DISCOVERING FAMILY HISTORY

On May 10th, 2001, Janice and I were riding in town, and as we passed the house of a cousin she had not met, she told me that she wanted to meet them sometime.  They seemed to be home, so we stopped in for a visit.

As we talked to Tony and Margaret, I asked Tony if he had any idea from where the Samson's had originally immigrated.  I had always had this question in the back of my mind, but failed to come up with any answers. Tony only knew that we had come from some place in Germany, with a name starting with Ober.... something.  As you can imagine, this can cover the names of hundreds if not thousands of towns in Germany.  He remembered that some distant relative had stopped by the house years ago to discuss the Samson family, and left a booklet showing the family tree with other information.  Tony was unable to remember much about the booklet except he had given it to his daughter, Mary.  

Tony was in failing health, knowing he always had a great interest in genealogy, but never found the time to actively research.  He asked me if I would pursue the search and keep him advised of my discoveries.  At that moment, I knew there was a personal challenge for me to come up with something for him.  Now I felt committed to discover answers to some of the unanswered questions.

The next day I contacted Mary, to find her not remembering the booklet, but said she would check to see if her dad had given it to her.  The next day she called me to let me know a copy of the booklet was being mailed to me.  As I waited, my interests were getting the best of me.  What could the name Ober......... something, be?

When I received the booklet, I found the name of the village to be Oberschopfheim, located in southwest Germany, near Offenburg.  I did a little research with not a great amount of success.  I was searching for a way to come in contact with someone that lived in that area, and would be willing to answer a few questions.  Since I had purchase items on Ebay, I thought it would be interesting looking for old vintage postcards from someone living in the southwestern portion of Germany.   After making a few purchases, I found someone living in Offenburg, which is, located about 10 miles from Oberschopfheim. His name was Ottmar Mueller, who was selling antique books and other printed items, on Ebay.  As time went by, we developed into friends with common interests in the area.  Ottmar, would play a very important part in my research, which I will never be able to thank him enough.

In the next few months, I purchased various old antique postcards, from various vendors, that had old pictures of the area. As I purchased these items, I would always ask the vendor to keep me in mind if they ever found anything that had to with Oberschopfheim.  What the heck, maybe I would luck out sometime. Who knows?

In the mean time, I had placed numerous listings in various genealogy sites in the United States and Europe, asking for any information regarding the small village of Oberschopfheim.  I did receive emails from tourist information sites in Germany offering a few brochures with information from the area.  Well, I was getting information about the geographical area, but now I wanted to find out something about the family.  Patience has never been one of my strong virtues, but I was making some slow progress.

Late in October of 2001, I received an email from a Ebay vendor, that I had purchased some postcards a couple months earlier.  His name was Berthold Weiner, who was a physician living in Konstance, and assured me that he had something I would find very interesting and valuable.  All I had to do was provide him with my mailing address.  No problem.  Now was the hard part, of waiting.

As I waited, Tony's health got worse, and he died on Dec. 16, 2001. My genealogy mentor had passed away, leaving me with a stronger desire to learn more. On Dec. 21st, I received a small package from Konstance, Germany. When I opened the package with a small book the size of a Reader's Digest, obviously written in German. The only thing I could recognize was the name Oberschopfheim within the title. Wow, I finally had something about the village, without a way of translating it into English. Hmmmmmmmm. I contacted Berthold Weiner, and thanked him for this wonderful contribution , asking him how much I owed him for the copy of the book. His response was, it was a pleasure to be of help. Such generous and helpful people were the norm, during all phases of my research. I was shocked how people in another country could take time from their busy lives to help a crazy American, in search of his family roots.

By thumbing through the book, I could see it was a small history book showing various dates from 600 up to 1895. Great! Now I have to find a way of finding a way to figure out what I actuually had. My first step was to go to one of the free translation sites on the internet, to discover the title located on the cover would mean, 'The history of Oberschopfheim'. This made me feel so proud to have come this far.

As I spent the next few days picking small notations in the book to translate, I realized the best way was to see if I found the name Samson, somewhere within the book. To my astonishment, I found two references in the book to Samson's. I then contacted my friend, Ottmar Mueller, and asked if he could help me, by translating the two pages. He said to scan the pages and email them to him. I couldn't get the files scanned and emailed files fast enough!

After a couple weeks, I received an email from him, explaining the Samson family had owned and operated a rock quarry in Oberschopfheim from 1790 through the late 1850's. The second reference listed a Karl Samson as the first Buergermeister (mayor) of the village, from 1837-1849. I felt like I had just won the million dollar lottery!! The name of Karl Samson was in the book, and my great, great, great grandfather was of the same name. I immediately thought of Tony, and how proud he would be of my findings.

Durning the course of the next months, Ottmar , had mentioned that the old rock quarry should be fairly easy to find, asking me if I would be interested in a few pictures. What a silly question. Of course! He and his family went to Oberschopfheim and took the two hour hike into the Black Forest, finding what remains of the quarry. Maybe a picture of a big pile of rocks to some people, but to me, it was fascinating. Also, there was a picture taken from the quarry, showing the village of Oberschopfheim and Diersberg. The picture was absolutely breath taking!

I forgot to mention, during this time my dad had become interested in the Samson genealogy, which is something he had never taken time to find out anything. My dad and I were not that close while I was growing up, since I was such a heard headed personality. Probably the best way to describe our relationship, was tolerating each other. While I was doing my research, I kept him informed of what was going on, and found him asking me many questions about the family history. This really made me feel better since our relationship had never been that good. All of the time and effort taken to do the family research is dedicated to my cousin, Tony and my dad. I only wish they could have witness and heard more of the “Samson's of Oberschopfheim”.

Back to business now. As mentioned before, I had numerous listings in various genealogy site, from ‘Genealogy.com’, to the local web site in Ste. Genevieve, asking anyone for help in finding my family roots. Sometime in early 2002, I received an email from a lady named Gabi Waidele, living in Offenburg Germany, and working with the Offenburg Historical Society. Their historical society have been working on a project ‘Auslander’, which translates to emigrants who left Offenburg, in search of a better life in the new world of the United States. She explained that the society was researching some of their citizens who left Offenburg during the period of 1840-1860. Since I was from Ste. Genevieve, she asked me if I knew any Greminger’s? Specifically, a gentleman named, Heinrich Greminger. I about fell over when I heard the name, since my step grandmother was a Greminger. The name Heinrich, did ring a bell.

About 2002, I purchased 8 acres of property off of ‘M’ road, after a friend, Roger Greminger, had told me that the property was for sale. Since Roger and myself were the only property owners on the road, we had the opportunity to give the road it’s formal name. The name of our road is New Ortenau Road, since it is the area of Germany, where most of the German immigrants came from, that settled in Ste. Genevieve. I see this as a great compliment to our ancestors who lived in the Ortenaukreis (Ortenau County), located in Baden Germany.

Oh, by the way, Heinrich Greminger is Roger’s great, great, great grandfather, and also a great, great, great grandfather of mine from my step grandmother, Odile Greminger. No blood relation, but through marriage. When I told Roger about the Gabi Waidele, looking for information about Heinrich, we really felt like this was a golden opportunity to both learn about our ancestor’s roots. I immediately contacted Gabi, and explained that finding further information and pictures of the Greminger family, would not be a problem. She was so happy to hear from us. Also, I used this as an opportunity to ask for help to find out anything on the Samson side. Everyone was happy with our relationship, and was looking forward to helping each other, regardless of the thousands of miles that separated us.

A month later, I received an email from a person named ?, living on the west coast. He had seen one of my inquiries on the Genealogy.com site, and was able to offer me some information regarding the Samson’s. From my inquiry, he did some research trying to find out when the Samson’s had reached the United States. He had a set of CD’s from the Family Tree Maker series, which had different passenger listings for the 1840’s through 1870. By doing a search for Karl Samson, he did find a Carl Samson that left Baden, Germany in late December of1852, and had arrived in New York, on Feb. 09, 1853. From the ship Irene’s manifest, it listed the following passengers that traveled together.

• Carl Samson 37 years of age Farmer
• Josephine Samson 29 years of age (wife)
• Anton 9 years of age son
• Richard 9 years of age son
• Henri 6 years of age son
• Karl 9 years of age nephew
• Therese 16 years of age niece
• Killian 20 years of age nephew

To my amazement, all of these names were mentioned on the Samson Genealogy booklet that Tony Samson, had gotten years ago from a relative living in Kansas. BINGO! To be truthful, I had a tear in my eye, when I had read his email!! Finally, something that would pave the road for further reseach. For the life of me, I could never understand how generous strangers could be. Because of this, I promised to help anyone else in their genealogy research. My way of paying back for the help I received.

Over the period of a few months, Roger and I had emailed many pages of information to Gabi, for her project. She was such a wonderful person to help both of us at the same time. As I got any information together, I was sure to pass it onto Gabi. In one of our email’s I did mention that the Samson’s did own and operate a rock quarry in Oberschopfheim, which she later confirmed with historical records. Back and forth went the emails, with text documents and pictures from the Greminger family. She was very grateful for the help we provided.

As we communicated back and forth, she mentioned her goal to have a article written about the Heinrich Greminger emigration to the United States, and also made an offer to write an article about Karl Samson’s emigration to the United States. Wow. This was hard to believe! Gabi always promised that two articles would be printed. In reality, the Offenburg Historical Society was interested in the Greminger information, since he had lived in Fessenbach, just outside of Offenburg. As far as the Samson’s were concerned, they were not interested that much, since they came from a village located further from Offenburg.

I was to find that the listings on different genealogy sites would be very valuable for the future. One day, I received an email from Kansas, inquiring about my listing on the genealogy site of Ste. Genevieve, found within Genealogy.com. From this email, I was to find a nest full of cousins from my great, great, uncle Joseph Samson, that lived in Weingarten but had moved to Kansas. From here, Colleen and I had emailed back in forth, trying to explain how our families were related, with stories of our ancestors. Finally, I decided it would be good to actually hear her voice and decided to call her. Colleen, was a real sweetie, and made me feel like we had known each other for a long time. The ancestors of Joseph Samson had moved to Kansas, wondering what happened to their relatives of Ste. Genevieve. Of course, dad really got a kick out of this. I know I did! Colleen has a Samson genealogy web site, called SAMSON STRENGTH, which I visited frequently looking for stories and pictures of my newly discovered cousins.

My dad was really enjoying the stories I had regarding our research progress. Since I knew that the Samson’s had arrived in the United States on Feb. 09, 1853, I only felt it would be fitting to do something special for the 150th anniversary. Dad’s birthday is on Feb. 07th, but he were unable to get together that day for his birthday. We decided to have dad come over on Sunday Feb.09th for his birthday dinner and cake, with my brother and his family attending. After we had lunch, I told them I wanted a picture taken of us together for the 150th anniversary of living in America. My brother and his kids thought it was a little crazy, but I really did not care what others thought. I did this for dad and myself since we had traded so many conversations back and forth.

For the occasion, I went to the back bedroom and pulled out my German flag, with the red, black and gold, and hung it from the patio curtain, to act as a backdrop for the picture. Also, for the occasion, I had purchase a small U.S. and German flag that would be put in a small wreath of flowers located on the kitchen table. Finally, after a little time spent trying to get everyone to pose for our family picture, we decided to have dad set at the table, with me and my brother’s family standing behind him. I did get a few comments from my brother’s kids, indicating that they felt I might be a little crazy in doing this. Nobody was going to ruin this photo opportunity. Flash, flash, flash, and it was all over! Painless, and not too bad. We then went about our business of having cake for my dad’s 81st birthday. To be truthful, looking at the pictures now, I really think my dad enjoyed having the picture taken. He had a smile on one picture and a frown on one of the other pictures, but I know he was in lots of pain the last few months of his life. I like to remember the picture of him smiling. Yes. He didn’t know he only had about 3 ½ months left to his life.

One day I sent a copy of the picture of our 150th anniversary to Gabi. She really liked it and thought it would be something special to include in the Samson article she was working on. In the mean time she would mention her progress with the Greminger and Samson article as time went by. On March 06th, 2003, I received a copy of a scan made in Offenburg Germany. It was an article from the “Offenberger Tageblatt”, which is the Offenburg daily newspaper. The title of the article was, “Karl im Glück in der Welt” meaning Karl has good fortune in the new world. On the page also was the picture of our little 150th celebration taken the month before. I couldn’t have been more surprised or happier.

During the last year, my dad was so surprised to hear how information and email could be exchanged so quickly. For a man born in 1922 and being a rural mail carrier for 25 years, he was used to seeing letters being mailed, and taking a few days to arrive at their destination. More than once, he did mention how crazy it was to take a picture and then have it sent to Germany or around the world in matters of minutes. I agreed with him, but was thankful for the technology that made it possible.

From the article, I made a couple of copies for my dad, which ended stuck on the ice box, and shown to his friends. I can only feel that somehow, I helped put a smile on his face, and maybe he was proud of me. Who knows.

While you read this, please keep in mind that virtually hundreds of emails, hours of researching county records, were required to get the information I was wanting. There is no way I have listed all the details of this project. The biggest thing I found while doing this, was the fact I never found a person that was not super helpful and unselfish. I can only praise all the people that have helped me. Without them, I would not be writing this now.