won't let us pay them anything. They are perhaps our dearest friends in Germany |
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| With Werner and Doróta Rückert. We have proved that we are related and consider them to be special relatives of ours. They live in Buchheim, very close to where my grandfather lived. |
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| Debbie with her cousin Heidi in front of the Frankfurt Temple. Heidi's grandmother was the younger sister of Debbie's great grandmother, the only two members of the Church in their family. One stayed in Germany while the other moved to the U.S. On our mission we were reunited with Heidi who is Debbie's relative and a dear friend. |
Going to Church in Germany:
During our three weeks in Germany, we had three different experiences. We spent our first Sunday in our Frankfurt International ward where we attended as missionaries. We love renewing friendships with dear friends, most of whom work in the Area Office. The second Sunday we went to the Ansbach Ward, which includes a military base and the geography where my grandfather was born. Meetings were in English with German translation. A few of the members remembered us from attending there for a few weeks four years ago. The last Sunday we were in Magdeburg and not close to any Church. We chose to spend our Sunday at the archive doing Family History work. That night, and the previous week, we were able to attend our home ward church meetings through Zoom. Three different experiences, but the very same Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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| Rented building where the Ansbach ward meets |
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| Hymns and services in both English and German |
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| Attending Church in South Jordan from our apartment in Eisenach, Germany |
A little relaxation:We spent most of our time in archives and parishes. The first weekend we were able to visit a castle near Tom's homeland and the tourist city of Rothenberg. We also relaxed with Cristian and Marianne. The next Saturday we visited the Hundertwasser House in Magdeburg, a very unique architectural wonder. When near the Frankfurt Temple, we took an evening and visited the Dom Römer plaza in downtown Frankfurt. These gave us a little break and the ability to enjoy the beautiful surroundings of Germany.
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| At Dom Römer in Frankfurt |
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| At the Hoheneck Castle near Tom's ancestral home |
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| Panoramic View from the Castle looking over locations where Tom's ancestors lived |
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| In Rothenburg |
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| Purchased at Rothenberg, our souvenir |
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| Debbie looking at the Hundertwasser house in Magdeburg, amazing and unique architecture |
We enjoyed just traveling the countryside. We loved seeing the yellow rapeseed fields everywhere we went. By the end of our trip, the rapeseed was harvested and so were our family history names. We rented a car and kept it for the three weeks. We traveled over 2,500 kilometers during this trip and filled the tank four times, each time for US$80 or more. The Autobahn roads were amazing. We loved the smooth level riding, including bridges over valleys and tunnels through the hillside.
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| One of the many rapeseed fields that we just loved |
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| Debbie in the middle of a rapeseed field near Sülzbürg |
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| Our rental car served us well. It matched the color of our car at home. Here it is parked at the hotel in Magdeburg. Note the parking dividers which are built into the parking area. This occurs everywhere. |
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| Our most expensive fill-up, over 100 Euros, $110 |
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| Beautiful vistas over the leveling bridges |
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| Tunnels through the hills, one was almost 5 miles long |
We stayed most of the time in apartments, changing every few days. These gave us many unique experiences. We had opportunities to eat meals in our apartments and of course to dine out. We loved eating Wienerschnitzel, Bratwurst, Apfel Strudel, Berliners and Ice Cream from the Eis Cafes that we found everywhere we went.
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| Carrying suitcases down four flights of stairs at our penthouse apartment in Eisenach |
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| These were the primary luggage that we hauled from place to place. In this picture it is stored in the corner of our Eco Smart apartment |
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| Onion Schnitzel with German noodles and green beens |
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| Apple Strudel, the best we have ever eaten at Rosbach vor der Höhe |
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| One of our many ice cream stops. This one outside the walls of the Old City in Muhlhausen |
We loved our time in Germany. We knew that we were on the Lord's errand and we learned from his redirections and guidance of our efforts. We are thankful that we could be instruments in his hands to help our ancestors on the other side of the veil.
The following is the summary of the research efforts and success with the family of:a Johanna Maria Leidolf:
Finding the ancestors of Johanna Maria Leidolf
Family Search records showed that Johanna Maria Leidolf had married Bernhard August Stoll around 1840 in Thamsbrück. Bernhard is the grandfather of Grandpa Stoll that came to the USA. Johanna Maria’s parents were identified as Johann Gottlieb Leidolf and Johanna Eleonora Frederic Müller. This was the status of these records when we first found the Church Books for Thamsbrück in August 2017. At that time, we found the actual marriage record, dated March 12, 1837. This identified her parents as noted. However, as we searched through all of the Thamsbrück records, we were never able to find more information about Johann Gottlieb Leidolf or Johanna Eleonora Frederic Müller or anyone else with their surnames. In subsequent reviews of the Thamsbruck Church books we remained stuck.
In the old Family Search Records, it showed Johann Gottlieb Leidolf’s birthplace as Greussen. In all of our efforts we were not able to see the Church books for Greussen. When we returned to Germany in 2018, the Greussen Church books were being filmed in Eisenach and were not available at the parish or not yet available at Eisenach. This became one of our highest priorities to return to Germany, to find Johann Gottlieb Leidolf’s birth information. As we scheduled our Family History trip to Germany in 2020, the Eisenach archive confirmed that they had the microfilm of the Greussen records. Of course, with Coronavirus, we cancelled our 2020 trip.
As we finally scheduled our family history trip to Germany in 2022, we first confirmed that we would be able to visit the Eisenach archive and see the Greussen microfilm. All of this was confirmed and it remained our number one priority. In the meantime, during 2020 some additional indexed records became available in Family Search and Michael Taylor Stoll linked Johanna Maria Leidolf’s birth to a birth record in Gangloffsömmern, Germany in 1812. With this new information, we also thought it wise to search the Gangloffsömmern Church books which were housed in the Magdeburg archive. It was our number one priority for our visit to Magdeburg.
On our first day of research in Eisenach, I searched the Greussen records and found nothing related to the Leidolf name, except a 1789 marriage record that had nothing to do with Johann Gottlieb. This was my greatest disappointment on that difficult first day. Resigned to wait for our visit to Magdeburg, we spent our time with other priorities.
When we went to Magdeburg, I was elated to find the marriage record of Johann Gottlieb Leidhold and Johanna Eleonora Friderike Müller on September 24, 1797. This led us to follow the Müller line back a few generations in Gangloffsömmern, a major win in our research. We were also able to identify additional children born to this marriage, information that we have been able to link into these records which are indexed in Family Search for the years after 1800. This opens up many descendants that will be more easily accessible.
The marriage record identified Johann Gottlieb’s father as Johann Gottfried Leidhold. It showed a few different locations that might work for his hometown. One was Niederissa??. As I looked at this with the archivist in Magdeburg, we could not tie it to any parish in their archive. In one of the marriage records of Johann Gottlieb Leidhold’s sons we found a location of Kranichborn, identified by my cousin right before we left Magdeburg. We found out that the microfilm for Kranichborn was located in Eisenach, so I had more hope to find the Leidhold family.
When we arrived again in Eisenach on May 23, I went immediately to the records of Kranichborn and once again found nothing. I decided to look again at the marriage record and pondered on the Niederissa?? name that I had seen and felt prompted to look for options in Eisenach. I found eleven parishes that began with Nieder. Three of them were Niederreissen, Niederreissen and Niederrossla. I decided to pick the one that was near Buttstadt which is the region where I had found Kranichborn. To my great joy, I found the family of Johann Gottfried Leidolf in that Niederreissen!
In these parish records I found the first marriage of Johann Gottfried Leidhold with Eva Margaretha Voigt in 1774. She eventually died in 1783, after the birth of six children, including Johann Gottlieb Leidhold. She died giving birth to twins who also died. Her sister then married Johann Gottfried Leidhold in 1784 and raised the four remaining children and bore another four children. All of their marriages, deaths, etc. are included in these parish records.
We were also able to track a little more to the Voigt family, but have much more to do with them. In the 1774 marriage record for Johann Gottfried Leidhold, my cousin was able to decipher a home town of Heressen. She was able to identify this on Monday night. We also found this parish in the Eisenach archive on Tuesday, so I was able to research further. I found a family of Johann Georg Leidhold in Heressen, including two marriages, the latest in 1740. I did not find the birth of Johann Gottfried Leidhold. I gathered the information and we returned to the U.S.
As I have reviewed the death record of Johann Gottfried Liedhold, it appears that he was born about 1756. We saw no births in Heressen after 1840. I suspect that he must have moved with his second wife or I just missed something. However, I have seen Georg Leidhold appear as a witness to the birth of Johann Gottfried’s first child and appears in another record. I am almost certain that we have identified Johann Gottfried’s father, but cannot prove it by a birth record. The search continues and will be the focus of future visits or research. I feel like so many things happened to guide us from one parish to another during this trip. We hit many dead ends, but other doors were opened to us. As we are documenting much of what we gathered, more information surfaces and more places to look.
In the end we found two more generations beyond Johanna Marie Leidolf’s parents and much more information about them and their children. By identifying more grandparents, we also have more surnames to research. Some we have identified; many more are still waiting. At least, we are no longer stuck in the 1800s but are nearing the 1600s in our searches.
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