We prefer the dates of August 7-8 for the 2010 Leonardville Zeisset reunion. Thank you for planning the reunion.

Edited by author 01-27-2010 06:20 AM
2010 Zeisset Reunion

This summer, we have something slightly different planned for the Leonardville Zeisset reunion. This time we will explore more deeply the roots of one of our branches, the Swart family. Louise and John Swart met and married in Leonardville in 1886, but moved on to Nemaha County within ten years.

This email tells about our tentative plans for the reunion, but most important, solicits your input on the reunion date and a few other program ideas. We are proposing three alternatives, July 17-18, July 24-25, and August 7-8.

Which ever weekend we select, our plan is to spend Saturday talking and touring near Seneca, KS, then Sunday sharing fellowship in Leonardville, 75 miles away, at the cemetery and at the church. In Seneca, our hosts will be Carl and Ruth Swart. We will have a chance to tour the farmstead built by Louise and John Swart (Carl's grandparents), see the cemetery where Louise and John are buried, and visit a toy museum created by a Swart relative. We will talk about the Swart family and compare their experiences with those of the other branches of the family, including yours.

Early Sunday morning, we will drive to Leonardville for a visit and memorial moment at the Leonardville cemetery, attend church together, and share a pot luck/catered dinner in Zeisset Hall at the Leonardville United Methodist Church Sunday noon. In the afternoon, Loretta will review our family story and tell us about her most recent research. We will fit in some singing and storytelling as well, so come prepared to contribute.

So now we need to hear from you. Just click on the link below, or copy and paste this address into your browser. Be sure to forward this message to additional people whose addresses you don't find above, or just give us their emails in Question 8. And if you have relatives without computers, why not call them and fill out a form for them. (Multiple responses from any one computer are allowed.)

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PPHCSQQ

Please respond right now--it will only take a few minutes. If you need to check with someone else, try to get back to this in the next week or so, before you forget, so that we can start analyzing the results.

Once we pick a date, we will send announcements to everyone by mail, but for right now, we are conducting this query only by computer.

Oups...

Thanks to everyone who attended Gladys' visitation or funeral. She would have been pleased. Actually, Gladys was not the last of the children of the immigrant 6. Elizabeth Nanninga Morlong is still living at the Leonardville Nursing Home. You can go to http://www.legacy.com and put in Gladys Llewelyn to get the obituary. I thought I could put a link to the obituary itself here, but haven't figured out how to do that.

Thanks for the notice. It is sad to mark the passing of the last of the children of the immigrant 6, the end of a generation. Loretta, we know you were a big help to Gladys.

I wanted to let you all know of Gladys Hoerman Llewelyn's death today shortly after noon in Clay Center, Kansas. Her health had been declining more rapidly for the past several months. I will post a link to her obituary in the next couple of days.

I was just reading the Zeisset Message Board and noticed a question by Nadine asking about the "rest of the trip" taken by Bettie and Allan Burns, Lee Swart and Rod Hildreth. Our trip to Prague by snell (fast)train was good, changing in Dresden, and with the assistance of the conductor in Frankfurt and Dresden we made all the connections. Others on the train assisted us with the transfer of our baggage - no small task as we were lugging several bags, including maybe the kitchen sink. Prague was a wonderful surprise for all of us. Bettie was continuing to have difficulty with her hearing aids and spent time fussing with them. Rod and I made sure we were with her at all times to keep her from falling while walking on the cobblestone streets. I would definitely recommend anyone traveling to Europe to add Prague to their itinerary.

After Bettie and Allan flew home to Dallas from Prague, Rod and I took the train to Munich where we picked up a rental car and then continued on visiting the Bavarian area of Germany. After leaving the Garmish area we drove down thru Austria to Italy for lunch (fifty miles)and then continued on driving on to Liechtenstein, Switzerland and back into Germany before heading northeast to the Weimar area of old "East Germany" where we visited the town of Lauscha. Lauscha is world famous for it's hand blown Christmas ornament industry. Much of the work is done in small home based shops with the products being sold in village stores (and through the wholesale markets around the world). I did come away with some very nice ornaments to add to my Christmas tree - actually, after buying the ornaments we asked the merchants to mail them to me at home so no problem with having to carry them onto the plane. Only two small ornaments were broken, so it was a success.

That is sort of it in a nutshell. We did have a great two weeks roaming Germany and several other countries after the Zeisset Reunion Journey. Rod and I managed to visit ten countries on this trip including a visit, before the Zeisset part of the trip, to the village of Mitling-Mark in the northwest of Germany were my grandfather, John Swart (married Louisa Zeisset), was born in 1860. Rod and I will be returning to Mitling-Mark this fall to do more family research for my family and then fly over to Cornwall, England to do research on his family.

I look forward to our next gathering at Leonardville or back in Germany!

It was a bit of a challenge getting to Germany this time. First the domestic flights were all delayed, but the international flights were not, so we missed the plane to Germany. We got on the last plane out of Chicago to London, but someone left the waterhose in the plane and it took 1.5 hours to thaw it loose so we could leave. Once we arrived in Frankfurt, 7 hours after the scheduled time, we were in a traffic jam for 2 hours. Naturally I didn't see my suitcase for a couple of days. After that we had a great trip and I significantly increased my knowledge about Kreuzfeld. Once again (due to the delayed arrival) I was not able to visit Sindolsheim.
I have information to share that will be posted to the Webpage eventually. I'm waiting for some copies to arrive from an archive I visited (the copier was kaputt that day and I found out too late that my camera makes great copies). I photographed a letter from Jakob Friedrich Zeisset written in 1878.

I was unable to meet you and join the tour last summer, but I did want to express my thanks to those who have shared their pictures and research and tour information. I am a granddaughter of Albert Nanninga (son of Bertha Zeisset), and am glad to have connection with the Zeissets. Hope you plan another tour soon! --SW

Paul encouraged me to post some information about my upcoming trip in February. I'm going to Germany again. I'll be traveling in a car instead of a bus this time! I'll be visiting Sindolsheim, where the Zeisset family lived from 1851-1864. This was a stop on the August tour that we had to cut because we ran out of time. I'll visit Darstadt and the church at Winterhausen where the Isaak Zeisset family lived from 1888 to around 1900. Lizzie Zeisset Weller, George Weller and Jake Zeisset also lived there with Isaak Zeisset and his family. I'll also go to Waldenburg. Johanna Epp Zeisset (grandmother of our 6 immigrant Zeissets) died at Fasanenmühle which is at the base of the hill atop which the town of Waldenburg sits. This is just a little north of Schwäbisch Hall. While the church records there were destroyed in the last days of WWII in 1945, I may be able to find some information at the City hall.
Believe it or not, I'm not tired of researching yet! I've discovered lots of things since our trip. One of the most interesting things I've learned concerns Lydia Zeisset. She was the granddaughter of Johannes Zeisset (married to Elisabetha Baer of Niedersteinach where the whole town came out to meet us...). Lydia was in some way handicapped, perhaps mentally ill, and was among the first of the "behinderte" (handicapped) people killed by the Nazis. I'll be visiting Grafeneck where Lydia died. Lydia was a cousin of our 6 immigrant Zeissets.
Naturally I'll have photos and hopefully more stories to tell...

Greetings to all the Zeissets and spouses, friends etc..... What a grand trip!!!! Memories to last "Forever"! Many thanks to Loreta and Paul, and everyone else!! We took the news article from the Riley paper and put it in The Courier-Tribune, Seneca, Kansas. All of our pictures are in place in an album, the daily report made it so much easier to get the pictures in order---Thanks!!!

The inviation is still open-stop by anytime, would love to have you!! Carl and Ruth

The official newspaper of Leonardville/Riley, "The Riley Countian" published an article about our trip to Germany this week. They did a great job with it (in my opinion). Who wants an actual copy of the newspaper? I'm going to L-ville tomorrow and can buy up the ones I can find. We can also make a copy of the front page article. You may not know that there were also 2 large articles about our reunion in the Weisweil area. I have copies of those (they're in German) and there was a little blurb in the Schrozberg newspaper also!

We have an interesting new feature in our diary: sound clips taken from recordings of interesting people talking to us, and other special sounds, like church bells and organs. If your computer has a sound card, click on the links marked with speaker symbols.

Thanks, Paul, for sending all the information and photos of your reunion trip. It sounds and looks like we all missed out on quite a trip. We had seen some of the photos when in Colorado for Debbie's daughters wedding that Lee had taken.

We had a mini reunion with our immediate family while out there. Bettie, Ethel, Lloyd, Lee and myself (which is all that is left) were there and hadn't been together for five years.

Gladys