This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Surnames: Rube, Witteman, Hetzler, Meyn, Pier, Rexroad, Sturdevant, Roderick, Handel
Classification: Biography
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ZJYBAEB/1412
Message Board Post:
To all of you who are researching their Zimmerman roots and are discouraged. On 29 Jan
2000 11:20 AM after discovering my great-grandfather's name was Philip Zimmerman, I
posted the following message to the Zimmerman board:
"My great-grandfather lived in Crown Point in the 1870's. My grandfather, Martin
Julius Zimmerman was born there on 05/18/1874. That is all that I know. I would appreciate
any information I can find on Philip."
That is how I started. Now 5 years later, I know that Philipp emigrated to the USA around
1850 from Baden in Germany, possibly from the town of Dettingen an der Erms southeast of
Stuttgart, to the Great Lakes area.
He was widowed from his first wife, Margaretha, who accompanied him from Germany and
married a second time to Maria. Maria, born Rube, arrived in the USA with her family in
1851 from Prussia. She was widowed from a man named Witteman.
Philipp and Maria's marriage was blessed with two children, Karoline Henriette on June
6, 1866 and Martin Julius on May 18, 1868. Both were born in Crown Point, Indiana and
baptized at the German United Evangelical Zion Church, Dyer.
Philipp passed away sometime between 1870 and 1878. Maria remarried in 1878, a Thomas
Hetzler, whom she also outlived.
Karoline "Etta" married John Meyn on March 24, 1886 after which the whole
family, Etta and John, Martin and Maria moved to Scotia, Nebraska. John and Etta's
first two children were born there before they moved on to Washington state to the
Chehalis area where their descendents live today.
Martin remained in Scotia where he married Tomena Larsen. Maria passed away on Nov. 2,
1900, a year before the birth of their fifth child, my father Chester Leanord Zimmerman.
In 1907 Martin began moving from farm to farm, finally winding up in Minnesota where both
he and Tomena are buried. His descendents are spread all over the world, from Germany to
Arizona.
Karoline was only known to me as a story that ma father told. It went like: "They
took off on a wagon train to out west and probably got killed on the way because nobody
ever heard of them again".
A long story short - my research led to the discovery that they survived and prospered in
Washington state. This past Christmas I talked to my second cousin, the sole suriving
descendent of that branch of the family on the phone. She knew of us also only as a story
of those who were left behind. After 115 years to be reunited as a family - what a
Christmas present!
I wanted to share my happy story with all of you who might have reached that point of
wanting to give up. Keep goin' Zimmermans - it can really be worth it!