The Great Ancestor Hunt

He's done for Genealogy what Indiana Jones did for Archaeology - Hat, Leather Jacket, and Notebook. The Whip tends to strike fear into the hearts of mild-mannered genealogists, so he has to leave that behind.

Mild-mannered engineer by day, serious genealogist on weekends. He's in search of ancestors and will not be stopped! From Germany to Poland to Cornwall to Ireland ... His quest takes him to the remote corners of Europe, asking himself, “Why did they leave?” and “Why did I come back to the Old Country?” Why Germany? Why not France, why not Italy? The answers aren't written in the Church records, the answers are in ancestral memories. We'll probably never know...

Part 1, Richard's German Vorfahren

We went to visit some old friends in a little town called Spelle near the Dutch border. Stan Dykas was a fellow Graduate Student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1988 when Richard started his Ph.D. research and Kathy her M.S. research. Stan was the builder of the experimental facility, nicknamed The Antichrist by Kathy (after watching the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy"). Stan also was Richard's contact at GE when Richard and Kathy made the move from ABB in Connecticut to GE in New York. Stan and his family moved to Germany a couple of years before Richard and Kathy made their move. We never imagined back in 1988 that

1. Kathy and Richard would be married
2. Richard would be the Godfather of Stan's son, Christopher
   
3. we would all be living in the same foreign country at the same time.

Another coincidence is that Stan lives less than an hour away from another little town, called Alstätte, where some of Richard's ancestors come from. We have to go way back in order to find the ancestors who immigrated to America. Let's count the generations:

1. The maiden name of Richard's mother is Sharon Rochford
2. the maiden name of Sharon's mother is Bernice Finnegan
3. the maiden name of Bernice's mother was Hanna Kipp
4. the maiden name of Hanna's mother was Gertrude Nienhaus
5. the maiden name of Gertrude Nienhaus's mother was Gertrude Bengfort
6. her parents were Hermann Johann Bengfort and Anna Christina Ellert

The Bengforts were the ones who emigrated from Alstätte in August of 1867. Stan drove us to Alstätte, which is a very pretty little town of 4,900 people. We went to the town cemetery, which wasn't hard to find. The hard part was finding any Bengforts. It seems that land is scarce in Germany, and cemeteries are not considered the best use of a precious commodity. So when the cemetery gets full (every couple of centuries or so), the graves are covered over with more dirt, and more graves are dug on top of the old ones. The top of the gateway to the cemetery has the motto "Death, the door to life".


We didn't find any graves of ancestors, but we did meet some nice people. They told us that we were in the right place, in spite of the lack of old graves, and also told us the name of the local expert on genealogy. By this time we were ready for a stop at a cafe, and fortunately we found one across the street from the church.

The Pfarrkirche Mariä Himmelfahrt (parish church of the ascension of Mary) is a red-brick Catholic church that has been modified over the centuries. The oldest part is the tower; a simple rectangular structure from the 15th century. The old nave and choir were built between 1878 and 1892 in the transitional style from late-baroque to classical. So this part was constructed after the Bengforts emigrated.


The old nave runs east/west, as was always case back then. The newest addition extends to the north, and forms the new nave. The altar was moved from the east end of the old nave to middle of the old nave, which is at the end of the new nave. Anyway, there are some nice statues of the church fathers inside. Below are Ambrose on the left and Jerome on the right .




Outside the church is a fountain with sculptures representing the activities of the citizens. One side shows farmers, another shows hunters, and so on. So Kathy asked me, Why did your ancestors leave when they ended up doing the same stuff in America? A good question. Maybe they were looking for a place with paved roads. Until 1898, Alstätte had no paved road leading to it. More likely it had something to do with the wars at that time in Europe. The Franco-Prussian war was looming at that time.


We stopped at a drugstore nearby, and asked for a phone book, so that we could look up the address of the person who specialized in genealogy. As we should have guessed, the person we were talking to knew the person we were looking for, and she gave us directions. We walked to his house, and found only his wife there, but before we finished talking to her, he drove up the driveway. He was very friendly and helpful. He not only promised to look up my ancestors, but also gave me the name of a person in a nearby town where some of my other ancestors come from. Since then, I've received a call and e-mail from someone else who got my name from the man I talked to. He gave me the source of some information that I already had, and told me the current name of the ancestral farm. I've got plenty of people to meet the next time I'm near the Dutch border.

The rest of the weekend was spent with Stan and his family. We spoke only English with my godson, so that he doesn't forget his native language.


That's the news from Erlangen, where the Ancestors are dead, the Americans speak German, and all the German ancestors are Irish*.

* A family in-joke.