This is YOUR FAMILY WEBSITE. It will be successful only if YOU contribute. You do NOT have to be
computer savy to help out. Contact us, and we'll git'er done!
We need Current Contact Information.
In order to keep all folks fully informed, we need CURRENT CONTACT INFORMATION: street addresses,
telephone numbers, and email addresses.
Contact your siblings, your children away from home, your folks - anyone in the relation - to
email us their current contact information. Send it to me
at Mike_Heydinger@HuronHS.com.
If you are more comfortable with snail-mail, send any information to me at Mike Heydinger Box 112 Huron, OH 44839.
BOOK COMING - Family History Data Needed.
A book detailing the complete family history as far back as the 1600's is being prepared and will be ready for the 2021 family reunion. The first third of the work
is an exciting trip back through hundreds of years of history to find what has survived about the Heidingers. It is the result of trips to the homeland, of personal visits to
every community where a Heidinger may have lived in the old world, of countless hours paging through documents and maps from mayor records and chuch offices.
Pictures abound of ancestors, of where they lived and made their living, where and how they worshipped, and in a few cases of where they now lie. Local mayors were most helpful,
parish cures readily supplied ancient documents so fragile they were falling apart in the hands, village historians happily spent time revealing details that otherwise
could never have been discovered without their aid. Ordinary people on the street were most friendly and helpful to this stranger if he even stood still on the road and looked lost -
which happened frequently.
This first part of the book will be a most insightful peering into the souls of these ancient Heidingers in order to give today's readers an idea of what it
truly means to be a Heydinger today. We sometimes forget that we are not just the accumulation of eons of soupy DNA passed down over the millenia. We are what our ancestors dared
to add to that mix in order to survive in the tumultuous world that was Europe-in-the-making for thousands of years. You will be surpised at what you will learn about yourself
even as you read about the past - almost like looking through a mirror and catching glimpses of yourself on the sides.
The middle part of the book will contain information about our first ancestors who landed in America, then made their way west to the Crawford County area of Ohio to carve out a life
there on the mid-nineteenth century frontier of America. It is an interesting account of exactly how the Heydingers mixed in with and became part of the settlement that is today
North Auburn, and the village that was then New Washington, or Dutchtown as they proudly called themselves. These will be the first three generations of Heydingers, beginning with
John Adam and Catherine who shepherded their family to America, then their five children, only three of whom survive to marriageable age: John, Margaret, and Mary. Lastly will come
the nine sons of John and their immediate progeny, none of whom still survive.
The last part of the book is where you, reader, come in. It will contain information about the Heydingers immediately descended from the nine boys - oops, make that seven, as only
seven were "breeders." Steve and Joe remained bachelors and stayed on the home place to attend their parents until they passed and continued farming until their own deaths. So if
you are a Heydinger by blood and not necessarily by name, then this last part of the book will be about you. The plan is to have 100% participation. Realistically, many will be too modest
to see their names in print or just plain blow it off. Well, that's on them. But if YOU and your immediate branch and twig on the family tree want to be included, you will have to
contribute some information - I do NOT do fiction. I mean, I could, but you would not like it. So protect yourself and see that you and your loved ones are included. I need info about
your parents and grandparents, where they lived and made a living, about the family lives they enjoyed over the years, of anecdotes that made them memorable within the family. In other
words, I want flesh and clothing put on their bones. I will not just include anyone to say they were born, married, and then died on such and such a date. Consult a genealogy table if that's
all you want. You don't need to worry about how well it is all written up. That's my job as editor, and I do it all the time.
We ask you to send us digital files if possible. If you are not computer
savy and still wish to make a contribution of materials to this site, please email us and we can arrange to either come
to you or have materials shipped to us for scanning and then returned to you.
PLEASE - on all pictures, identify each person with a recognizable face. If known, indicate the year and place
the picture was taken. Protect your valuable pictures and documents with cardboard stiffeners!
We need Current Family Tree Information.
If you go to the FAMILY GENEALOGY TREE in the column to the right, you can open it by clicking on the RED words This
Family Tree and locate your immediate family's limbs, branches, and twigs on the family tree.
The further back you go, the more accurate the information actually is. What we need most is more MODERN up-to-date information.
Locate your part of the family's information and update it for us, PLEASE. Email to us the new and improved data.
Don't worry about formating the data. Just give us the names and important dates, tell us what generation they are
in and under whose name they should go. Generation numbers are included just to the LEFT of each name.
In order to have the NEW information included in the revised tree, you MUST get it to us. We will maintain the
original document in order to guarantee security. Sorry!
