Brother, Niece, and I left Strasbourg by train this morning. There was a bit of delay. When we boarded the train (a good 12 minutes before it departed) I asked for the toilet. None on this train. So I dashed back into the station and Brother and Niece wisely got our stuff off the train. Of course, it took a while to find the facilities. The train left before I got back. We took another one 30 minutes later. That one did have a toilet on board.
In Offenberg we walked over to the car rental agent (not as close to the train station as I would have thought). We rented a car here rather than in Strasbourg because we are returning the car in Cologne and even though the European Union is supposedly without borders car companies won't rent in one country and accept a return in another.
We drove from Offenberg to Altenheim, the first of our ancestral villages. My three-great grandfather on my mother's maternal line was Jacob König. He left Altenheim as a young man in 1852. His parents were Georg König and Catarina Anselm. Thanks to a city-family book that compiled various church records, I know ancestors back another six generations before Georg and Catarina.
Alterhiem is close to the Rhine River with the hills of the Black Forest not far to the east. The land of the river floodplain is flat. It is still mostly a farming community.
We have no records of family who stayed behind. So we don't know if there are distant cousins still around. However, we did see the names König and Anselm on war memorials and on gravestones in the cemetery. Even though we don't know of those people were actual relatives. It felt like we were in the right town.
German cemeteries don't allow for much confirmation of ancestors. Brother said that the family only rents the burial plot and when the family stops paying that rent the plot is given over to someone else. Whether or not that's the reason it was rare to see a gravestone older than 50 years. The back of the cemetery in Altenheim preserved a few of the older markers, but they weren't on active burial plots. So there is no way for me to find when Catarina Anslem, born in 1798, died.
Though historically frustrating, the new markers are beautiful and creative. They are not just rectangular slabs of stone. Instead, they're a lot of different shapes.
We had lunch in Altenheim. Then on to the next village, which was Schutterzell, only a few kilometers away.
Jacob König's was Veronica Weiss, who was born in Schutterzell. Veronica's mother was Katarina Klein. Brother thinks Katarina was bold for having four illegitimate children baptized at the church. Katarina married Georg Weiss. He adopted the children when Veronica was 7.
We don't know Katarina Klein's parents, so don't know how many generations were in Schutterzell. Because of that we didn't feel as much of a connection to the place. It is also much smaller than Altenheim. We looked through the cemetery and were soon on our way.
It was 3:00 already so we decided to skip a couple palaces in Rastatt and go on to a third village, Waldprechtsweier. I'm amused by the village name because it is at the north end of the Black Forest and the name roughly translates to “the woods are white.”
A big surprise of Waldprechtsweier is that it is quite hilly, even though the drive to it was mostly flat.
My two-great grandfather Berthold Kistner was born in the village in 1842. His wife ,Ida Klein, was born there in 1845. But they didn't marry there. She immigrated to Missouri in 1856 with her family, he in 1868. They married soon after he arrived. We know two generations before them were born in Waldprechtsweier. We know the names of one more generation, though don't yet know where they were born. This is the only Catholic branch of the family. The rest is German Protestant.
Again, we looked through the cemetery and found a lot of people with the same family names.
We drove into Karlsruhe for the night. I chose the hotel because of a great price and pretty good internet reviews. However, there were a few problems. (1) No air conditioning to enjoy after a warm day. (2) No elevator to get us to the 2nd and 3rd floor. (3) No one at the reception desk. A sign said we were to call a particular number. That person told Brother to enter numbers into a keypad and our room keys dropped down below.
Supper was at an Indian restaurant. Niece has been asking for this type of food. Rain began to fall as we headed back to the hotel, a short distance away. Once we were in the hotel a thunderstorm opened up.
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