family history places

Updated 30.4.2026

An alphabetical index of places discussed in my family history blog entries. When the listing starts with the place name as a link, this refers to a blog entry in the lost cities series, so these cities need no further introduction. The year numbers after the name give the time range when my direct ancestors lived there. If a third number is appended with a slash, this indicates that other relatives continued to live there after the ancestors left. I generally alphabetise places under their historic names, so we have eg Elberfeld, Hamborn and Breslau rather than Wuppertal, Duisburg and Wroclaw.

For an index of people, click here.

• Aachen 1936 - 1940
• Adamsweiler, where our old station master Christoph Kauer worked until his death in 1909, was a cute little station but it is sadly in the middle of nowhere. I visited the station once in the 1980s and have no memory of the village, I think it is essentially a through road with a dozen houses.
• Bonn 1929 - 1934
• Breslau 1830 - 1877
• Bruchsal 1889 - 1909/2023
• Elberfeld / Wuppertal 1919 - 1961
• Steel workers from Wallonia moved to Fachbach on the river Lahn in 1672 - they stayed there for several generations and form a significant part of the ancestry of the de la Strada family that settled in Krefeld after 1776. I wrote about their migration history here.
• Freiburg 1928-1930, 1957-1961
• Among the previous stations where Christoph Gottlieb Kauer worked before he became station master of Adamsweiler, the village of Fontoy/Fentsch may also be worth looking at, as it's the birthplace of Helene. Here's a postcard sent by friends at Fentsch to the Kauer family after they had moved to Adamsweiler:
  
• Peter and Frieda lived at Gronau from 1926-1932. I've shared a photo of Peter at the relevant border crossing here. Their second daughter was born on the Dutch side of that border.
• Gütersloh 1825 - 1928/1950s
• Hamborn inlaws: 1922 - 1979/2015
• Idar-Oberstein 1940 - 1962
• Idstein 1714-1804
• Königsberg 1935 - 1945
• Krefeld 1764 - 1924/current
• Bad Kreuznach 1945 - 1951
• Lorsch 1890 - 1938/1973
• Julius and Helene lived in many places - I've shown their shop in Luisenthal (Saar) here. The family stayed there from 1911 to 1918. After which they made the fundamental error of moving to the countryside. It didn't last long.
• Among the previous stations where Christoph Gottlieb Kauer worked before he became station master of Adamsweiler,Mülhausen/Mulhouse is the biggest and most interesting city (just over 100,000 now).
• I wrote about the miners migrating to Sainte Marie aux Mines (Markirch) before 1732 here. The notoriously un-googlable Paul Simon moved on to get married in Böchingen in 1768.
• Minden 1903 - 1952/ca.1970
• Bad Münster 1919 - 1930/1952
• Münster 1928-1929, 1934-1936
• Bad Nauheim 1945 - 1972/1983
• Rheydt 1923 - 1935
• Schwaney has an amazing musical tradition but has never been more than a village (current population 2000). Frieda's grandfather from Schwaney died before she was born, so there wasn't any chance of a transfer of that musical culture. Unless they have it in their DNA ...
• Strasbourg 1901 - 1908
• Simmern must have been a great place before 1689, but never recovered from the attention of Louis XIV, as I have written previously. 3/16 of my DNA comes from the town and the surrounding villages since the dawn of time (ie at least since the 15th century). In the 1870s, the Kauer and the Imig Clan left Simmern behind in the name of progress, and I am sure that was a good move.
• Tangermünde 1888 - 1916
• I first mentioned the high school at Trarbach (Mosel) here, where two generations of Ebner ancestors were teachers for 45 years in the late 17th / early 18th century. Biographies of both Ebner teachers are now here and a blog entry on the history of Trarbach is here.
• Würzburg 1961 - 1968
• Zella St. Blasii, today part of Zella Mehlis, population 12,400, was the birth place of Heinrich the cellist, but it was only a stepping stone in the itinerary of his father Richard the railway man. Although Heinrich spent the rest of his life being labeled a Thuringian because of his birthplace, to the best of my knowledge nobody ever shed a tear for the memories of Zella St. Blasii.
• the ancestry of the Lorsch family is scattered around Odenwald villages. Some have a long history, such as Zotzenbach, which was first mentioned in 877, so is due to celebrate its 1150th birthday soon. It is now part of Rimbach.