This story of my ancestors is written for my children; if it is read by others, I hope they will bear this in mind.
There are various motives that led me to be curios about my ancestry. I wanted to know where I came from. I was fascinated by the ups and downs of the fate of my ancestors, and finding out about them was also just a hobby.
The information on which the story is based comes mainly from written records, primarily from church records, but also from what my mother told me. To a minor degree other relatives gave me some information. Actually, I have only very few close relatives. My father had one unmarried sister and an unmarried brother who died early. My father’s father had no brothers, but three unmarried sisters. I knew only one of them; the other’ two had died earlier. But my father’s mother had two brothers with descendants. Neither my mother, nor my mother’s mother had brothers or sisters. My mother’s father had only one brother with two grandsons. One of these grandsons is an ardent investigator of family history. From him I received very interesting information about some of my very early ancestry.
In fact, my story concerns to a large degree not only parents, grandparents, and great grandparents, but earlier ancestors as well.
A few technical remarks must be made. To each of my ancestors a number is assigned. It is called his or her ancestor number. This number appears in brackets, ( ), behind the name of the ancestor. The meaning of these numbers is explained in the introductory part of Appendix A L 1. (Not included-but it is basically a numbering scheme for tracking ancestors where KOF is 1, his father 2, his mother 3, and anyone’s father is double their number, and anyone’ s mother is double their number plus 1- MNF) This appendix contains a list of all known ancestors. (Modified version is attached as Appendix L A- MNF)