Trip to Muhl, Germany. Go ahead, try and find it on a map.

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.

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.

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)

The small white sign underneath translates roughly to "Rabies Endangered District"

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)

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.