Author: Ann Laemmlen Lewis

Most of my ancestors were Weingärtner, which literally translates to wine gardeners, or wine growers and vineyard workers.  After a long day digitizing documents, John and I took a drive to the Heuchelberg mountain by Leingarten.  The Turm, or tower on top of this small mountain stands as a sentinel over the vineyards where my ancestors farmed.   Some of this land is still in the Laemmlen family, now farmed by Martin Laemmlen and his cousins.

Martin explained to me that in today’s world, machines pick the grapes.  In former years, everything was done by hand.  Below are some of the containers that were strapped to the backs of the farmers and pickers.  These were in Grandpa Rudolf’s barn when I visited in 2006.

These next 3 photographs were displayed at the restaurant at the Heuchelberg restaurant where we had dinner the first night.  They show families picking and working in the vineyards, and the type of transportation they used back then.

Here are some pictures my father had that were in a collection of photos taken by Otto Huber from our area in the 1930s:

And here are these vineyards today:

Grandpa Rudolf’s brother Paul “Wilhelm” married Lina Roeslin and had 3 children:  Hermann, Hilda and Else.  Today we also visited Renate, who was married to Hermann, who died in 1960.  They had 3 children:  Elke, Birgit and Gert.  Elke was on vacation and Birgit was at work, so they couldn’t visit today, but Gert came from Brackenheim to see us.

We had a really wonderful visit in their garden, catching up on all of our family members on both sides of the ocean.  It’s good to connect again.  Renata is always so happy to see family members.

Renate explained to us that she is the oldest of 4 girls (Renate, Marie, Brigitte and Rosa).  They all lived on this street.  We also met Rosa next door.

Here are some photos I took of Renate’s family photos:

This afternoon we visited Bernd and Petra and their son Sascha, brother to Michael.  We had a lovely visit, catching up on our lives during the last 10 years or so.  Sascha is helping in the vineyards now, as the next generation takes over.  Both Bernd and Petra have retired and are enjoying a quiet life and their garden.

Sascha showed me these photos, framed on their wall–the first is Grandpa Rudolf’s home, where Bernd’s parents, Kurt and Hilda lived after Grandpa came to America.  Kurt’s brother, Rudolf also lived in that farm home.

Here is an aerial view of Bernd and Petra’s home now:

And this is the home Petra grew up in:

Today at noon we took a short break from the digitizing at the archives to have lunch with Michael, Kathrin and Mick.  They were celebrating their 8th anniversary today.

Jutta and Martin joined us at the bakery across the street from the archives.

We enjoyed a great visit and I couldn’t get enough of Mick’s big blue eyes!

The City Hall in Leingarten is located right next to the Lorenzkirche, which is across the street from where Grandma Elsa and Grandpa Rudolf grew up.

I’ve been communicating with the archivists here about my visit this week.  I’ve done quite a bit of research in old Grossgartach records, in fact, I’ve extracted and transcribed all of the church records that are microfilmed from 1563 until 1876.  That’s as far as the filmed records go.  It took me several years to do that, working on non-stop with a microfilm reader in our basement that I acquired for $25 at at BYU Library surplus equipment sale.  I love reading the old documents.  And I am related to almost everyone in the town back then.

For the next 3 days in Leingarten, we spent many hours in these archives digitizing the civil registry records.  The church kept records, and the city kept records.  Only the church records were microfilmed.

My goal this week was to photograph as many pages of Grossgartach records after 1876 as possible.  I’m allowed to see anything outside of the privacy limitations (110 years for births, 80 years for marriages, 30 years for deaths).

When Regina, the archivist, started handing me the old ledger books, my hands started shaking and my heart started beating.  These books contain names, that are treasures to me.  They are my family.

During the next 3 days, we worked like crazy to photograph as many of the records as we could before we had to return to Frankfurt.

There are 4 different types of records we filmed:  Family Register Books that contain a 2-page entry for every family compiled from birth, marriage and death records.  These are great for putting family relationships together.  They also contain the parents of the father and mother.  Here’s an example of one random page.  Wilhelm Heinrich Link, shown here, is my 4th cousin, 3 times removed.

The other books contain Births, Marriages and Deaths.

We worked as long as the archive stayed open.

And when closing time came, a MIRACLE happened.  Regina allowed us to take the record books home so I could keep working through the night!

The next morning we were back at it.  I asked Regina if I could go down into the archives with her to see where the record books were kept.  (As we’d finish a book, she’d bring us the next.)

Here is what the Leingarten Archives look like:

Sadly, Regina said, there are very few people left who can actually read the old handwriting in these old records.

Regina knew my Grandpa Rudolf Laemmlen emigrated from Grossgartach in 1929.  She said they had a box with folders and information about townspeople who emigrated from here.  She later made copies of the pages of all of the immigrants for me to take home.  In those lists were Rudolf and Elsa.

Then she pulled out another folder containing letters that were written by these people, back to the Burgermeister in Grossgartach, reporting on their lives in new places.  As she gently turned the pages of letters, she came to two with handwriting that was very familiar to me!  Rudolf wrote 2 letters back to Grossgartach–one in 1958 and one in 1964.

Here they are:

What a thrilling discovery!

By the end of our third day in the archives, we were exhausted!  I photographed 15 of the 19 large old books we copied.  John and Jutta helped do some too.  My hand was EXHAUSTED from clicking photos and my back was aching and cramped from standing and bending over books all day.  I’ll take 17,323 images home with me to transcribe.  It will keep me busy for a while!

Why do I feel compelled to gather these names?  That’s a good question.  These are MY PEOPLE.  And their names are in THESE BOOKS.  I think I just want them to be remembered.  And I want to know them.  I hope that someday I will meet them and they will know that I cared enough to learn their names.  That’s why I do what I do.

On this Sunday evening Martin and Elly went with us to the Leingarten Cemetery to visit family members there.  There aren’t many of our people’s headstones left here.  After 20 or 30 years, the headstones are removed, standard procedure.  None of the stones from the older generations remain.

Hilde died in 2019.  She was married to Dad’s cousin, Kurt, son of Hermann.  Hermann died in a tragic farm accident at age 42.  The tongue of the wagon hit him in the stomach and ruptured something.  It was not treated in time to save him.

Kurt’s brother, Rudolf also had a stone here.  He was cremated.  He had learning disabilities, but lived a long life.  He was living in Grandpa Rudolf’s childhood home where Hilde helped look after him.

Here’s Helmut’s headstone.  He died in 2016.  His daughter Regina’s plot has also been turned over to the next person, but there is a stone to her memory on Helmut’s plot.

The Leingarten Cemetery is small and peaceful.

Martin & Elly’s grandma is Sofie Werner Laemmlen (m. Rudolf’s brother Karl Albert “Heinrich” Laemmlen). Sofie had a sister named Frieda. Frieda married Karl Hauff, Gerhard’s father. I met the Hauff family in 1976 and they’ve visited us in America. Gerhard lived in Canada a couple of years and he spoke English well. He worked for a lumber company. His wife is Erika and she is still living, but she has dementia now. She was delightful and fun. Gerhard and Erika have 4 kids–Martin, Barbel, Andreas and Karl-Heinrich. Some of the kids have come to America to visit our branch. What a nice family.

Gerhard Hauf had one sibling, a brother named Reinhard.

Reinhard’s son, Werner died of cancer in 2020.

Those are the only family members still represented here.  We saw the place where Onkel Richard and Tante Marie’s stones once stood.  It’s vacant now.

I wonder how many hundreds and hundreds of my relatives have been buried in this cemetery.  Thank goodness their names are recorded elsewhere.