Lincoln, Nebraska

I have finally gotten the motivation to reach out to others who share my fascination with this subject and headed down a parallel path of discovery. The obvious starting point is Lincoln, Nebraska, headquarters of AHSGR and home to their museum and library. It is December in America's Midwest and the weather can deteriorate quickly. A storm is coming in, which prompts me to make the 500 mile journey from Denver to Lincoln on a Monday in order to get to Lincoln before the storm hits. I call the museum first to find out their protocol in case of severe storms. The lady on the phone tells me that they do sometimes close the museum, often in parallel with school closures. I take my chances nonetheless.

I detour off of Interstate 80 south to Hastings, then east along State Highway 6, to the town of Sutton, Nebraska (population 1,700). It is late afternoon when I arrive and already beginning to get dark. I find the cemetery on the northern outskirts and check the board which is conveniently placed behind glass panes under a small canopy. The inhabitants of the cemetery list multiple names of Ochsners, a few Kleins and a few Ulmers, all of which bear some relationship. The name I am looking for, that Jacob Ridinger, is not listed.

I proceed back into town and stop off at the local library. By chance I see a book chronicling the 125 year history of the town. The librarian, despite a frenzy of small children participating in a holiday coloring contest of some sort, finds a few minutes to spend with me and shows me a few collections of books which pertain to my subject of interest. I ask her about other cemeteries in the area, especially in Grafton, Fillmore county. She says there are other old cemeteries around.

I proceed to purchase the 125 year history of Sutton, which has plenty of old photographs of my relatives, and head back on highway 6 towards Lincoln. I soon pass through the town of Grafton, population around 400, in Filmore county. The images I have now are of the landscape, not much different from the rolling fields of Tatarstan in Russia and, from the aerial pictures of Rohrbach and Worms, not such a distant place anymore. I picture what this area may have looked like when Jacob first came here, an untamed and uncultivated region very much like his previous home in Ukraine. Such a shame, though, that he would have to leave his established home in Ukraine to begin again in this new land.

The next days in Lincoln are not productive, but I take this in stride as one of the frustrating times that us researchers must often endure. The storm arrives as predicted and I am snowbound in my room at the Days Inn, with the museum, and practically everything else in Lincoln, shut down. I do manage to call Jim Griess, the AHSGR coordinator for the village of Rohrbach. We have a lengthy conversation of how we are related, how I pronounce my last name, have I been to Rohrbach, and about the regions in France and southwest Germany where our ancestors originated. He says Jacob is buried in a smaller cemetery a few miles north of the one I was in, and he has a photo of the headstone. He has a 4-wheel drive truck and lives about 10 miles outside of Lincoln. We will try to meet at the museum tomorrow.

I am well rested and up at 6:00 am. The snow has stopped and skies are clear, but the wind is now busy re-arranging the previous day's snowfall into even deeper drifts, and the wind chill is well below zero. I take my shower and go downstairs for a breakfast of cereal and bagels. I come back to my room and write to this blog. At 9:00 am I venture out. After a bit of digging, I extricate myself out of the Days Inn parking lot and onto the main street. I see that D street has been plowed so I turn left past the AHSGR museum and see it's still covered with a foot of snow. I turn back onto 9th street and head for the University of Nebraska. Its closed. So is the book store, and the next bookstore, and the next. I'm freezing and looking for a Starbucks to warm up. The fellow ahead of me is carrying a cup of coffee, so I ask him where that coffee shop is, and Starbucks. I hit the first one and spend some time there, then over to Starbucks. Jim calls at 12:00 and says lets meet at Mill Coffee at 1:00. I have an hour to kill so I swing back by one of the bookstores to see if they are open now. To my luck, it is, and the proprietor has a good selection. Three used books and $20 later I'm on my way to Mills.

Jim shows up shortly after 1:00. We talk about family history. He knows all about the Lodi connection. Like me, he's more interested in the history than the genealogy. I get some ideas about where to go next. South Dakota has a good archive. Sutton, due to the railroad, was the starting point in the U.S. Fanned out from there to Texas, California, South Dakota - Sutton was running out of free land. There are city histories in Odessa and Kherson (Ukraine). My next stop is Ukraine! Follow it with Germany, France. I'm ready!