“Are you sick of it yet?”
As I dig further into final revisions of my novel about “first wave” emigrants from southwestern Germany, I’m getting this question a lot.
Surprisingly, the answer is no. Sure, I’m sick of the disorganization of my house, and the overgrown condition of my yard. But as I keep researching and writing, I’m still getting insights, and making new discoveries.
“Did you see in the letters?” my cousin asked me recently. She is helping me translate a new batch of letters uncovered just this summer. “The Crollys were from Friedelsheim.”
“Yes! Yes!” I said. “I saw that!”
Why so excited? A year ago at this time, without any idea it was a village of my ancestors, my relatives took me to Friedelsheim, to see a blacksmithing demonstration. I felt as if I was seeing ghosts. Friedelsheim, I learned, was an area with a large concentration of Mennonites. There is evidence the village has been around since 770 A.D.
Michael Harm traveled from the Rhineland-Palatinate to Cleveland, Ohio. He met an American born girl, whose German parents (Evangelical Protestants who helped found the Second German Reformed Evangelical Church in Cleveland) emigrated from Friedelsheim.
Friedelsheim and Freinsheim are so close to one another in the Rhineland-Palatinate, only Erpolzheim lies between them. It’s amazing to me, how we travel so far to end up so close to home.
