I'm back, I know I haven't posted in a while. And even this post is a cheat. This is a copy of what I wrote to my Phillips Family on our FaceBook page, detailing a trip Mike, the kids and I took. Enjoy!
At some point I came across the Family
Tree book given to my parent's by Grandma & Grandpa. I figured
out the starting point and have been looking for the town of Muhl,
Germany, which is where my Great, Great, Great Grandfather, Johann
Peter Philipp was born around 1822. I have never been able to find
the town. I have emailed with local historians of the Diocese in
Germany. They also could not give me a specific location. It does
not exist on Google Maps. The Diocese said that it had been included
into the city of Züsch.
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| A good omen for our trip? |
This past week Mike and I planned a
trip to Boppard, Germany with the kids. We spent the day hiking and
seeing castles, but there really wasn't 2 days worth of sight-seeing
to be done. I suggested a trip to see Züsch. I had no idea what I
was going to find there.
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| Zur Alten Muhle |
As we came down out of the mountains,
we saw a sign for a restaurant called “Zur Alten Mühle”. We
thought we hit the jackpot. There was no one around in the town of
Borfink, so we moved on. There was a sign in German that read,
“Borfink, the end of civilization”. Interesting folk.
A few miles down the road we were
shocked to see the town of Mühl. Let's get this straight, it was
more of a collection of houses than an actual town. I don't think
you could even call it a village. Maybe 30 houses bunched along 4
streets. We found the Catholic Church (literally it was the only
building that wasn't a house, no shops, no restaurants). There were
several graves in the back of the church, and one actually belonged
to a Adelheid Philip, who passed away in 2008. (side note, we now
have learned that graves are only maintained in Germany for 30 years,
after that, they are recycled, don't ask me how)
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| The small white sign underneath translates roughly to "Rabies Endangered District" |
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| Muhl |
After a few minutes of debate, we
decided that we would continue on to Züsch as originally planned.
Züsch was a much larger town that Mühl. Of course, today was Sunday
and nothing is open on Sunday in Germany, so there were few to no
people wandering the streets, also, it was about 87 degrees out. We
first stumbled upon the Protestant Church and cemetary. No Philipp's
there.
Again, we debated taking our victory of
finding Mühl and going home, but we decided to walk on a little. We
visited the Catholic Church, St. Anthony of Padua. I had been giving
this name in relation to the marriage of Johann Peter Philipp and
Magdalena Kronenberg, his first wife. Quite possibly they were
married in this church. (He later married her sister Katharinia,
after Magdalena's death, and they raised a family, including Michael,
who came to the United States, and from whom we all descend)
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| St. Anthony of Padua |
Again there was a large cemetery behind
the church and we found several from the Philipp family recently
buried there. As we were looking at the stones, we saw a woman
leaving the church and watching us. She approached us and stood by
the grave of a couple by the last name of “Bier”, yes, Beer. She
asked me(first in German, then in English) “Do you have people
here?” I said “possibly”, and showed her the book. She was so
excited and said “Johann Philipp?, he is my family!” (At this
point she realized that the church bells had been ringing this whole
time, and she was in charge of stopping them, so she ran off to
complete her duty!).
When she returned, she told me that I
needed to meet her sister, who was already on her way, because “she
has everything”. The sister, spoke no English, so that is always
an adventure, luckily I had my translator Mike with me. She had a
small booklet with her, falling apart, sealed in a plastic bag. She
was very excited and speaking very fast about Hitler and “schule”,
which means school. We finally figured out that when her Grandmother
was in school, the Nazis made the children research their family
trees.(you know in case you had any Jews in your tree) Grandparents
and great grandparents, places of birth and death, marriages,
children, etc. The children filled out these neat little books.
Attached are some pictures of the book, please notice the artwork on
the front cover. Such a fascinating glimpse into the past. Sure
enough, there is our Johann Peter Philipp from Mühl, in her book.
The dates are slightly off, but I'm sure that is common after almost
200 years.
The entire time we were speaking with
the non-English speaking sister, the original one was trying to reach
a man in Mühl, by the last name of Kronenberg who has a lot of
information on the family. (Kronenberg was the last name of Johann's
wives) She was not able to reach him today, but we exchanged email
addresses and phone numbers. She promised to pass along my
information to him. So I may be making another trip in the near
future.
Two other items of note that we were
told by the sisters. They said that their grandparents always spoke
of how loving the Philipp grandparents were to their family.
Secondly, they commented that all the Philipp's always had many
children! I think we an all understand both of those family traits.
I am truly amazed at the unusual set of
circumstances and decisions that let us to be standing near that
particular grave at that particular time. And I look forward to
hopefully hearing a little more about our family soon. I will pass
along what I find.
