The emigration project

Working trough the Lutheran Church records for the Haerten area I have noted all the emigrants for the Kemmler family and also most of the emigrants of related families like Bauer, Digel, Kuttler (Cuttler, Cutler), Grauer (Grower), Gutbrod (Goodbread), Keinath, Riehle, Schäfer (Shafer, Shaffer), Schettler (Shetller, Shetler), Walker etc. and have included them in my database. Further I have checked the data against the book "Die Auswanderung auf den Härten", which contains an index of emigrated persons of that area. Whenever the emigration is reported in the book you will find a respective hint on the source information level.

The idea was to store all the emigrants with their whole family relationship in a database to facilitate an easy access and provide as much ancestral information as possible. Further the data should enable researchers all over the world to find the roots of their ancestors in Germany as well.

The book "Die Auswanderung auf den Härten"

Cover of Die Auswanderung auf den Härten

This book was written by Dr. Walter Schmid and is published by Dr. Hans-Jörg Schmid. It describes a lot of historical aspects of the life of our ancestors and the various reasons for their emigration to the different parts of the world. Most of the people emigrated to North America, but others also to Hungary, Romania, Russia and other European countries.

It gives a very good overview of the historical, political and economical situation through two centuries and how political or economical events have triggered the various waves of emigration. The book can easily be read and it's easy to understand.

In the annexe a list of emigrants is included for the cities of Wankheim, Mähringen, Immenhausen, Jettenburg and Kusterdingen. The information about the emigration was taken from the official records and also from the church records.

Unfortunately the book is actually only available directly from the publisher and it is written in German. If you would like to have one, please contact:

Mrs. Rose Schmid
Hoelderlinstrasse 15
72127 Kusterdingen
Germany

or send me an email and I will forward your request.

Email

List of emigrants

After my own experience for the research of my relatives in the U.S. I know, how difficult it could be to find the connection on the other side of the ocean. Therefore I have decided to publish the emigrants I have stored in my database on the website. I'll will regularly update the data depending on the development of new entries.

Please be aware, that on the website not all family members are published. The list contains only those persons who have really emigrated. In cases where the whole family emigrated you will find naturally also the data for parents or siblings. If parts of the family stayed at home, they are not shown. Nevertheless for most of the emigrants I have full family details with at least two generation of ancestors.

If you have found your ancestor in the list, please contact me for further information. Normally I should be able to provide information on the whole family. The degree of information varies depending on the requested family. On the Kemmler side normally the information goes back to 1600.

On the overview page for the towns of Wankheim, Mähringen, Immenhausen, Jettenburg and Kusterdingen you can find a list of last names of emigrants. Please see also the map page for further cities.

Comments on the notes

Please be aware that some of the comments are in German. If you need a translation, please let me know.

Explanations of destinations: Explanation of sources: Please follow this link to visit the list of emigrants

Special projects

My research has shown that a lot of emigrants settled in Western Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa. After the evaluation of various cemetery books I noticed that there are really hot spots in Williams County and Crawford County, OH. As a first step I have intensified the research in Williams County, OH and Crawford County, OH

Further pages with detailed information on other counties will follow. As an entry point a page for Lucas County, OH and Washtenaw County, MI was setup. Recent research has shown that a number of emigrants has also setteld in Richland County.

Secondly I tried to visualize the settlement of the emigrants by using maps. Therefore the information in the location fields of the genealogy program have been used as 'geo reference' and was combined with geographical maps broken down in counties and cities in the U.S. Please follow this link to lookup the geographic maps.

Presentation for the Historical Society Haerten e.V.

On Oct 14, 2005 I have held a presentation for the Historical Society in Maehringen with the title "On the trace of the emigrants". Thanks to a lot of contributions I could present lots of pictures and share quite interesting with the audience. According the feedback I received it was quite a success. Also the local press in Reutlingen and Tuebingen did publish an article about the presentation and its content. As I know lots of people are interested in the presentation I have translated it into English and made it available for download.

General Information

I have created a special page with general information about cemeteries, fonts etc. Please follow this link to access the general information page. >