[redsmetz]

I'm not sure how I missed this thread when it first came up, but I've worked on my genealogy since I was in college in the 1970's. I agree with the poster who talked about how to get started and there are so many more resources than there were even a handful of years ago.

I started on my dad's side and wrote my great aunt, then in her late 70's and she wrote out for me the info about her immediate family (she was my grandpa's sister) and then her father's family. I am now dismayed that stupid, young, sexist me didn't ask one question about her mother's family. I've since piece together some info, but it's been far more arduous with her historical memory gone.

Actually when I started in 1974, I basically tracked down the descendants of my great-grandpa's siblings. I came to learn that out of four Metz sons that came over, my siblings and I are the only ones with the Metz name anymore. My mom had as many boys (six) as any generation of the Metzes in that line. If you're a Zimmer or a Rademacher over in Northern Kentucky, we're probably related though.

The stories I learned though were very interesting, that my g-g grandfather died from a bee sting and his widow fled Germany when her oldest son was going to be conscripted. With six of her eight children, she fled across a river into France and made her way to Holland and sailed to the U.S. Two of her older children had already come ahead here to Cincinnati.

Back in 2000, I decided to find out more about my dad's maternal grandmother's family because I knew my grandma had corresponded with cousins over her lifetime. Her name was Maria Darpel and she came from Germany at the age of 18 to be a nanny for a family who promised to pay for her passage back. Fortunately for my genetic make-up they reneged on that arrangement. She married first to a Werdmann who died leaving her with two children, and she remarried Henry Bens (who also had 2 or 3 children) and they subsequently had three more children, my grandma being the first of those three.

I searched the internet for Darpels in Emsburen and came up with a webpage of someone with that name, a military chaplain nearby. I wrote to him in my "so so" German and told him who my great-grandmother and asked if he knew any Darpels in that village. It was his family, he wrote back, and said he remembered the Metz, Bens & Werdmann families well (I hadn't mentioned the last two names). My grandma's family began sending CARE packages to the family after World War II, a great help to his family since his father (my grandma's cousin) died from an illness the day the British occupied his town. In 2001, Hermann came and visited and it was jarring how much he looked like my dad and how he had mannerisms that were like my dad, even though the families had been physically separated for 120 years. He brought with him a present for my son since he arrived on my son's 13th, a cross that his brother had carved from an oak tree from his sister's farm, a farm that has been in the family since the 1600's. Whew. Some of my family have since visited over there and seen the farm and the church where our ancestors were baptized in a font given to the parish by Charlemagne. Yeah, that Charlemagne!

On my mother's side, her maiden name is Donnellon and we have some info about those ancestors coming from County Galway. Her mother's maiden name was Kroger, her maternal grandmother was a Forbes. Between Bens (originally Benz), Kroger and Forbes, I don't have a nickle.

Famous person side, in my wife's family, pitcher Tom Henke's dad is my mother-in-law's cousin, so he's my wife's second cousin. Both of their mothers were named Rackers and therefore, my wife and Tom Henke are also distantly related to NFL kicker Neil Rackers (I believe he's my kids' 4th cousin). We met Henke at Cinergy when he was with the Cardinals. He was trotting in from shagging balls and my wife hollered, "Hey, Tom Henke, we're related," much to the horror of my teenage daughter.

Long winded, I know, but I love learning family history and seeing the widening circle of relatives. And that's coming from he who has 70 first cousins, without even factoring in the hundreds of other folks I'm related to more distantly.