Dixon and Simms Family History Blog

In the last article we discuss the immediate birth, immigration and subsequent family of Emil Winker  (1866-1919). Now we need to delver deeper into who his parents and siblings were, where they came from, and where they went. We are confident that Emil was born in Spaichingen, Wurttemberg  deep in the southern part of Germany at real crossroads in Europe. Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria are all in close proximity. Spaichingen, Wurttemberg In Emil's marriage to Katherine Schroeder, in 1898, we learned of his parents names. Parents Lawrence and Elisabeth This gives us our first starting point... although, finding a marriage between Lawrence and Elisabeth, anywhere in Germany, proves initially troublesome. We know for a certainty they were both native-born Germans like their son. This is a fact and there would have been no reason to lie about that on the census returns when listing their parents birth country. Locating them in records from Wurttemberg will prove...

I offered to help trace the family history of a good friend of mine recently and, after he passed on the details i needed to begin my search, i asked him which branch he would like me to delve into first and this [Emil] was the one he chose. Details of living (or recently deceased) people are withheld - exactly as they would be for any similar such research shared online. This information i am sharing here is 100% publicly available to anyone. The start point for my research is for Emil Winker (1866-1919) . I knew the details of his son which in turn gave me my start point for him. Emil Winker spent most of his life in Iowa. We know this thanks to the various Iowa State / US Federal Census' records that we have (more on that). From the records we quickly learn that he was not native born in Iowa. He was actually from Germany . He arrived in the USA in May 1883 from a ship sailing from Hamburg as a 17 year old teenager and was among some 1.4 million German settlers who came to ...