Looking for family history

One of the nicer aspects of helping chronicle this community’s history is hearing from people from so many different walks of life. We were recently contacted by Stephen Roediger, who called to ask if the

newspaper could help him find a family document that was perhaps in the possession of local residents.

Roediger said he isn’t really connected via social media and hoped there was something we at the WDN could do to help spread the word about his quest.

He penned this letter, and we're sharing it here in the hopes we as a community can

help him with his search.

The essence of my quest is to locate a lost document written in 1874 in Germany, detailing the ancestry of the Sammetinger family who

settled in Pusheta Township in 1835. About ten years ago I obtained a copy of a Sammetinger family history written by Louise Roode neé

Sammetinger in 1972. In that document she wrote: (See box above right)

----During my research of my Sammetinger ancestors, I discovered that all church records prior to 1829 from the village from whence the

Sammetingers came were destroyed in a fire in the last century. So, because Lorenz Sammetinger returned to Germany and had this document drawn up, he was unknowingly saving a

small part of the Church Records as well as a greater part of his own ancestral history.

So, where is this document? To date, I have been unable to discover what happened to this document. But thanks to Lorenz's granddaughters, Louise (Sammetinger) Roode and Caroline

Susanna (Sammetinger) Kantner we have some knowledge of its contents. In her “History of the

Sammetinger Family” written in 1972, Louise described the Sammetinger linage going back to 1679 and some the details about their lives: where they lived, their occupations and even a

snippet about the untimely death of Lorenz’s grandfather, resulting from a fall off of the roof of his barn. So she obviously had access to this document.

Louise’s sister, Caroline (my great-grandmother), translated and transcribed this document before it went missing to the best of her ability in 1951. Although she was removed by two generations from Germany, the family still

spoke German in the home when she was young. So she was able to translate most of the

document, although it is clear that she had some trouble with certain words and place names. What Louise set forth in her “Family History”

is corroborated by Caroline’s transcription. Just two entries will indicate the contents of the transcription:

“1) Wolfgang Sammetinger and his wife Salome, Citizens of Pahres … kingdom of Bavaria, Lutheran religion. 2) To them was born Jacob

Sammetinger in Pahres on July 25, 1679. He moved to Bergdheim as a Bestander (land owner worker) then became a citizen there; then was a Hatter in Guttenstatten then he went to

Schornweisach and died Nov. 13, 1741 at 10 o’clock AM in his 62 year.” Although it sounds like Jacob Sammetinger moved around a lot, in reality, a look at a map will reveal that Gutenstetten is only 5 1/2 miles from Schornweisach and Pahres and Bergtheim lie on the road between.

Lorenz Sammetinger was born in 1815 in the village of Schornweisach in what is today Middle Franconia, Bavaria. In 1835, His father emigrated to the United States with his wife and five children, purchased land in Pusheta Township and became members of St. John’s German Lutheran Church in Pusheta Township, sometimes referred to as “the Sammetinger church”.

When Lorenz was about 59 years of age, Lorenz took ship and returned to the village where he was born. On his return, in addition to the church record described above, he also brought back a German Bible which was presented to the church. I have never seen this document, which was written in German and possibly bearing an official seal.

This church record, if found, would be of particular interest to many of the Sammetinger descendants here in the Wapak area, to the Sammetingers cousins who still dwell in the village of Schornweisach today and to St. Roswinda

evangelische Kirche where the Sammetingers, Bauemels and Lunzes worshiped in Schornweisach. For them to have even a shred of their lost church records restored would be a very welcome event.

Many inhabitants of Auglaize County, and particularly Pusheta Township can trace their heritage back to Johann Christian Wilhelm

Sammetinger. Among them are many with the surnames Bauemel, Jacoby, Schurr, Ruck, Lunz, Grau, Koch, Knerr, Kaeck, Kantner, Roode, Schumann, Heissler, Fisher, Stemen, Hartmann, Schmidt and Smith as well as Sammetinger.

I am blessed to have had ancestors who felt the need to chronicle their family history. I am

particularly thankful to my great-great-great grandfather, Lorenz, who felt the need to return to Germany to have a documentation of his ancestry drawn up and brought back to his family

here and my great grandmother and her sister who tried to preserve and share that information with their descendants. Our ancestors were

not royals or even aristocrats. For the most part they were farmers and craftsmen, fathers and

mothers, who often struggled with the day-today battle to provide for their families. But it was still important to them, and in that I feel a very real sense of kinship.

Sadly, all attempts for me to locate this document, to this date, have failed. Perhaps it was thrown away by someone who did not recognize its historical significance to the Sammetinger family. Or perhaps it is in someone’s attic,

or in a shoebox tucked in a closet. Perhaps it has lain forgotten in some nook or cranny of the St. Johns Lutheran Church.

It is my hope, that by sharing this story with you, the Original Family Record, signed and

sealed by Pastor Steinhauser may be found, and future generations descending from the Sammetingers of Schornweisach will learn something of their German identity.