AHT 2025
My name is Molly Daniel, and I made a couple of trips to Germany to photograph Arenzville heritage sites.
The purpose of these trips was to photograph places related to the German immigrant ancestors who came to my home town of Arenzville, IL, from the early 1830's to the early 1900's. I wanted to capture images of these places and share them with others in digital and print form.
The first challenge in for the most recent (2025) adventure was to research the families to find reliable documentation of their presence in the region, i.e., birth/baptism, marriage or other records. I also looked for the dates of these events and connections with other persons. None of these are my own relatives, but I first did considerable genealogical research using available tools of Ancestry.com, church archives, and newspapers. I also relied on information from others who have made trips to this region and/or researched these families, particularly Sara Gierke Krenzke, Dr. Wilhelm Grosse-Nobis, Jane Kays Slavens, Brenda Harrison Fletcher, Donna Tegeder, Roberta Staake, Leona Lovekamp, Tammy Rockwell, Karen Baughman, Kevin and Theresa Kleinschmidt.
I then created a list of immigrant ancestors which could be sorted by surname, place, or year of emigration (see the links below). The final tally was 155 persons and 53 places, but some of the persons on my list were the parents of immigrants who themselves did not emigrate.
The next step - perhaps the hardest part - was designing an intinerary which fit into our available travel time.
My trip was completed in 2023, though additional research continues. A collection of photos and a book resulted from that trip. Click the links to view the photos or to order a copy of the book - available as a hardbound book with 192 pages in either a standard color or premium color edition. You may order as few as a single copy of the book and have it shipped directly to you.
Photos in an online album and a book are now available for Arenzville Heritage Tour 2 - Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia Edition. More information about the planning of the 2025 trip:
This was completed based on the research I did beforehand to identify immigrant ancestors and the towns with which they are affiliated. Click the links below to see a list which I generated. Please note that I realize that this is an incomplete list and that it does not inlcude ALL the Arenzville immigrant families from this region. I was adding names up to the day before we departed, and even during the trip, I was thinking of names which could be added. I simply did not have time to research the many families:
List sorted by SURNAMES
List sorted by PLACES
List sorted by EMIGRATION YEAR
Note that information about the year of emigration is frequently inaccurate, particularly when taken from census records. In many cases, the year is an approximation, at best.
The images below illustrate the sites we visited in this region for each day of our trip.
Our tour covered this region of Germany.
While researching the places and families in Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia, I used some online resources which may interest others. Some of these are free, and some require a paid subscription. When the source is in German, I have often used the "translate" option at the top of my browser window. Here are a couple sources I found helpful:
- Archion - https://www.archion.de/en/
These are digitized church records - birth, marriage, death records in a digital image form. Some records can be a challenge to decipher, and you will need to understand how to find the correct locality for a particular church, that is, which Landesarchive (state archive) or Kirchengemeinde (parish) retains the records. Use the "locality search" on the site to start. This resource requires paid access, but one can purchase a 30-day subscription for €19.99 (about $24.50). It was very much worth it to me.
- Kirchengemeindelexicon - https://kirchengemeindelexikon.de/
This is an historical parish lexicon of the Evangelische (Lutheran) Churches of the Hanover Region. This website is in German, but if you use your browser's option to translate the contents to English, the results are very good.
On the Microsoft Edge browser, look for the "translate" icon at the top right of your screen when the page loads.
Try looking up, for example, the entry for St. Nikolai church in Bad Essen (remember to hit the "translate" button your browser ):
https://kirchengemeindelexikon.de/einzelgemeinde/bad-essen/
During our recent visit to Germany, we met Volkmar and Anne Siems of Apen. They are launching a heritage travel business to provide services to American visitors who are interested in exploring family roots in Frisia, East Frisia and Oldenburg regions. Among Cass County families, this would include the immigrant ancestors of the Tholen, Thyen, Janssen, Kruse, Onken and related families, just to name a few. I am sure that there are others, but these are the ones who had connections to Arenzville, which was the purpose of our trip. If you are considering making a trip to the very far northern/northwestern region of Germany, you may be interested in what Volkmar and Anne can offer. I can personally vouch for them. They are trustworthy individuals, with experience in hosting foreign visitors. Their time and knowledge of local history greatly enhanced our brief visit. You can learn more about their heritage travel business from their website:
