Nancy's Ancestral Villages

Oct. 8 - 10, 2002

After Pat and Ed dropped us off at the Frankfurt airport, we picked up our rental car and headed south to visit some villages that Nancy's ancestors had emigrated from.
 

We went first to Gau-Heppenheim, which is west of the Rhine and south of Mainz.  It is a little village overshadowed by modern windmills for generating electricity. The protestant church here was small and hemmed in by houses so I couldn't get a decent photo of it.

Susanna/ Susan Roeder was born here on 21 October 1827 and baptized on the 24th of the same month. She married Frederick Eberhardt in St. Louis, Missouri on 19 December 1850 and died in Kansas City, Missouri on 27 January 1905.

The next stop was Bockenheim, which is south of Gau Heppenheim, and on the Deutsch Weinstrasse. This is the protestant church there. The parents of Susanna/ Susan, Philipp and Agnes (Kaul) Roeder were from this town.
 

The next two towns (Epfenbach and Zuzenhausen) of Nancy's are in the same general area as Neckarelz. It is interesting that both her and my ancestors came from roughly the same area at about the same time.
 

The protestant church in Epfenbach. This is the ancestral town for Johan Georg Arnold who arrived in Philadelphia in 1738 who settled in Maryland and was the American ancestor of a German Baptist family. He is the son of Wendel and Anna (Schmeisser) Arnold and was born here on 5 November 1702, . 

The town center in Zuzenhausen. The pole is similar to the "maibaums" in Bavaria. Johan Georg Arnold and Anna Maria Barth were married in Zuzenhausen on 17 October 1724. Anna Maria,  the daughter of Nicolas and Anna Regina (Wacker) Barth, was born here on 28 May 1702,

As long as we were in the area,  we decided to visit Heidelberg, which is a common tourist stop for Americans. This is the castle ruins in Heidelberg. Heidelbeg is on the Neckar river, and hence Johann Philipp would have floated by here if he went by river to Rotterdam.
 

Next stop - Austria, to enjoy the mountains.