Laas’ and Mary Lou has a picture of some of them. Mary and William Carl Heiden, Aunt Libbie Laas, Aunt Emma I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.

Laas formerly Ullrich.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Who are they? I don’t understand what relation they are to us.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They’re Pa’s cousins. That’s where Alice (Laas) Berlin (left) comes in.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - We always called them “Aunt and Uncle.” Uncle Will I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.

Laas was from Texas. He was the “rich” one in the family. Who were the Paulsens?

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - They were relations to Aunt Emma I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.

Laas, I think. They were some of the leaders when it came to starting the annual Heiden reunion.

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Lucille [Lehmkuhl] was a Burmeister wasn’t she?

Helma (Heiden) Nickel - Louie and Aunt Rikie Burmeister, she was a I’ve also got the cedar chest that Ma’s mother brought over from Germany. Ma used it as a hope chest.

Laas too. Lucille had a sister, Mildred, who died of infantile paralysis. No, Lucille was the one on crutches.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Her sister, Florence Burmeister, was the Paulsen. She married a Paulsen. They used to come out from Toledo and they were the ones who made the lemonade at the reunion.

Laas’ and Berlin’s would come on Sunday night just in time for dinner.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Always!

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - They would come about 4 or 5 p.m. Ma would send us down in the basement to get some more jars of preserved beef. Boy, that made the best gravy! Or, she would make some pork sausages and fried potatoes.

Ralph Heiden - You wonder now about how people make such a big deal out of eating a pat of butter or having an occasional egg for breakfast when back then, they ate the fattest meats and sausages.

Norma "Jeanie" Heiden - Ma would save the grease from bacon. Then when you fried potatoes you would use that grease.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - Sometimes they would put that old lard directly onto bread and eat it like a sandwich! And we worry about eating a little bit of butter.

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Art always talked about taking lard sandwiches to school.

Wilma (Heiden) Bicking - I can remember coming home from school and taking a piece of fresh bread and putting the bacon grease on it for a snack. Pa used to eat mettwurst and eggs and spicanse for breakfast.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - I can remember him cutting the fat off pork and eating it. It would make us kids almost sick. 

Ralph Heiden - Do you recall any stories about your grandfather, August Heiden ?

William Frank Heiden - About all I remember of him is going over to their place on South Custer and he would be sitting in that old high back chair.

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - And he had that earphone in his ear so he could hear.

William Frank Heiden - Other than that, I really don’t remember anything else about him.

Ralph Heiden - We always heard a story about when they came over that a little daughter died on the ship. Well, Myrna (Drake) Bishop who is Bertha (Heiden) Drake’s daughter and granddaughter of Herman Heiden, was told that the little girl lived through the voyage but died here and is buried in Monroe. Mary Lou did some detective work and found that she was buried in Zion Lutheran Cemetery in Monroe on June 16, 1873 only 12 days after they landed in New York.

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - And there was a gravestone for her?

Ralph Heiden - Yes.

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - There was a Laas baby buried next to her too.

Ralph Heiden - That’s another question. I keep hearing about the Laas’ but nobody really knows what relation they were to the Heidens.

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - They were always there at the reunions.

William Frank Heiden - I think it was Bill Laas from Texas. They came every year.

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - There was Miss Libbie Laas. I don’t think she ever got married but I can remember her being there.

William Frank Heiden - Maybe they came over from Germany together or something. There had to be some connection. They were always big at the reunions along with the Burmeisters.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - Since Meta was buried next to a Laas, it makes you wonder if they had some early connection.

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - Did the Laas’ come over on the boat with August?

Ralph Heiden - No. The one (Laas child) that is buried at Zion Cemetery was buried in 1869, four years earlier. So, they were already here.

Here’s an idea that I’m starting to wonder about. August, my great grandfather, had a half sister. In the 1920's, her granddaughter sent a series of letters to August’s wife, Rika.

I finally found an elderly German lady who could read the old script writing and is translating those letters word for word. I have about 5 or 6 of them done now.

In one of the letters, they say that they were corresponding with Elizabeth Laas. So, perhaps, the Laas’ are descendants of August Heiden's half-sister. They would be a distant relative but still related. I don’t have any evidence to draw that conclusion but it might be that way.

Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann - That could be the connection.

Ralph Heiden - The letters are rather sad overall. They were having some very tough times in Germany then and they were always asking their Aunt Rika, my great grandmother, for money.

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - In one of them, they ask for some money for a house and some land. Then, later they say they bought the house but needed more money for the land.

Marie (Heiden) Tommelein - Did they ever help them?

Ralph Heiden - Yes, they sent money when they could and they were always very appreciative of it and told what the money would buy.

Brick Tommelein - My dad said that at that time, everyone over in Europe called America “the land of opportunity.”

Ralph Heiden - A lot of people here were helping their relatives then too. In one of the letters, they ask Rika to send her letters registered because people were stealing things from mail from America because those envelopes were likely to have money in them.

Helen (Henning) Heiden - Now are these letters all from Mecklenburg?

Ralph Heiden - Yes. They are from the area called Mecklenburg and the port city of Rostock. The little villages where our ancestors came from are the size of Grape and Maybee and they are about 50 miles from Rostock.

Helen (Henning) Heiden - From the Hennings, I heard them say that the people were like slaves back then in Germany. They worked for all these big rich people. They provided pay for them and took care of them but they couldn’t get ahead. They didn’t want them to get married because there were already too many of them to take care of. That is where the Hennings came from too.

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - Didn’t you say that our name should be something other than Heiden?

Ralph Heiden - Yes, my great grandmother, Maria Heiden, did not marry the father of August. So, he took her name rather than his father’s which was Kannsehr or Canseyer.

Helen (Henning) Heiden - That’s the same way with my grandpa Henning. Grandma wasn’t married when she had those two kids.

Ralph Heiden - That was a real common occurrence back then.

Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden - They wouldn’t let you get married unless you could support yourself.

Ralph Heiden - They technically weren’t slaves but there was nowhere else for them to go except to another big estate to work and they were full too. Also, the landowner had the responsibility to take care of the people on his land so he was stuck too.

That is why they pushed a lot of them to leave and go to America. Also, the illegitimacy rate went way up because even though they weren’t legally allowed to marry, people continued to form couples and do what they needed to do.

Helen (Henning) Heiden - You wonder why the Heidens would come here but they said on the Henning side that they would send money back to Germany to help others come here.

Ralph Heiden - But with the Heidens, we don’t know who was here to pave the way for them. Maybe with this Laas connection, there might be something to go on.

The Rambows came a year later. They came here in 1874 and I don’t know if they came from the same part of Germany as the Heidens. I haven’t looked into that yet.

I think about the only way we are going to learn why the Heidens came here is if we stumble onto somebody in one of the other branches that has an old box of papers up in the attic that someone gave them long ago. Otherwise, the reason may be lost to history.

[Note: According to Karen (Berns) Wheaton, the Rambows did come from the same area in Germany.]