Heiden is not a very common surname in Germany or the U.S. In our research which started in 1972, we have traced our branch back to the Mecklenburg-Schwerin (now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) region in northern Germany. August and Fredericka "Rika" Heiden were rural folks who lived in the tiny villages in that area before emigrating to America in 1873.

Included in this section are descriptions of many of the villages, maps of the area and examples of the type of life people led there in the late 19th century. We visited the region by car in 1996 and have included pictures and details we found.

Other members of the extended family of August and his wife, Fredericka Knaack  are also documented. Rika's relatives, the Knaack, and Dreier relatives stayed in Germany as far as we know now. The "alleged" paternal family of August Heiden, the Kanseyers, are also included.

We also cover the relatives of Wm Carl Heiden's wife, Mary Rambow. The Rambow and Milhan families lived in the same villages with August and they emigrated in 1874 to the same area of Monroe County, Michigan.

The maternal ancestors of the author's mother, Mildred include the Roggermans, Gettys and Olivers. Charles John Roggerman lived on Rugen Island, Germany before coming to America in 1882. The James Getty Sr. family made the journey from what is now Northern Ireland in 1852. We are still working on finding the European home of the Olivers.
 

August Heiden and Fredericka "Rika" Knaack were born and raised in rural northern Germany. They were married on February 21, 1868 and continued their life together in the small village of Gross Wokern. August became a brick mason by trade.

Their first three children were born in Gross Wokern. Heinrich was born in 1866 followed by Ernst in 1868 and Meta in 1870.

In 1873, they made the overland trip to the port city of Hamburg and boarded a ship for New York City. Shortly after arrival for some unknown reason, they travelled west and settled in the City of Monroe, Michigan. Meta died just a few weeks after their arrival and is buried in the Zion Lutheran Church cemetery.

The 1880 census shows them living in Monroe with additional sons, "Willie" i.e. William Carl (1874) and Herman (1876). Herman's fraternal twin sister, Bertha, had died as an infant in 1877. They had another daughter, Lena (Koster) in 1881  and their final child, John, was born in 1884.

By the late 1890s, August and his sons owned farms in Raisinville Township a few miles west of Monroe where they remained for the rest of their lives. For a while in their later years, August and Rika lived with their son, Heinrich, at his farm at 8420 Dixon Road. After Heinrich died suddenly on April 20, 1922 of a heart attack at the age of 52, his parents moved back to their original home on South Custer Road with their youngest son, John.

August died on September 5, 1922 at the age of 84 and Rika was also 84 when she passed away on January 14, 1926.

Included are sections on the Kanseyer family which, according to the German church records, was "alleged to be" the parental ancestors of August Heiden.

The Knaack, Dreier and Regelin families are relatives of Rika Heiden. Some of them also came to America and lived in or near Monroe County and attended Heiden Reunions in the early to mid-1900s.

William Carl Heiden was the fourth child of August and Rika Heiden. and the first one born in the U.S. He was born in the City of Monroe on April 1, 1874 about one year after his parents arrived in America. He is the grandfather of the website's author, Ralph Heiden.

In his youth, William lived on a farm on South Custer Road in Raisinville Township. A couple of miles east on that same road lived Heinrich Rambow and his family. They had immigrated from Gross Wokern in 1874, one year after August Heiden who was also from that tiny town.

William courted one of Heinrich's daughters, Mary, and they were married on February 17, 1897. William's brother, Herman, married Mary's sister, Fredareka Rambow, on February 22, 1900.

William Carl and Mary lived on a couple of different farms in Raisinville Township after their marriage and had their first seven children. On William's 35th birthday in 1909, he purchased the 141 acre farm at 8861 Dixon Road where they would have six more children and live for the rest of their lives.

Mary passed away on June 11, 1963 at the age of 85 and William Carl Heiden died on January 31, 1967 just two months short of his 93rd birthday.

Mary Heiden's ancestors included the Rambow and Milhan families who also lived nearby in Raisinville Township, Monroe County, Michigan. They have their own units on the website.

Arthur Henry Carl Heiden is the father of the author of this website, Ralph Heiden. He was the eighth child of Wm Carl and Mary (Rambow) Heiden and was born in 1912 at the family farm at 8861Dixon Road.

Art married Mildred Mae Roggerman on March 3, 1934 and they had seven children over the following 24 years. Six of them lived to adulthood and one, a boy, died at birth in 1951.

The family moved a lot and each child was born while living in a different house. The author, for instance lived in four different houses (one of them twice) during the first 20 years of his life. All four were located on Dixon Road within just a few miles from Arthur's parents' home..

Art farmed on rented land all of his adult life while also working full-time jobs in factories in Monroe and Dundee, Michigan.

On June 18, 1985, Arthur Heiden passed away at the age of 72. Mildred died on July 3, 2012 just about two months shy of her 98th birthday.

Also included in the website are the ancestors of Mildred Heiden. Her maiden name was Roggerman and her maternal grandfather was Ervin Getty and her grandmother was Lena Belle Oliver. The Roggermans came from Germany and the Gettys from what is now Northern Ireland. We are still in the process discovering the native land of the Olivers.

Several family traditions and activities have been repeated throughout the history of the Heiden Family in Monroe County. Chief among these were the Annual Heiden Family Reunion, the Lutheran Church, historic Bridge School and local community schools.

Many of the earlier generations were farmers or worked for local businesses. We have included a sampling of occupations for some of those ancestors.

Over the decades, we have collected many anecdotes and family remembrances from dozens of people in the families covered in this website. Some were submitted in writing while others resulted from recorded meetings with groups of relatives.

A large majority of the people of the first two or three generations of this group of Heidens in America lived in Monroe County, Michigan. One of August's sons, Herman, moved his family north to Isabella County in 1915 and one of Wm Carl's daughters, Hilda Fuller, lived in Battle Creek, Michigan. The rest made their homes in Monroe County.

The geographic center of most family activities and residences from 1873 into the 1970s revolved around a relatively small area in Raisinville, Ida and Dundee Townships. We have identified over 85 homes, farms, churches, schools, reunion sites and other places in the county which played a role in at least one family member's life.

One of the fun parts of creating this website was the opportunity to finally share the hundreds of family pictures accumulated over the past 50 years. The printed version of The Heiden Family 1995 was only able to display a few dozen images but the website can handle them all. The pictures above are of my grandfather, William Carl Heiden and is part of the Through the Years photo section.

In a section called Family Group Portraits, we have put together a grouping of individual pictures of people in the families of the first three American generations. To the left is the page for the Herman Heiden family. Click on it to see a larger version.

We have pictures for a wide variety of people, events and occasions. Where possible, we have captioned the pictures to the best of our ability but would always be interested in your comments, corrections or stories. Please send an email if you have pictures you would like to have displayed on this website.

Documents and photos are the basis of most genealogical research. We have included census forms, church records from Germany, letters from German relatives from the 1920s, military records, newspaper articles, obituaries, ship passenger lists and wedding anniversaries and announcements.

Also included are contributions from others such as the 1985 book on the Getty Family and notes on the Rambow Family written by Caroline (Weilnau) Rambow in 1925.

As part of this section, we show several versions of family trees and charts that can be generated for various branches of the families. These can be further individualized for a particular group of family members.