During my visit to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (formerly Mecklenburg-Schwerin) in the summer of 1996, I went to several church yards to see if I could find some old gravestones of my ancestors.

Well, I soon became confused at the situation because it seemed that all the people buried there had died within the past couple of decades. When I returned home, I did some research on burial customs in Europe and discovered that they generally reuse a grave once most of the relatives of that person were also dead and the grave was no longer maintained. It's a matter of the most efficient use of limited space.

I did find some of the recent headstones that bore names that are also found in the ancestry of the Monroe County Heidens. Uwe Milhahn, Wilhelm Dreier, Emma Dreier, Erich and Meta Laas might have been relatives but that would need further investigation.

I did not find any gravestones for Heidens but did find the name on a WWI memorial in the village of Groß Wokern, the home of August Heiden and later found German soldiers named Heiden who were buried near the beaches of Normandy, France.