My maternal cousin, Tom O’Brien, is a master historian and genealogist who literally has traveled the world in search of facts and photographs, particularly of the Litterst family. He and his wife have travelled extensively.
Tom and his French wife, Marguerite, raised two sons and live in the Portland, Oregon area.
Our great grandfather, Max Litterst, migrated in 1866 at 19 years of age and was naturalized November 3, 1873 at the Circuit Court in Peoria. His witnesses were cousin John Wichman and Henry Tanner. According to the Baden Emigration Index, Item #40461, Max Litterst had grown up in Ettenheim, population 11,000, in southwestern Ortenaukreis on the Rhein Plain in Europe, southwest of Berlin, Germany, closer to, and east of Paris, and south of Luxemburg.
Max was the father of my grandmother, Josephine Litterst, and he was the first of four family members to come to Peoria. The other members were Karoline in 1867, Josef in 1869, and Franz in 1871.
The city of Ettenheim is in southwestern Ortenaukreis on the Rhein Plain. Elevation ranges from 190 meters to 312 meters above sea level. Four other villages combined into the city to give it a total population of 11,000. Ettenheim was founded in 700 A.D. and was granted status as a free city (Stadtrecht) in the 12th Century.
Ettenheim’s Catholic parish served as the mother church for Altdorf, Grafenhausen, Ringsheim and Kappel am Rhein. The church records begin in 1583.
Two steamer trunks were brought over by members of the family and now reside in California with other cousins. Because my grandfather, Florentine Richard Scherer, father of my mother, was born in Lawrenceburg, Ind., it may be unlikely that he would have brought the trunks to Peoria. So how they ended up with California cousins remains a bit of a mystery, or, actually he did bring them from Indiana to Peoria and from there one of his children, who relocated to California, took them with him.
Ettenheim was founded in the 8th Century by Eddo, bishop of Strasbourg, and the Benedictine abbey of Ettenheimmunster was founded at that time. In 1809 it was made the seat of its own district until 1824. Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien took refuge there in 1801 after he was suspected in a plot against Napoleon. He was arrested March 15 and later executed in Paris.
The coat of arms of Ettenheim displays a castle in red with an open gate and three towers topped with crosses upon a field of white. This pattern was designed in 1901 by the Karlsruhe General State Archives after a seal from 1545. Since 1370 local towns seals had depicted a Gothic structure with three towers and a crenelated wall as a reference to Ettenheim’s defenses.
Ettenheim has five boroughs (Stadtteile) and is connected to Germany’s network of roadways by Bundesaitobahn 5 and Bundesstrabe 3 which pass through the city. Its climate average low is 43 degrees to an average high of 62. It is northeast, in the buntsandstein mountains of the Central Black Forest. In the foothills of those mountains that fall within Ettenheim’s municipal area are the wetlands of the Seltenbach which are protected as the Saure Matten nature reserve.
Isn’t history a wonder? Absolutely adore it!