Lake Constance and the Zelwegger line

The primary focus for today was the meeting with Christoff Zelwegger. We planned to meet at his home and then drive over to Austria for dinner. Knowing this would make a late night, Mom rested most of the day.

Spence and I went down to Lake Constance to look around. The lake is huge, and very blue. There are not many fish in it because it is too clean. We drove along the bank for a while and then parked so we could walk.

Suddenly I heard someone calling my name. And there were Simone and Stephen who are our landlords. They were in a little cafe having a coke with their son. We sat and talked with them. It was delightful. They are a very charming couple. He is a mechanic and she is a housewife and also runs the bed and breakfast. Their 9 year old son had just been to the dentist. How weird for us to run into one another.

We picked up Mom about 5:30 and drove to Christoff's home. I brought tons of geneology so I could really "talk the talk" with him.

Have I told you how I found him? While preparing for this trip, I decided to try to locate descendants of our ancestors who stayed in Switzerland. So, I mailed over 100 letters to people with our last names - almost like picking them out of a hat. I pulled up the swiss directory on the internet, filtered by village and then selected about 20 people with the same last name. Then I sent letters to them explaining that my ancester lived there in about 1850, immigrated to Utah in about 1860's and I was looking for the family he / she left behind. I included some pedigree sheets and family group sheets, and I asked if we happened to be cousins. While writing the cover sheet for the Kunzler family, the thought came to me that I should include the wives maiden names - so I did.

Miraculously, about 2 weeks ago I got an email from a man with the last name Zellweger. He explained that his boss got a letter from me and saw that one of the wive's maiden names was Zellweger and gave the letter to him. Sure enough, we are cousins! His ggggrandfather and my ggggrandmother were siblings. Hans Kunzler's wife, Elisabeth died about 11 years before he and Anna Elisabeth ( Emil Hurler's mother) and Emil joined the church. She is the sister to his direct line. He emailed me several family group sheets, histories etc. I spot checked a few of the names are on family search.org but many are not.

I have been so excited to meet with him. A real cousin!

We arrive at their cute apartment in Au at about 6:15 pm. I was surprised to see that he was about 36. We sat down to begin our sharing. I was stunned. He had no more interest in family history than to fly to the moon. Yes, he like old things, like the photos in his hall. He had never done research and he really did not care to talk further about our lines and where they split. I was so disappointed.

We had a wonderful evening, however. He is a fascinating person. He married a girl from Sibera. He has travel very extensively. He is full of facts and fun stories. And, he has reddish hair and some features that remind me of some of the cousins. It was fun to cross the Rhein (spelling???). The resturaunt was lovely. Seriously, we enjoyed getting to know him.

Later, as I thought about this, it seems to be a bigger miracle than I had seen at first. The records he gave to me came through his father, from a family friend who had a hobby of doing family history research. This friend is currently about 80 years old and not very clear minded. Several years ago he gave a gift to Christoff's father - which was his family line. His father kept it for a while and then gave it to Christoff. Christoff read through it, thought is was cool and kept it. Then my, rather random letter reaches Christoff's boss and somehow it got to me.

So somehow we now have many more names on Emil's Grandma Zellweger's side. She died before she heard the gospel. But most likely she and Hans are active on the other side, and of course she would teach her siblings and aunts and uncles. And now we have information on many of them. And there is no logic in how we got them.

We will keep in touch with our new friend and distant cousin Christoff, and I will enter these names as soon as possible.

When I meet Hans and Elisabeth I can say I got their message!