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 | Ghering |
| Chandler |
| Crawford |
| Baney |
Mother's side:
| Proper |
| Bush |
| Sutton |
| Britton |
If you can fill in
missing information, or would like to exchange information, please email me.
Kathy Goodman
Going Home to Täbingen
Taebingen, Schwarzwald, Germany - This is my ancestor's home town. Thanks to this Web site, Michael Goehring from Taebingen sent me an email telling me about the town's Web sites. Of course, they are in German. This handy online translator will give you a rough idea of the context of a German sentence. Just copy the German words (up to 150) and paste them into the text box. Select the language you want to translate from and to. Click the Translate button. You can also translate a whole page by typing in the Web address. The whole page translation seems to work for single pages without a lot of frames.
This trip to my immigrant ancestors' homeland was a whirlwind. It was wonderful simply to be there, to know that my ancestors once walked that ground, worshipped in that church, and raised their families. It makes me wonder... was I fulfilling a wish to return to the place of origin. Part of each of my ancestors is within me. Genealogy is more than recording names, births, and deaths. It is understanding our ancestor's life circumstances, getting to know them better, and as an added bonus
meeting relatives you otherwise would never have known.
by Kathy Ghering Goodman
On the plane to Germany, I thought, "Christian and Christina are going home. A little bit of them is in me." As we drove out of the Frankfort Airport, I blinked away some tears. When the autobahn entered a forested area, I didn’t feel I was in a foreign place. I felt like I was home.
It was the end of April 1998 and I hadn't seen my son Jared for more than two years. While we visited, Jared and Michelle took Ron and me to many places in Germany:
But the greatest treasure of all — together we visited Täbingen, the hometown of our immigrant ancestors, Christian and Christina Göhring, who came to Pennsylvania in June 1843. In 1998, Täbingen's population was 500. Five years earlier in 1993, the town had celebrated its 1200 year anniversary. They published 1200 Jahre Täbingen Stadt Rosenfeld to celebrate the occasion. Bürgermeister Willi Seeman, gave Jared and me each a copy! It has so much information, of course, all written in German. (Thank goodness for translations from new found cousins and others on the Internet.) |
 This book describes 1200 years of Täbingen history. |
Täbingen, in the southwestern portion of Germany, is 10 to 12 kilometers northeast of Rottweil, which is south of Stuttgart on Autobahn 81. It is nestled near the top of a hill by the Schlichem river. Täbingen does not show up on some maps because it is small. Map of Täbingen. To add to my confusion, there is a town named Tübingen and I was not sure whether my ancestors who had written "Taebingen" on history papers might have mistakenly interpreted the umlat.
Driving to Täbingen, we traveled south on Autobahn 81 and exited at Rottweil. As we traveled through Rottweil into the country, the road narrowed and tightly hugged the hills, winding around sharp curves and through hills green with the lush growth of Spring. I wasn't sure we were going the right direction. Finally, we came to an intersection and there was a sign pointing the way to Täbingen. My heart beat faster in anticipation. I had no idea what the town would look like. The road took a sharp right past a stand of trees and the land leveled out into vast green fields on both sides of the road.
In the distance I could see red roofs. And as we got nearer the village, I could make out a church steeple amongst the red tile roofs. "That has to be the Evangelische church," I said to Ron. Could it be that easy?
My first view of Täbingen. The Evangelische church is in the middle of the picture.
(To make sure the pages load as fast as possible, I created pages with only one or two pictures on them. Most of the pictures are a small thumbnail. Click the picture to view a larger size. Just click NEXT to continue through the story or click a link to go to another page.)
