Our Family Treasure

For 102 years, various members of my family have been responsible for keeping the documents that my great grandparents Leo and Emma Schrader brought with them when they immigrated in 1906. Without these items, much of our family’s history would have been lost. Many records belonging to those areas east of the Oder-Neisse line, where my family originated, were destroyed during World War II and its aftermath. It is doubtful that we would have been able to reconstruct this information without these originals. Below is the marriage certificate of Leo and Emma in Muttrin, on April 5, 1904

The next item, which I had to have translated, was written by the minister of Budow’s church. It was needed to prove the details of Leo’s birth. It gives Leo’s parents as Wilhelm Schröder and Caroline Quetschke. (Quetschke, I am told is an uncommon German name.)

Below is the Kirchliches Zeugnis or Christian Certificate that shows, the birth, baptism, marriage and confirmation of Leo, Emma, Willi and Max.

These are pictures of an unknown German family. The woman bares a family resemblance, so my guess is that she is related to either Leo or Emma.

One of several papers relating to Leo’s military service.

The definition of an heirloom is something that has been in the family for generations. These papers are my family’s heirlooms.

This post written for the 55th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. 

Note: German family names – Schröder, Gleffe, Quetschke, Hingst Related German family names – Tuschy, Kollat, von Malottki

© 1 September 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

I am a German girl

For many years, I avoided doing research on my German ancestors. As a child I had read such books as, “Diary of Anne Frank,” “Escape from Warsaw,” “Snow Treasure,” and “Mila 18.” 

I remember watching World War II movies as I drowsily fell asleep in the back of our old Chevrolet station wagon at the local drive-in. The lesson from all these books and movies was clear — Germans bad, everybody else good. I consoled myself with the thought that most of my German ancestors had made it to American shores by the end of the 18th century, so I hoped that whatever character flaw allowed the evil of Treblinka, Dachau and Buchenwald to occur, had not yet entered the German gene pool.

But one set of great-grandparents did not make the American voyage until the beginning of the 20th century. They left behind, in the old country, a large family of siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces. Many of their family, my family, were still alive when the Nazis came to power. With as much trepidation as a child opening an old cellar door, I have opened my own door to my German past. It is an ongoing project, whose treasures are not easily found. 

Tomorrow, inspired by the Carnival of Genealogy's next edition, “A Place Called Home,” I will share with the information about my own German homeland Until Next Time ...

Note this post first published online, April , 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 29 August 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder