January 2002  Volume 5   Issue 4 Issued Quarterly

Gossip/Klatsch (formerly Dies und Das)
Birthdays
A Word To The Newer Members
Without Cousins?
Four More Kids Bring Total to 101
Links
Midi Music Mini Mall

(Editor's note: The underlined persons are Konrad's Kids.)

Charlene Laur Soos reports she and her husband Bob have sold their home near Niagara Falls, NY and are soon moving to their home near  Lady Lake, Florida which is north of Orlando....Friedemann Rehse of Berlin and his wife Frauke were blessed on 10 October 2001 with the birth of a baby boy, Golo. This information was passed on to your editors by his sister Traude Rehse Scholich of Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart...Karlheinz Schoenfeld of Wappingers Falls, NY reported in September that Alfred Ziemen, the husband of Karl's sister, Sonja Schoenfeld Ziemen, had passed away on September 23rd near Herrenberg, Germany. Alfred was close to age 70, a retired engineer, a computer enthusiast and a good man. I had the pleasure of meeting him and Sonja in Laichingen in June of 2000...Milton Schwenk and wife Joann of Yakima, Washington are spending the next couple months in sunny Arizona...Jim Schwenk and wife Mary are flying to Sunnyvale, CA on Jan. 7th to spend three weeks spoiling their three grandchildren. The mother, Kathy Schwenk Axtell, doesn't seem to mind...How many of you would travel to Laichingen, Germany if we should decide to hold a Schwenk Reunion there sometime in 2003 or 2004? To those who would, please inform your editors...Gary Schwenk of Binghamton, NY recently dropped us a line, and from that we learned he is a professor at Binghamton University in the Department of English, General Literature, and Rhetoric...Peter Hayes of near Albany, NY reports "there is no news to report." Well, that is not entirely correct. He did ask us to add his sister Judy Hayes Cosgrove onto the list of Konrad's Kids. See article further down...Uli Schwenk of Münsingen near Laichingen writes that a Friedrich Hilsenbeck of Laichingen intends to visit Uli this month to discuss Uli's Schwenk ancestry. I believe that Friedrich is also an descendant of Konrad, but is not online, and I am waiting for data from him to prove this.  Why doesn't everyone get online?...Ernst Schwenk of Lachingen, the father of Gerd and Jochen,  wrote me his very first email ever in December. I met him and his wife Doris in June of 2000. They had invited me to their home for lunch. I will urge his sons to get an email address for their father so that he can be in our Klub.
 
 

Birthdays   For Birthday List for Konrad's Kids, click on cake >

A Word To The Newer Members

So, who is Konrad and who are his Kids?  Reasonable questions. Konrad (spelled also as Conrad) Schwenk is my earliest documented paternal ancestor who lived in the linen weaving village of Laichingen near Ulm north of the Danube from 1601 to 1686. He was a weaver. He and wife Magdalena had four sons who survived, married and had children there in Laichingen.

Konrad's Kids are his living descendants who have computers and send/receive electronic mail. At this point in time (Jan 5, 2002) there are 101 known Kids. All but seven are descended from Andreas b. 1641. 12 of these live in Konrad's home village (now a city of 10,000); they are descended from Bernhard b. 1650 & Heinrich b. 1645.

In January, 1996 when I first came online, there were only six of us, that is, six online descendants of Konrad that we knew of. As time went by, more and more of our known kin came online. Then in January, 1997, our SchwenkNet Website was created (as of 11/00 defunct). Through visits there by internet users who had entered Schwenk into search engines, nearly a dozen other distant online cousins have come to light and are now "members."

So, what is this Konrad's Kids' Klub?  What is its purpose? Nothing in particular. It is simply a network of diverse people on two continents who can trace one line of their ancestry back to a common ancestor. The other thing obviously in common is that each is online. Until March of 1999, we would send a monthly newsletter to each member via email.  Since then, this newsletter has been posted in this Uncle Don's Corner Website, and now on a quarterly basis. Click here to see a map showing the location of each Kid.

Your two editors maintain a list of Konrad's Kids' email addresses. But for the sake of privacy, we have felt it better not to publish this list anywhere in this Web site or in these newsletters. However, if any of you wish to have a copy of this list, just drop me or Jim Schwenk a line. Don Schwenk

Without Cousins?

Recently I met a man who told me that he didn't have any cousins. In fact his family had dwindled down to just himself and his brother. No aunts, no uncles, no grandparents, no parents; actually no relatives that he knew of. This totally amazed me and I asked him if he missed not having any cousins. His response was matter of fact, "It's difficult to miss what you have never had." I told him I understood, but at the same moment I felt a deep sadness for him and continued to wonder what it would be like having no cousins and what this fellow must be missing. From that time on, the thought of cousins took me back to that conversation. Whenever I thought of cousins and my relationship to them as in heredity or socially I found myself carefully pondering and asking myself, "What makes a cousin so special or important?"

I looked for cousins in books and magazines. Entered "Cousins" in search engines. All to no avail! I looked through a textbook and notebook from the class I had taken on Marriage and the Family some summers ago. The textbook dealt with all the troubles and tribulations that could be found in family living today - one paragraph on the extended family, and made no mention of cousins! Perhaps cousins were not so important in the world of social studies! My fascination persisted. Making no further attempts to consult reference materials, I decided to rely on my own memories, observing, and talking to my own children and others about cousins.

Here are some things I took note of. I fear that many of the comments may sound totally all too obvious or trite to most readers, but I think it necessary to be said.

Cousins are found at the outer limits of the extended family, and may at times unfortunately remain unknown to each other. Fortunately, families that are close to each other often produce cousins that are likewise bound to each other. We know that traditional family gatherings such as Christmas and reunions may often create this bond. A four year old may not be able to explain how she is related to her aunt or uncle, but will be able to tell you the names of all of her cousins. Children growing up in a well adjusted family know, love, hate, and tolerate their brothers and sisters. This is all part of growing up. I think that each child at some point or another asks, "Is this as good as it gets?" And about that time, cousins are discovered in that ever expanding world out there. Cousins become something extra special in a child's life. Now even more kids and more family to enjoy, and friendships more treasured than many of those found on the school yard. I think of cousins as being the "Frosting on the Cake" in every child's life.

You may be surprised to hear that it has been cousins that have indirectly contributed to our own self worth. Hard to believe? Parents of my generation (pre Boomers) were not all that free with praise if you happened to do something well. It would never do to give us a "big head", they often said. To find out what your parent thought of you it often was necessary to hide some place close to the telephone and over-hear your mother bragging about your accomplishments to Aunt Helen, who at the same time was singing praises of your cousins. Humility for us, and bragging material for mothers. Thank goodness for cousins! And for that matter, thank heavens for Aunt Helen!

I asked my brother Richard Schwenk his thoughts about cousins. He reflected on meeting a cousin he found for the first time. "Even without the advantage of bonding, once a cousin is discovered, there is that wink of recognition as a minimum sign of being more that just a member of the human race. Like the time in Laichingen in 1995 that Heinrich Christof Schwenk and I discovered that we had a common ancestor in Konrad the Great. We both gave each other "high fives"! I will never forget that moment!"

And so I will continue to research what I call the "cousin phenomenon". I guess now it's a hobby for me. You probably share with me the amazement of cousin watching too. The closeness and dedication of cousins to each other is often unsurpassed.  I have a nephew Christopher, in Providence Rhode Island who spent two days in an airport trying to get a flight out to Wausau WI. to celebrate his cousin's (my son David) wedding! Cousins often have full use of a car or an apartment when they come to visit. This welcome often not even reserved for friends! Cousin often wear this badge of honor.

Surely you cousins out there could help me in my quest for cousin anticdotes that prove my theories or you may have theories of your own. Please send them to me. They will be greatly appreciated. I will continue to report on my cousin watching in the future.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the Konrad's Kids who attended the Reunion in the Black Hills last June. It was a heroic effort on your part to travel so far. A wonderul, most enjoyable time! I hope that we can reunite soon with the addition of all of Konrad's Kids.

Last year's January issue of the SNNL told us that there were 83 Konrad's Kids online. This January there are 101. Let's find some more!

A Most Happy New Year to All Cousins.

Jim Schwenk
 

Four More Kids Bring Total to 101

Since the last newsletter, four more online descendants of our Konrad have come to the attention of your editors. Here they are in the order of their "joining".  Welcome aboard!

James Albert is a mechanical engineer in Buffalo, NY, where he was born in 1953. His sister Sue Albert appeared in this same column in the October 2001 issue. Here is his descent from Konrad.

Isabell Gorzelany was born September 18, 1987 in Kochstetten where she resides with her family. Incidentally, Kochstetten is just a hoot and a holler from Mundingen where my gg-grandfather Johannes Schwenk was born. I was a guest in the Gorzelany home for one week in May of 2000. Her sister Ursula has been online and a member of our Network for about three years. Here is her tree.

Karlheinz Wurster was born in Urach, now called Bad Urach, near Stuttgart in 1940. He resides near Munich and is a professor and doctor of pathology. One year ago, we came into contact through snailmail. He knew of his great-grandmother Johanna Friderike Schwenk born in 1844 near Laichingen, but had no information on her paternal ancestry. I then had the pleasure of tracing that back to our Patriarch Konrad Schwenk later that year. Karlheinz recently came online. Here is his descent from Konrad.

Austin Schwenk is our 100th member. He born on Oct 2, 2000 in Boise where he resides with his parents. Yes, I agree he is a bit young to be online. But he does have his own email address and thus qualifys. And besides that, he is my grandson, the son of Rodney. And I say it's okay to bring him into the Klub.  Here he is trying to get to the keyboard. 

Judy Hayes Cosgrove was born March 30 1940. Peter Hayes and Sally Hayes Downey are her siblings, both members of our klub. Judy and husband William F. Cosgrove have three children. Here is her tree.

Peter Hayes wrote to me on Oct 10th saying, "Thanks. I'll rattle the bushes for some more," meaning he will check around to see if any more of his close kin are also online, but not yet in our "Klub." As you can see, he did shake the bushs. I would ask that you all do the same. Don Schwenk
 

Links
 http://www.fontfiles.com/ Fonts are fun. Here you can download a great variety of them, many of which are free.
 http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=donschwenk This is Don Schwenk's online family tree. More than 12,000 individuals appear in this tree, including, of course, all of Konrad's Kids. All the names are linked to their parents, and descendants - if any. We think you will find this very interesting and informative.

 http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=laur1 This is Charleen Laur Soos' online family tree. It contains more than 17,000 individuals. It works the same as explained above.

http://www.terraserver.com/  Here you can find topographic maps and aerial photographs of places in the US. Check it out. Very interesting!
 http://www.kbb.com/  This is Kelly Blue Book's Website. Here you can check on the retail and wholesale value of your car.
http://www.laichingen.de/ This is Laichingen's official homepage. Check out what's happening in our "cradle community." In the German language, naturally.

http://www.infospace.com/  Here you can locate phone numbers and addresses of people in many countries of the world.
http://www.thumbsplus.com/ will take you to the homepage of ThumbsPlus (Cerious Software, Inc). ThumbsPlus is a remarkable image viewer and organizer program.
http://www.paintshoppro.com/ - This is where you can download as shareware an excellent image editing program.
 
 

Midi Music Mini Mall

Some Webpages contain hidden imbedded links to midi files. That is, soon after you open the page, music begins to play which is usually entertaining, but the visitor has no control over this. Here, we will give you the freedom of choice. If you choose, simply click on the links and adjust the volume according to your preferences. A tip: If a large window opens containing the midi file, simply minimize it so as to allow the continued reading of the newsletter while the music plays in the background. If that doesn't work, right click (Windows users) on the link, then select Open in New Window.
 

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