You must have accidentally stumbled onto this site since we are not officially open for viewing yet. We hope to have the entire site tested and fully functional by March 1, 2025 when all pages and links will be available. None of the hyperlinks that will appear on this page are active now.  In the meantime, here is a summary of the contents of the website.

[Note: Facts, dates and data are only included for NON-LIVING family members as is the custom for online family histories.]
 
 

Welcome to the online version of The Heiden Family book which was distributed in 1995. We started the research on this family in 1973 and it has been 30 years since the completion of the book. Over the past three decades, we have been working on and off on the family history and recently decided that a website would do a great job of sharing the huge amount of information to family members everywhere.

The printed edition could only contain a few family photos while this 2024 website includes over 1,000 plus new facts and many added features. The website is structured to follow the Heiden and related families from their homes in Europe to Monroe County in southeastern Michigan.

This particular Heiden Family originated in the Mecklenburg region of northern Germany. August and Rika Heiden emigrated in 1873 and made their way to Monroe County, Michigan. They were the parents of 8 children and had 35 grandchildren and 105 great grandchildren.

Although we include information on all of August's children, emphasis is given to his son William Carl and his wife, Mary. They raised 13 children and had 38 grandchildren, (including the author of this website) followed by 90 great grandchildren. The number of people genetically related to August and William Carl is in the hundreds and counting.

The eighth child of William Carl and Mary was Arthur Heiden, the father of the author. He was married to Mildred Roggerman and they had seven children. Like all of his siblings except sister, Hilda Fuller, Art spent his entire life in Monroe County.

Heiden is the paternal branch of my family but the maternal sides are also covered on this website. Rika's maiden name was Knaack and her mother was a Dreier. Mary's parents were named Rambow and her maternal grandparents were the Milhans. Mildred's parents were Roggermans and Gettys and her maternal grandparents were named Oliver.

If you are a member of this large family, please share a link to this website with your relatives. If you have comments, family stories or photos you would like to share, please send an EMAIL.
 

 
 

Heiden is not a very common surname in Germany or the U.S. In our research which started in 1971, 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 son, Wm Carl Heiden are also documented. 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 Knaack, Kanseyer and Dreier relatives stayed in Germany.

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

This unit covers the Heidens and other relatives who did not leave Germany. These are the close ancestors of August Heiden as well as other relatives in the Knaack, Kanseyer, Rambow, Dreier, Milhan and Roggerman branches.

Included are maps and descriptions of the  regions of origin for the ancestors of the families covered by this website. At the time they lived there, Germany was a collection of dukedoms and principalities. They lived in the duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin which is now called Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In 1871, Germany was consolidated into the country we know today.

The Heidens, Rambows, Knaacks and Milhans all came from very small rural villages in northern Germany. Included here is a description of their home villages and which family members originated in each or what events such as marriages took place in them.

We have pulled together some basic historical perspective for the conditions in which our families lived in the "old country". At that time, they were part of a dukedom ruled by the man pictured to the right (Duke Frederick Wilhelm). Knowing the economic, political and societal circumstances can help to understand what motivated them to take such a drastic move in order to better their lives.
In 1996, we visited the area of northern Germany where August and Rika Heiden lived before coming to the U.S. in 1873. Starting from the port city of Rostock, we drove the 30 miles or so to the area where the Heidens and Rambows once called home.
Although the surname Heiden is not extremely common, there are others by that name found in various parts of Germany and the U.S. Over the years, we have accumulated names of notable people named Heiden who are not, to our current understanding anyway, related to the Heidens of Monroe County.

Konrad Heiden (right) was one of the first authors to write a negative book about Adolph Hitler. No relation to us, as far as we know.

 

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 long lost 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" (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 in with his brother, John on South Custer Road.

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, Laas 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.
 

August Heiden lived in rural Germany from his birth in 1838 to 1873 when he and his family left for the U.S. This section gives a glimpse into what life there might have been like for the Heidens and the Rambows.
This describes the situation and details of the emigration of August and Rika with their first three children, Heinrich, Ernst and Meta in 1873. They arrived in New York and were processed through Castle Island, a predecessor of Ellis Island.
 
When the August Heiden family arrived in the U.S. they quickly made their way from New York to Monroe County, Michigan. In the 1880 census, they are listed as living in the City of Monroe.

Their young daughter, Meta, died there only a few weeks after their arrival. After a decade or so, August purchased a farm and a separate piece of property in Raisinville Township just west of Monroe.
August and Rika had eight children including Heinrich, Ernst, Meta, William Carl, Herman, Bertha, Lena (Koster) and John. Meta and Bertha both died in childhood. All the others with the exception of Herman spent the rest of their lives in Monroe County.

According to the German church records, August Heiden's father was "alleged to be" a man named Johann Canseir. As we followed that person back in history, it appears that the actual name was probably Kanseyer.

This is most likely due to the general illiteracy in those times when various record keepers had to figure out spelling based on the spoken word alone.

The maiden name of August's wife, Rika, was Knaack. Again, this is a name that had a variety of spellings in the old records.
The maiden name  of Rika Heiden's mother was Dreier. This branch of the family leads to the relationship with the Laas and Regelin families who settled in Toledo, Ohio and Monroe County respectively.

In the early to later 1900s, members of the Laas and Burmeister families were regular attendees at the annual Heiden Family Reunions. They were related to the family through the Dreier connection to Rika Heiden.
A family by this name lived in Monroe County near the homes of many of the Heidens. They were related through the same branch as the Laas Family.
 
 

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.
 

There were 3 William Heidens in the early generations. To differentiate among them, we will include their middle names. William Carl Heiden (left) to avoid confusion with his youngest son, William Frank Heiden (right). (They were sometimes mistakenly designated as Sr. and Jr.) William Leo Heiden is their nephew and cousin, respectively. He was a son of Heinrich Heiden.

Wm Carl Heiden married Mary Rambow in 1897 and they spent the next 66 years together raising their 13 children on a few farms in Monroe County.
 
 

From 1898 to 1927, they welcomed 13 children into the world. Mary was 20 when she had the first child, Edna and 49 at the time of the birth of their last child, Norma.

All of their children lived to adulthood and they produced 38 grandchildren. With the exception of one daughter, Hilda Fuller, all of the children spent their lives in Monroe County.

 

On April 1, 1909 on his 35th birthday, William Carl Heiden purchased what became to be known as the home farm at 8861 Dixon Road in Raisinville Township.

Seven of their 13 children were born while the family lived on this farm. Over the years, at different times, over 35 people lived in the house with William Carl and Mary. Some of their children and their families came back to live with Ma and Pa for short periods during the Great Depression. Wm Frank, his wife and seven children shared the house after he purchased the farm from his parents in 1960.
 

As part of the 1995 Heiden Family book, many people submitted written anecdotes about William Carl and Mary Heiden. These are reproduced here to help us understand our ancestors better.

If you have stories or memories you would like to share, please send them in an EMAIL.
Also while working on the 1995 book, I met with two groups of aunts, uncles and cousins to talk about Heiden family topics. I brought along a tape recorder and transcripts of these discussions are included in this section.

We are also working on getting the tapes digitized so that you can hear the voices of these relatives on your computer or other device.
Included as a sub-topic is the history of Heinrich and Wilhelmina (Milhan) Rambow who were the parents of Mary Heiden. The Rambows lived in the same village in Germany as August Heiden and they all settled within a few miles of each other in Monroe County.
This is the family of Mary's mother, Wilhelmina "Minnie" (Milhan) Rambow. Her brother, Fred Milhan, came to Monroe County at the same time and built a log cabin a mile or so from the Rambow farm. He lived to be over 100 years old.
 

 
 

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 on Dixon 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 no two of their children were born while living in the same house. The author, for instance lived in four different houses (one of them twice) during the first 20 years of his life. All four houses were on Dixon Road.

Art farmed on rented land all of his adult life while 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.
 

Art and Mil were married on March 3, 1934 and lived together for the next 51 years until Art's death in 1985. During that time, they lived in many different houses and had seven children.
Their 7 children were born over a 24 year span. A boy child died at birth in 1951. The other children were all born in even numbered years and were either four or six years apart.
Ralph Raymond and Adeline "Addie" (Getty) Roggerman were the parents of Mildred. The family originated on Rugen Island in northern Germany where Ralph's father Charles lived before emigrating in 1882.
Ervin and Lena (Oliver) Getty were Mildred Heiden's maternal grandparents. Their ancestors came from a small village in what is now Northern Ireland in 1852. A book about the family by Monita Fergus was distributed in 1985 and it has been the source for much of what we know about the Gettys. The entire book is included on the website.
 

Lena (Oliver) Getty was Mildred Heiden's maternal grandmother. The Getty and Oliver families were neighbors in Ridgeway Township in Lenawee County, Michigan. Properties owned by the Oliver family members in 1874 were all within about a mile of the western border of Monroe County. We are still working on this family and will have a more complete narrative by late 2025.
 

 
 

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 and the historic Bridge School which those in the early generations attended through the 8th grade.

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

A large number of the early generations of the Heidens and Rambows attended the Bridge School which was the oldest public school in Michigan. Until it closed in the late 1940s, it only took students through the 8th grad.

Later generations attended high school in Dundee or Ida, Michigan. A few were graduates of schools in Deerfield, Britton, Milan, Battle Creek and other places.
 

The Lutheran Church was a central element in the lives of the Heiden families in Raisinville Township. St Matthew Lutheran Church and later, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church played major roles in the lives of our ancestors.
For over 80 years starting in the 1920s, the Heiden family held an annual or periodic reunion on or around the Fourth of July. The Herman Heiden family in Isabella County also held annual reunions.
In the early generations of the Heiden Family, a large percentage of people worked as farmers or as hired labor on farms. We have included lists of some of the occupations held by those in the first 3 American generations of Heidens.
This section includes all the family stories that we have collected over the decades. They are divided by the person being remembered so that you can see what people related about say, Helma Nickel, for example or about life on the home farm or memories of Bridge School. If you have stories you would like to share, please send them to us in an EMAIL.
 

Many of the later generations of the Heiden Family were involved with a wide variety of high school activities. We have been able to find dozens of images of over 50 of our family members showing their involvement in the National Honor Society, Top Ten, Sports, Plays, FFA and other activities during their high school years. The oldest pictures are from a 1928 yearbook and there are many from the 1950s and 60s.
 
 

A large percentage of the people of the first two or three generations of this group of Heidens in America lived in Monroe County. 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 center of the vast majority of family activities and residences from 1873 into the 1970s revolved around a relatively small area in Raisinville, Ida and Dundee Townships. We have documented over 80 homes, farms, churches, schools, reunion sites and other places in the county which played a role in at least one family member's life.
 

Under Topic 1, we cover the small villages and locations where our ancestors resided in Germany. Most of the people lived in small houses in tiny villages a few miles from the farms where they worked during the day. They would often walk out to their jobs in the morning and walk back home each night.
In the early American generations, almost all of the people in the Heiden and Rambow families lived at least part of their lives in Monroe County. We have information on over 80 places including farms, homes, churches, schools and reunion sites associated with Heiden Family members.
 
One of August and Rika Heiden's children, Herman, moved to Isabella County in central Michigan in 1915. They raised their four children on a farm in that county and many of their grandchildren still reside in the mid-Michigan area.
This website concentrates on a group of Heidens in Monroe County, Michigan. However, there are people with this surname in other parts of Michigan and even in the Petersburg and Dundee areas of Monroe County who are from other branches of the family. They may or may not be blood relatives and only further research will make that determination.
Through random sources, we have found maps and information that tell where people with the surname, Heiden, live in the U.S. Of course, we have no evidence that any of these are of direct relationship to the Monroe County Heidens. Further research may make connections with some of them...or not.

 
 

One of the fun parts of creating this website was the opportunity to finally share the hundreds of family pictures accumulated over the past 30 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.

We have photos 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 contribute and have displayed on this website.
 

We have gathered multiple images of over 140 people as individuals or married couples at various stages of their lives. These have been placed together on a single page to show the physical transitions we make over our lives.
For 65 family units, we have pulled together a portrait picture of the parents and individual children to display on a single page.
There are many pages devoted to displaying pictures of family members as individuals, married couples or in groups.


Since the early 1920s, the Heidens have held a family reunion most summers. We have many photos from reunions throughout the years.



Ancestry.com has a section which contains digital copies of high school yearbooks for hundreds of places across the U.S. For the schools attended by our family members, not every year is represented. However, we have collected historic photos of relatives wherever possible to display on this website.
The Village of Dundee was at the center of a lot of the activities of our families. We have included historical photos showing the village in the 1950s and 60s including the prominent businesses, DHS and items of interest.
The oldest public school in Michigan was located in Raisinville Township just about a mile from the home of William Carl and Mary Heiden. We have photos of the school over the decades and class or individual photos of many of the students. Also included are copies of newspaper articles about the school and its students.
Included here are pictures taken in and around St Matthew Lutheran Church in Raisinville Township. This was the original place of worship for August and Rika Heiden and Heinrich and Minnie Rambow after they came to America. In the 1960s, St Matthew joined with St Mark of Ida to form the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church.
We have gathered several home movie films of family activities taken as far back as the 1940s. These are in the process of being digitized and we hope to have them posted on the website in the near future.
We would be happy to share any of the images of people, places or documents included in this website or in our collection. Hit the More button for information on how to submit or receive family digital images.

 
 

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 anniversary 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 Rambow in 1925.

As part of this section, we also show several versions of family trees and charts that can be generated for various branches of the families. These can be further individualized for smaller family units.
 

In 1971 for some reason, I decided I wanted to know more about the history of my family. I was 23 years old and my mother, Mildred, and I went to see the oldest living person from the first generation of Heidens born in the U.S. That was my great Aunt Agnes, widow of John Heiden, son of August.

During our visit, she went to her attic and brought down a small wooden box that contained documents and letters from Germany and that was the beginning of this long search.
The U.S. Census is a primary source for information about individuals and families. It can show details on where families lived and how many family members resided together at a point in history. They also give information on the occupations, level of education, year of immigration and other family background items.
Baptismal records, wedding certificates and confirmation documents are included here for many family members.
 
 
We have data on around 3,000 individuals documented in the RootsMagic genealogy software on our computer. Included on the website are monthly lists for birthdays, weddings and deaths of the non-living people in the database.
 

Back in 1971, I contacted what was then East Germany to get information about our ancestors. Their responses included some of the earliest documents relating to August and Rika Heiden in their native land of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Germany.
Using PhotoShop and the genealogy software, RootsMagic, we are able to create many different types of family trees and charts. We can customize these to your particular family and provide you with a digital file (at no charge) which you can print.
This book is available here in digital form. We have used it extensively on the Getty family which is in the maternal ancestry of Mildred (Mrs. Arthur) Heiden, the author's mother.
In the 1920s, relatives of August and Rika Heiden sent letters relating the awful economic conditions in Germany at that time and thanking their American relatives for the help they were able to provide. We have had these letters translated into English and also show copies of the originals.
Starting with microfilms from the Church of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah to online sources such as Ancestry.com, we have been able to search the handwritten records of small churches in Germany. We have copies of birth, marriage and death records for many of our German born ancestors.
When August and his family left Germany in 1873, they had to acquire certain documentation from their local government to allow them to emigrate. These documents were in a box that I got from my great aunt Agnes Heiden in 1971. They have also been translated into English and the originals are shown too.
 
Many family members have had interactions with the military ranging from filling out draft registrations to serving in peacetime and in wars. Some served in the Austro-Prussian War to the Civil War to World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf.
 
 
Family members have had their names in the papers for a wide variety of reasons (always good). This ranges from sports stories to school honors to recognition for contributions to their community or service organizations.

 

 

(Walter Berns)
 
We have accumulated obituaries, death notices, funeral services and other related items for over 165 family members. Many of these came from newspaper clippings while others were available online.

 
 

This includes names of famous and a few infamous people in Germany or the U.S. who have the surname Heiden. At this time, we do not know if any of these people are directly related to the Heidens of Monroe County.
In 1925, Caroline (Welnau) Rambow, wife of Henry Martin Rambow, III left some hand written notes on the history of the Rambow family from Germany to America.
Here we have included copies of receipts from the late 1800s into the early twentieth century for transactions by Heiden family members. Also represented are mortgage documents that help us understand their early days in Michigan.
 
 
As part of the research, we have acquired copies of the individual ship passenger lists that include the members of our family. We also have pictures of the actual ships that brought them across the Atlantic Ocean
Several of the surnames and some given names in the family background are found in different records with different spellings. Some are just mistakes while others are the result of living in a largely illiterate culture 150 to 200 years ago where only the parish pastor could read and write. He would only hear the name spoken and did his best figuring out how it should be spelled.
 
 
This section contains August Heiden's citizenship application and naturalization documents. There is also a copy of a land abstract for 8861 Dixon Road, the home of Wm Carl and Mary Heiden among other documents.
This includes newspaper articles, invitations, and announcements about significant wedding anniversaries of family members.
 
 
These are announcements and news reports about the weddings of many family members.
 
 

 

If you have any comments, suggestions, pictures, family stories or anything that would help others to know and value this wonderful family, please send me an EMAIL.

Also, please spread the word about heidensofmonroe.com to other members of these families. The whole idea of this website is to help family members know more about their roots.

Thank You!
Ralph Heiden

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