Living relatives in Alsace France?

by Rebecca
(Wisconsin, USA)

Both my husband and I have ancestors from Alsace. My great grandfather, Georg Vetter, was born in Beinheim, Bas-Rhin, in 1824. My husband's great-grandmother, Catharina Sensenbrenner, was born in Soufflenheim, Bas-Rhin, in 1838. We are trying to find out whether we have any living relatives in the area. Do you have any suggestions? It is amazing to us that our relatives only lived 12 kilometers from each other two hundred years ago! We visited Alsace in 2017 for our 25th wedding anniversary and went to small towns like Beinheim and Soufflenheim, but we haven't been able to track back "down" to current generation.

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Finding living relatives
by: Suzele

Hi Rebecca,

The only way to find living relatives is to go there and meet people and find them.

I've done this with people on Alsace Ancestry tours. Sometimes you have some. Sometimes everyone left for the US or Canada or somewhere else.

It just depends.

This is why my Alsace Ancestry tours are really treasure hunting tours. Because we're looking for something.

Anything that will lead to something else.

It's an adventure and you don't know what you're going to find. But you usually find something.

We've found living relatives. Distant relatives sometimes.

Or family homes still standing or where they used to be sometimes.

Addresses and names of more people.

What someone did for a living.

Locations of other family members in the past - like their houses that are still standing.

Those are just a few off the top of my head things we've found together.

To give you some ideas.

But it's hard if you don't speak French and sometimes a little local dialect helps too.

Which I do speak and understand. It helps gain the respect and get help from the locals sometimes.

Sometimes I've gotten names of the local historian who can help answer questions.

Hope it helps with your family search,
Suzele

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