Although we always speak of our ancestors as having come from Germany, in reality, that was only true for the last two years before they left for America in 1873.  Germany as we think of it today did not exist as a unified nation until 1871. Prior to then, this area of Europe consisted of a loose confederation of about 300 independent dukedoms and principalities.

One of these territories in the northern region was called Mecklenburg-Schwerin. According to the available church and municipal records, ancestors of our branch of the Heiden family had lived in this area at least as far back as the mid-1700's.

So far, we have traced the family tree back to a man named Friedrich Heiden who was born in 1755. The Heiden line then moves down four generations to August Heiden who, with his wife and three children, emigrate to America and eventually end up on farms in Raisinville Township, Monroe County, Michigan. August now has several hundred direct descendents.

The ancestors of the modern day family members were born and raised in humble villages surrounded by farms owned by a Duke or other elites of the day. They lived in what was then called Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

 After World War II, this area was made part of the former East German Democratic Republic but is now included in the re-unified Germany and is called Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The Heidens and Rambows were primarily farm people who lived in tiny villages scattered a few miles apart in an area about 30 miles from the port town of Rostock on the Baltic Sea. The main City of Güstrow was nearby and Teterow was the  "county seat" town.  Güstrow has a current population about 30,000 while Teterow which was closer to the Heidens has a population of around 8,500.

August Heiden grew up in the village of Gross Wokern or Groß Wokern which now has about 1,100 residents. Nearby villages such as Mamerow, Nienhagen, Neu Wokern and others are within a few miles or less of each other. It is easy to imagine villagers walking between towns to visit friends, relatives or prospective mates. There is little doubt that, in places this small, everyone knew everyone else at least to a certain extent.

Life for the people who lived in this part of the country was, obviously, quite different from what we experience now, over 150 years later. To help to understand the differences we have included brief units about farm life, houses, burial customs, marriage and emigration patterns for the late 1800s including a report about the Port of Hamburg.

In the summer of 1996, I took a trip to the northern part of Germany to visit the area where our ancestor's lived. On the speed-limit-less autobahn, it took no time to travel from Rostock out to the area in question. It was easy to envision our relatives living there with very little having changed in the past century or so.

Although the name Heiden is not a very common one, there are certainly many other branches that originated in Germany over time. During our research, we have discovered other Heidens who, as far as we can tell, are not directly related to us. Some of these people are famous (or infamous) and we have also collected information on Heidens in general.

For instance, Konrad Heiden (left) was one of the first journalists in Germany to be critical of the formation of the Nazi party in the early 1920s. Eventually, he was forced to flee Germany and finally made it to the U.S. He published books about the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. Again, as far as we know, he is not a relative.