Walheim: Die Alte Heimat (the old homeland)

Thursday we went to a tiny (itty bitty) town called Walheim where Chad's great grandfather, Wilhelm Friedrich Furkel was born. Since great grandpa emigrated to the US in the 1870s, it has been a mystery where exactly he came from in Germany. Finally, the week before we left on our trip, I did some further research online and came up with a German emigration index that had his info and the town of his birth! We were SO excited. We skype-phoned the town church to find out if we could search their records and they kindly offered to do it for us. (Actually, that's the only way they do it since they have all the original books at the church!) The next day we had an email with the names and dates of our Furkel heritage back to the 1600s! Amazing.

As it turns out, Walheim is very close to where we lived in Germany (it's off of the same main road--Bundesstrasse 27). Walheim consists of the church, the Rathaus (city hall), and two restaurants, both of which were closed, so we had to go up the road to Besigheim--see you there in the next post!