The follow was written in 1995 and was included in The Heiden Family book which was distributed that year. I have added a brief section on what has been happening since 1995 at the bottom of the page. Comments from 2025 are in brackets [ ].

It started in the attic of Aunt Agnes Heiden's house at 8700 South Custer Road and continued on a trail that led through East Germany by way of Salt Lake City, Utah. Along the way, the search touched base in the records of the National Archives in Washington D.C. and spent some time with a genealogical researcher in California. Many hours of the search were spent laboring in front of a microfilm reader (right) or squinting at the screen of a computer. The search has led to renewed contacts between relatives who had not been in contact with each other for years.

It has been a long search, stretching from 1972 through the mid-90's and it is by no means completed. There is still a lot left to learn about the Heiden Family. But, we have made a good start, and the following is the story of where the search has led us and what we have found out along the way.

In 1972, for some long forgotten reason, I (Ralph Heiden) became interested in the history of the Heiden family. I began to wonder where we came from and how our family came to Monroe County, Michigan of all places.

At that time, the oldest living relative that I knew was my father, Arthur Heiden's,  Aunt Agnes (Brockman) Heiden who lived on South Custer Road. She was the wife of my grandfather, William Carl Heiden's, brother, John. All of that generation of Heidens were gone then except for Aunt Agnes who was 81 years old at the time. One Saturday morning, my mother, Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden, and I went to pay her a visit.

As we talked and I asked questions about the older generations of Heidens, it became clear that she had many fond memories of the family but, as is the case with most of us, her memory of the specifics of dates and facts was a bit fuzzy. I asked if she might have any old papers that could help us. She thought for a moment and said, “Well, I think there is an old box or two up in the attic. I haven’t looked at them in years.”

She went up to the attic and soon returned with an old reddish brown wooden box with a hinged top and two latches on the side. It was about a foot high and six inches wide. We slid the latches aside and opened the box to discover a treasure of documents, papers and receipts that would help tremendously in the search for the German roots of the Heiden family.

In the box were many old, yellowing papers covered by nearly illegible scratches in German script written with a fine point ink pen. There were also official looking documents machine printed in both German and English. Included were many hand written notes and receipts for long forgotten transactions.

When Agnes saw my excitement at the discovery, she said, “You know, I think I have some old letters around here too. You might as well have them if you are interested in all this stuff.”

With that, she went into another room and, in a few minutes, returned with a small cardboard box about 8 by 10 inches and an inch deep. It was a sturdy box but looked well worn with age. I opened it and discovered several envelopes addressed in that same old German script lettering. One was addressed, “Mastr Heinrich un Ernst Heiden in Monerow, bei Chicago, Staaten Michigan, Nord-Amerika.” Many others had been sent to “Frau Ww. August Heiden, Monroe-Mich, Nord-Amerika.”

From the envelopes, it appeared that most had been sent by someone named Marie Dohmstrich while others were also signed by an Emilie Dahme. They were mailed from Rostock, Germany over a period of several years in the 1920's. Inside the envelopes were letters also written in a flowing script handwriting that was totally unintelligible to me. I had no idea who these people were or why they were writing to my great-grandparents but I knew I wanted to find out.

In the bigger box there were many documents that provided much needed information. Included were three very old looking pages, each of which had a red wax seal affixed near the bottom next to a signature. They were each dated April 22, 1873 and were signed by an official in the German town of Klaber. From what I could make out, these were documents from the home province of my great grandfather, August Heiden, that may have have had something to do with proof of citizenship.

One page was for August Friederich Anton Theodor Heiden son of Maria Heiden from the village of Gr. Wokern. He was born January 27, 1838 and baptized on February 4th of that year. The second document concerned Elisabeth Sophie Wilhelmine Friederike Adolphine Knaack, August’s wife who was born November 3, 1841 and baptized November 14th. The last page dealt with Meta Friederike Henrietta Elisabeth Heiden, their daughter, who was born on December 23, 1870 and baptized January 8, 1871. Two sons, Heinrich and Ernst also came with their parents from Germany but their documents were not in the box.

These papers presented a bit of a mystery. I knew my grandfather, William Carl Heiden (right), had two brothers, Heinrich and Ernest (Ernst), but who was Meta? To my knowledge, there had been no mention of an adult woman named Meta in the family. There was an old story, however, about a child who had died at sea on the voyage from Germany. Was that story true? Could this be her? Little did I know that it would be over 20 years before I would finally learn the fate of Meta Heiden.

These documents were where I began to see the names of Gross Wokern, Klaber, Güstrow, Mamerow, Neinhagen, Ribnitz-Damgarten and Teterow, the small German villages and towns were our ancestors lived. Discovering these names was extremely valuable for conducting further research into the German Heidens during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Another paper prominently displayed the word, “Militair” which, even with a minimal understanding of German, led me to think of a military discharge. It was issued in the Güstrow District and had August’s name on it and two dates, November 9, 1859 and November, 1861.

There were documents written in English too. One was August Heiden’s application for U.S. citizenship which was sworn to on April 4, 1879. His Certificate of Naturalization was there too. August was granted citizenship on November 2, 1896 at the Court House in Monroe, Michigan.

Also included in the box were several mortgages for different farms, property tax receipts for the late 1800's and miscellaneous receipts for lumber, clothing and other items. I have all the original documents stored in protective covers. Copies and translations of most of them are included in later chapters of this report.

Since so many of the Heidens had been members of the St Matthew Lutheran Church, I decided to see if there were any records there that might help. In 1964, St Matthew had joined with St. Mark’s church and was now called Prince of Peace so I sent a letter to them asking for help.

It happened that Madelyn (Hanson) Berns (right), the wife of my cousin, Walter, was working as church secretary at the time. She was also doing some genealogy work so she pulled together a list of names and dates pertaining to relatives who had been members of the church over the years. This helped greatly in moving forward in the search.

My next step was to try to determine the exact date when August Heiden and family landed in the United States. I now figured that they left Germany shortly after being issued documents in April, 1873 and I knew that my grandfather, Wm Carl Heiden, had been born in Michigan on April 1, 1874.

So, I contacted a professional genealogical researcher in Washington, D.C. who searched the National Archives for the appropriate ship's passenger list. The records she found showed that August and his family arrived at the port in New York City aboard the German freighter, Saxonia, on June 4, 1873.

It listed August Heiden, his wife, Rika, and their three children, Heinrich age 6, Ernst who was 4 and a child, Meta, 9 months of age. Reportedly, one infant died during the voyage but the researcher could not find a record of its name.

To continue the search, I turned to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (LDS), also known as the Mormons. This religion was started in the mid-1800's and, it is my understanding, that they believe that ancestors who lived before that time can be baptized posthumously as Mormons. That is one reason why they are so heavily involved in genealogy.

In order to help their members do their research, the church has gone throughout the world gathering all sorts of historical records and placing them onto microfilm. They store the films in a giant vault in Salt Lake City, Utah and distribute them to local churches for use by both members and non-Mormons.

In the mid-70's, I went to the local LDS church in East Lansing, searched their extensive indexes and discovered that they had films of old church records for the tiny parishes of Gross Wokern and Klaber which were August and Friedericka's home villages. The films covered the years from 1650 to 1860 but they were hand written and were often unreadable or confusing to the untrained (and strained) eyes.

These records confirmed much of what I already knew from other sources. This substantiation from a second source helps lend credibility to the information. Scouring these films also resulted in the compilation of a huge list of names of related and unrelated individuals leading back to about 1785. Because of the poor quality of many of the films and my lack of extensive background in the German language, it was very difficult to keep track of everyone. I looked at the pages of names and decided I needed to find some help.

[In 1993, I flew to Salt Lake City and did some onsite research in their massive archives. This was before very much had been digitized so it was mostly viewing microfilms and books]

Somewhere, I obtained an address for a genealogical center in Leipzig in what was then called East Germany. On a whim, I sent them a letter requesting further information. I had no idea whether they would answer my request. The year was 1973 and we were still in the middle of the “Cold War” and this was an Eastern Bloc country after all.

But, I thought I would give it a try and much to my surprise, I received a rather detailed response. This new information also confirmed parts of what I had already discovered and it provided plenty of new information too.

For about 10 years, my job and other demands took me away from working on the genealogy. Whenever I would see my aunts or uncles, they would often ask, “What are you doing with that family history?” I would always answer that I was “working on it” and would have something done soon.

In 1985, the family had a gathering at William Frank and Helen (Henning) Heiden’s (right) house and I put together a summary of what I had discovered about the family to that point in a letter.

The brief summary that was distributed ended with the paragraph, “These records did, however, confirm what I had learned earlier and resulted in the compilation of endless lists of related individuals leading back to about 1785. Unfortunately, from what I could translate and understand of the German, it appears that we come from a long line of sturdy farm workers and house servants. Sorry! No royalty or even a horse thief in our past (at least as far as I could tell).”

In late 1994, I finally made the commitment to complete the family history and get it out to people before Christmas of 1995. The first thing I did was purchase a computer program called Reunion ® to help me organize all the data and keep the different generations and hundreds of individuals straight. I know have almost a thousand people entered representing over 700 different families (not all are from the Heiden family, however).

I was also aware that at least two other people had been working for a long time gathering information on the Heidens. I contacted Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann (left) (one of my godparents), daughter of Leo Heiden, and found that she too was using a computer program to keep track of data. She sent me a diskette with her information and I added it to mine.

Karen (Berns) Wheaton, Walter Berns’ (right) daughter, had also been pulling together information. I visited her and found several new facts to add to my database. She had quite a bit of information about Mary (Rambow) Heiden’s family, the Rambows.

For a couple of years, I have been using the computer network called Prodigy ®. It has a Genealogy Bulletin Board where people can ask questions and get help on their research. I asked for help in translating German documents and a couple of native speaking Germans on the network responded with translations. Several of the translations covered later in this report are from people on the Prodigy network.

One person said that he had a book that showed a picture of many of the ships that brought people to America from Germany during the 1800's. Since I knew that our family came over on the Saxonia, I asked him to look it up. He did and sent me a copy of a drawing that shows this ship.

Perhaps the most important discovery I made on Prodigy was of a man named, Robert Albert from California. He was doing research on families from the little German towns in Mecklenburg close to were our ancestors lived. We agreed on a fee and he got the appropriate microfilms from Salt Lake City and continued the search for me. He was able to confirm the information that I had found twenty years earlier and then traced the Heidens back even further in history until the records became unreadable. details of what he found are covered in Chapter II.

[Of course Prodigy is long gone as far as I know.]

My computer program [in 1995] will print a sheet which contains all the information on a particular person with blank spaces where something is missing. I organized these sheets by family groups and sent them to about 75 different families in the spring of 1995. I received nearly 70 responses which is fantastic for this type of venture.

With these questionnaires, I not only requested facts, I also asked people to jot down their memories about William Carl and Mary (Rambow) Heiden. The responses were amazing as people recounted stories and little anecdotes that showed the great impact of these two people on so many lives.

I also met with several family members to get their memories directly or to check on certain stories or details that came up in the writing of this document. I met and tape-recorded meetings with many relatives and also with Pastor Don F. Thomas of the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church. Transcripts of these wide ranging discussions are included in Chapter IV also.

Finally, as the time for printing pressed close, I turned to several relatives including Mary Lou (Heiden) Opfermann, Dianne (Heiden) Houpt, Karen (Berns) Wheaton and her sister, Margie Berns for help with layout, proof reading and cross checking facts. This book is the result of the good will and efforts of many, many wonderful people in the Heiden family.

Thanks to you all!

[This was the end of the section that appeared in the 1995 The Heiden Family Book.]

The Heiden Family 1995 was extremely successful for a family history. We have such a large family that over 130 copies were distributed. I was 47 at that time and I am now a few months away from my 77th birthday. Like everyone, a lot things, mostly good but some not so good, have occupied my time so the family genealogy was on the back burner for much of span of three decades.

I began creating websites way back in the 1990s as part of my job as a horticulturist for Michigan State University. So, it seemed natural to put the family information in that format. In the printed version, we were only able to include a few dozen photographs or actual copies of documents. So one of the first major tasks was to turn paper photos and documents into digital format. Including duplicates, I have around 6,000 digital files in .jpg or .gif format created mostly by scanning the originals.

About 20 years ago, I created a simple website and put it on some DVDs (remember those?) for my brothers and sisters. Then I got busy with other stuff and put genealogy on the back burner.

A few years ago, we moved to New Jersey and I rediscovered the boxes of family pictures and papers which reignited my interest. I bought the software, RootsMagic, found the old files from my previous software, Reunion. Fortunately, everything converted from one program to the other and I didn't need to re-enter any data.

I bought a membership to Ancestry.com, started building the website and here we are today.