Genealogy is, or should be, a shared journey and many have shared their knowledge with me over the years.
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Two men have been instrumental in aiding with my Feuerbacher research: Chester W. Feuerbacher (my dad's 1st cousin) and Alvin L. Feuerbacher one of my 2nd cousins from San Antonio.
In 1976 Chester W. Feuerbacher, son of Willie Feuerbacher, self published a little green book entitled "The Family of Alvin Feuerbacher and Wife Emma Feuerbacher (nee Hernsdorf)" tracing the history and descendants of his paternal grandparents. With the permission of his daughters, Sharon and Diane, I have digitized this little book by entering all the information, verbatim, into my genealogy program and this forms the basis of the Feuerbacher line on this website. Although the book focuses on the descendants of Alvin and Emma, he shared with me documents about their ancestry. The data from these documents has also been included in my database and can be found on this website. However, there is virtually no historical data on Alwin's family other than the given name of his mother and the fact that he had a younger brother.
There were several letters from the Hernsdorf family in Germany with family history contained in them. One letter even included a chart of Emma's ancestry seemingly taken from church records in Germany. This chart took some of her ancestors back to the late 1600's. I have extrapolated all this data and included it in my database and this site. Chester gathered all this information prior to the 1976 publication of his book by contacting and visiting with many cousins and any family he could find. I've talked with people who as kids remember coming home to find a little, skinny, friendly stranger with a big smile there waiting for them, asking their parents all kinds of family questions. In about 1968, I remember meeting Chester and Marie in the middle of a street on the Huntsville, Texas town square. We were both shocked to see one another and said almost simultaneously "What are you doing here?" Well, I was in college and Chester was doing family research at the Walker County courthouse! Who knew that years later I would attempt to continue and expand Chester's passion! In 1981 Chester issued a two page update to the book and those updates have been included here also. Chester kept in touch with everyone, and built a nice family network that he kept up until his death in 1992. Those were the days of snail mail, land lines and family visits. He would have had a field day with e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and the Internet. Everyone loved Chester and we are all grateful to him for his work on the family history.
Alvin Leroy Feuerbacher was a great grandchild of Alwin & Emma, as am I. His grandparents were Otto & Dina Feuerbacher (brother to our Edmund.) I don't remember how we connected, but I know it was through the Internet and after that we visited and emailed over a period of 10 or so years. Alvin is the one who discovered the ship and passenger list documenting Alwin's immigration to the United States in 1883. Alvin collected newspaper articles with any mention of others with the Feuerbacher surname (whether he knew them or not) and his family still has a piece of furniture built by Alwin and a vase sent by family in Germany in gratitude for aid sent after WWII. Alvin generously shared his research with me and seemed to enjoy seeing what I had discovered. Alvin passed away in 2013. His contribution to my research was invaluable. I always enjoyed visiting with him and his wife, Jo at their home in San Antonio---such interesting people.