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Special thanks to Dana Kiehl and Debie Blindauer for helping me push our research back one more generation :) I got to know Debie online through our common Zimmerman/n interest in 1997. Debie has done a tremendous amount of work on research in Sheboygan County and is a great resource. I met another online researcher, Dana Kiehl, in 1999 when she submitted several of her ancestors to the Zimmerman & Zimmermann Database. We wondered if there might be a tie between her ancestor, Richard Zimmermann (1858-1939), and my husband's great-grandfather, William Zimmermann (1837-1926), as both lived in the small community of Edgar, Marathon Co. around 1900.
After completing some additional research in 2000 and with the help of the Jan Hildebrand with the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center, Dana alerted me to some information she had gleaned about Gottfried Zimmermann and his wife, Dorothea "Caroline" Thieme. Dana had noticed some similarities in the database information for William. After reading Dana's work-in-progress summary I compared it with the information I had for William's mother. Catching my eye was the similarity in birthdates between Dorothea "Caroline" and William's mother, Caroline "Unknown Surname" - March 11, 1805 vs. March 11, 1806!
Lesa Hanners and Maryann Scearce Hanners (daughter of Dale Roberts Scearce and great-granddaughter of William) have helped strengthen the connection between William and his parents, Gottfried and Caroline. In February of 2001 Lesa emailed me a scanned picture of Caroline Thieme Zimmermann's obituary. The newspaper clipping from 1885 was tucked away within the pages of William's bible.
We are continuing to look for more information on Gottfried and Caroline, as well as their descendants. I am very grateful for everyone's assistance in this puzzle :)
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