Friday morning we left Rothenburg and headed to Grafensteinburg, the little village in Bavaria that my great-great-grandfather had emigrated from when he came to America. We found the street that the house had been on, the house itself was torn down a few years earlier.

As we were photographing the vacant lot, a man from one of the houses came out to see what we were doing. He spoke English and listened to our story. He said he didn’t know any Trinkleins, but we should come to village guest house at 6 when the old people come for a drink, they may know a Trinklein. I told him I hoped the church was open because I wanted to talk to the pastor and look for birth records. He told me the church was closed, but I should go see the pastor at his house, and gave me directions.

After passing through the church and its graveyard, we went to the pastor’s house and knocked on the door. The pastor’s wife answered and called her husband who came to the door and invited us into his home office. We explained our story to him and pulled out the old church birth records. We found one for Johan Peter Trinklein, born September 6 1819 in Grafensteinburg. The pastor visited with us and told how he had spent a year studying in America, and had visited Texas. He had also been a missionary in New Guinea. We thanked him and then got on the road to Munich.