Well, technically, I didn’t find Simon; the genealogist at the library found Simon. She found Simon in one of the books in the genealogy room at the Jasper Public Library, listed as Joseph and Mary’s (spelled Maria) infant son. No, I’m not talking about my little brother (who’s hardly little at six feet tall) but Simon Ringwald who came over from Germany in 1843. Neat, huh? I meant to post about this earlier this week when Kathy (the genealogist) gave me the ship’s passenger list, but, well, I’ve been easily distracted as of late. ^_^ It’s neat though, seeing a copy of the actual ship’s passenger list, seeing that they arrived in New York on a ship called Albany. It’s hard to read because it’s a photocopy of an old document, but it’s still cool. Fun fact: Ringwald isn’t spelled “Ringwald” on this document (or in the book we have at the library) but instead “Ringswald.” I think this warrants further investigation, don’t you? 😉

Actually, I’ve been thinking about trying to gather up family history and get it into a format that can be published in a book. I have some experience with editing documents for publication, after all, and we have a scanner here to help with documents that can’t be easily typed up. Maybe one of these days I’ll try to have a collaborative weekend with Katie since she’s got a ton of the family history already written up in binders from her 4-H years. The library here has access to on-line databases where I can find more information, and Kathy even said that the birth records of Simon Ringswald can be obtained from the churches in Sasbach, Germany (one or the other of them: there are two Sasbachs in Germany near each other). Too cool. I know that a lot of the family research has already been done by other family members (Katie, Aunt Pamela, Uncle Charlie, Great Uncle Joe), but I could work to put it together into books for them. That is, of course, once I finish with the novel I’m currently working on and after NaNoWriMo and the next book. It could be something I work on off and on though. Scan a few documents here, type up a few pages there, etc. Sounds like fun to me. I can already tick off some information using just one hand: me, dad, Grandpa Wilfred, Great-grandpa Ben, and Great-great-grandpa Simon. See? I can count back to Germany on one hand. 🙂 Family history is neat. I’m looking forward to showing Simon to Simon when he comes down this weekend. I wonder if he’ll think it’s as neat as I do.