John Jacob Link

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Today I was on a pilgrimage, and my Mecca was the part of Leingarten, Germany, formerly known as Grossgartach. As a little girl, probably as early as age four, I would stare at the photograph of John Jacob's Link's home in the front of a large, green volume titled "The Link Family," which sat in our front room. In this photo of a medieval-looking house on Heilbronner Street in a village just west of Heilbronn, a woman holding a baby in her arms stared out of an upstairs window. The photo was taken around 1914, and the house looked run down. This place seemed so very, very far away from me in Martinsburg, West Virginia. I was fascinated by the tale of my immigrant ancestor, John Jacob, who in his fifties, chose to leave his home and blacksmith shop (Schmied) in the village. He and his family endured the trip on the ship called Hope and landed in Philadelphia on August 28, 1733, along with thousands of other Germans from the area known as the Palatinate. They came to Pennsylvania seeking relief from the ravages of the Thirty Years War and the promise of land from Thomas Penn (whom, I think, was William Penn's son).

Today I stand in Grossgartach on Heilbronner Street at the corner of Hoppenstrasse where the Link house and Schmied once stood. I can't believe I am really here on, what seems like, sacred ground - the exact spot of the photograph.

At 10:00 a.m. Rob and I met Herr Kuno Krieger and his wife, Frau Brunhilde Krieger, in front of the Grossgartach Protestant church where the Link family worshipped. To my surprise we were also greeted by the Heilbronn press; a town historian, Herr Lothar Boehringer; and a very distant cousin, Herr Wolfgang Link, who is a retired general manager of a German textile/clothing company. I used a notepad to capture the names of my hosts to make sure I could spell them correctly and to jot down items of information I wanted to remember. They had a tour schedule established for Rob and me, and we began by visiting the inside of the old church, St. Lorenz.

Now I was really on sacred ground. The bones of my ancestors lay beneath my feet. We were led to the base of the tower (turm), the only part remaining of the structure from John Jacob's time. The tower was constructed no later than 1489 and the stained glass window dated from that time, although color had been added to the window when it was restored in 1898. I stood and touched the stone baptismal font where John Jacob and his older children had been baptized. The font was added to that place in 1662, as a gift from the wealthy Flinspach family (members of this family served as godparents to the Link children and vice versa, I think). Wow! Rob and I posed for photographs with our hosts for the reporter from the Heilbronnn newspaper, Herr Josef Staudinger. Outside, before another set of group photos, I presented Herr Krieger and Herr Link with green ceramic mugs bearing the Link family crest from our family reunion in 2002.

Herr Krieger then ushered us into his car and took off for neighboring Schluctern, where he said there was a surprise awaiting us. (to be continued)

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Comments

[Chris]

Wow
Your blog today is truly amazing. How in awe you must have been and still are! Can't wait to hear the rest! Chris