I just heard from my cousin that he is traveling with his girlfriend to America, to visit family in Omaha and afterwards, to visit us in Seattle in April.
My cousin and I are very distantly related. I have only met his sister, who has helped me so much in translating our family letters from the 1800’s, the same letters that are the basis for my thesis project. Angela and I worked together to translate the letters from Gothic German to German, then to English. She did most of the work, I did most of the typing.
The three of us share DNA with K. Elisabeth Handrich (d. 1864) and John Philipp Harm (d. 1872) of Freinsheim, a small town in the Rhineland-Palatinate near the Haardt Nature Park. In the mid-nineteenth century, John Harm and his wife Elisabeth had three children: Philipp, Michael, and Susanne. My German cousins are descendants of Philipp, who stayed in Freinsheim. I am a descendant of Michael, who left to come to Cleveland, Ohio when he was just 16 years old.
When I meet my cousin, you can be sure I’ll be looking for a family resemblance!