In past years, my mother and I have puttered around with the limited information we have on our German ancestors, and finally as we both are aging we have taken a more serious attitude to digging up the past and preserving it for future generations.
Our first attempts at gathering names ended up with her grandparents names on her mother's side and two generations back to her great-grandparents on her father's side. We were stymied in our attempts, mostly due to the lack of German records available through online genealogy sources.
New information became available through her father's (Franz Xaver Grunewald) memoirs entitled 'Rotlauf.' In his book, he included the names of his grandparents on both his maternal and paternal sides, along with a few other pieces of family information.
I, also, had connected, via Ancestry.com with two unknown cousins in Germany that are also researching the family lines - one on the Grunewald side, and one on the Schmittner side. One cousin had found a military record on a grandparent that revealed two bits of information (his parentage and birth city) we had not known.
On a recent trip to Germany, in the summer of 2016, my cousin Sabine and I visited the Catholic Archives in Wurzburg to search for records on the Grunewald line. We were successful in finding the names of Wendelin Grunewald's parents, and the parents of his wife Anna Hofmann.
These were exciting discoveries because we knew the records we needed were in the Catholic Archives. I contacted a professional genealogist, that had given me his card when I was there, and he was able to locate records for an additional 3 generations, along with full names, dates and occupations.
Now our journey moves forward, with his help, to find as much information as we can and to create this family history journal for current and future generations.
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