Dads stories

The email that started it all.

– way back on August 1st 1999.

Dear Harald,

Hi Dad,
Another aaaaa sends us greetings.
Love, Inge.

This is the email that our Inge just sent to me, together with a long letter underneath. From this you can then see that I am Inge’s old man, the grandfather of her children and the great grandfather of her grandchildren!

It is not usually my way to intrude into people live’s by breaking down their door. But it just so happens that I enjoyed reading your letter to Inge. The tone of the writing was very familiar to me. I could have sworn that you come from the left side of the Rhine, not from the right! But whatever….here is a friendly greeting. I am Peter Josef xxxx , the son of Martin and the grandson of Anna Catharina aaaaa. I hope that I got that right! I never knew her, I joined the family rather late, 1930, and she had already passed on.

My father who was also interested in genealogy, never spoke much about his famly. He didn’t speak much at all. But the name xxxxx is well known to me. In contrast with the achievements of your father he probably didn’t get very far with it. Well, he was a simple worker. And I also don’t know what happened to his things. I myself was not interested in these things because years ago, together with my wife Hedwig I was struggling to provide for our large family, here in Australia.

What really stood out for me was the great-great-great trail of each of the participants. Here I can now contribute. Your great (to the power of 4) grandfather is my great (to the power of 4) grandfather and Inge’s great (to the power of 5 ) grandfater. I won’t try and verify this further. I am not sure how you can write to the power of 4 in this document in any other way than what I have done, but most likely there is a scientific version of Word around that does this but the internet would probably not recognise it!

I have already written more than I intended! It was only meant to be a quick hello!

All the best, Peter….

posted by Inge @ 11:32 am