Can you see what we have discovered, the places to which we have been, and the turns we have made? We started out at a Krieg family reunion in West Texas in the early 1970's, visited a beloved aunt in 1977, have gone to more family reunions, said goodbye to a bunch of uncles and aunts (during the 1980's), taken a jaunt to a cemetery at Georgetown in the 1990's, and gotten a view of Walburg's St. Peter church. We admired a pastor who served the Swiss families.
We found Fred Treuthardt. We are learning how to observe signs of former lives in our long-unknown ancestors, especially Friedrich. We have become acquainted slightly with his family life when he was an old man of 63 (a bit younger than me). He was a grandfather, father, friend and farmer.
We have seen that he was part of a core community of Swiss-Texans. The central activity that brought them together was church. In these early days in Texas among the Swiss immigrants, there were many celebrations, weddings, births and baptisms -- not so many funerals. Not knowing the culture or the times, we don't know many things, including whether it mattered much to be the patriarch of the Treuthardt family.
I am pleased with this progression from a group of individuals forty years ago, to focusing on one man (Friedrich) and then zooming out again, not just on Friedrich's family but to his neighborhood in Texas over a hundred years ago.
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