Great-great Grandfather, George Michel Grimm, was born 24 Jan 1822, son of Georg Ludwig Grimm and Elisabetha Dauer in Oberotterbach, Südliche Weinstraße, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Three other sisters were born after Georg, Susanna (1823), Philipinna (1825) and Eva Margarethe (b. 1828 d. 1832).
Georg Michel lived a five minute walk from the new schoolhouse built behind the Evangelical (Lutheran) church in Oberotterbach. He would have been among the first students attending.
There is a confirmation record for Georg Grimm him that took place in the Lutheran church on Palm Sunday, in the 1830s.
Oberotterbach is 6.5 miles from the French town of Oberhoffen-lès-Wissembourg, where George moved and worked as a stone mason. We don’t know exactly when Georg Michel moved to Oberhoffen, or even where he married, but in July 1842, he bore a daughter named Catherine Grimm, after her mother, Katherine Müller (a Calvininst, as were all the Müllers) who was from the village. Catherine Grimm would marry Philip Günther, of Birlenbach about 1873. By that time, her parents had already emigrated.
George does not show up in Oberhoffen records until the 1846 ellenbach census. In the period of 1844/46 Georg Michel Grimm got his first house in Oberhoffen, and two years later his first agricultural land, which consisted of 8 fields, 2 meadows, and one vineyard. This land was his wife, Katherine’s portion that she inherited after her mother’s death in 1846.
MARRIAGE: In Oberhoffen, he married Katherine sometime before giving birth to Great-Grandmother, Magdalena Grimm in July 1847, who married Frederick Kieber in Oberhoffen-lès-Wissembourg. A third daughter, Marguerethe Grimm was born in April 1850 Oberhoffen. Marguerethe married Jacob Hausauer from Cleeburg in 1872 Oberhoffen.
In 1851, George (27), a laborer and Catherine (27) lived in House #10 Hinterdorf with their three daughters, Catherine (9), Madeleine (3), and Margeurethe (1). Catherine’s widowed father, Daniel Muller (61) was owner of the farm.Over the years to come they acquired more land, and changed their house twice. In the early 1860s they moved to the house where they remained until the emigration.
About 1869/70 he still bought a field, but in October 1871 he sold a great part of his property and movables by way of auction. This happened in the week before his daughter Magdalena’s marriage to Friedrich Kieber. The wedding took place on 19 October 1871. Friedrich Kieber and Magdalena Grimm left Oberhoffen right thereafter. Georg Michael Grimm made a donation to his three children on 8 November 1871. In this record is stated that Magdalena had emigrated to the US. Her father had furnished her with the amount of 800 francs.
IMMIGRATION: In March and April of 1872 Georg Michael Grimm sold the balance of his real estate and the house. On 13 April 1872 he ceded his claims that derived from the sale of the real estate to a man, who paid him this amount, deducted by a profit of about 7 percent.
On 10 May 1872 he and his wife arrived in New York.
Youngest daughter, Marguerethe, her husband, Jacob Hausaurer and their daughter Magdalena emigrated in 1882, probably with George’s eldest daughter, Catherine.
They traveled to Buffalo, where we find George listed in the 1873 Buffalo Directory living at 441 Elm Street, working as a stonecutter.
The 1875 NY state census Amherst E.D. 01 lists the alien George, (53) stone cutter, and Catherine (55) in a framed house worth $500.00. Looks like Georg can read and write German. They lived 6 houses from daughter Lena’s family (farmer, husband, Fritz Kieber and their first two sons, Fred and George).
By 1881, we find George in the city directory, still working as a stonecutter, but now living at 812 Michigan Ave.
At 60 years of age,George died in 1882. He’s buried, along with his wife, Katherine, in Skinnersville Cemetery, Amherst NY. That is the year that his two other daughters, Marguerethe and Catherine, emigrated and settled, by 1910, a few doors away from each other on farms in Amherst (Eggert Rd. and TownLine Rd.respectively)
A huge thank you to Uwe Porten, a genealogist extraordinaire in Germany, who did much of this research and took us to the Grimm house in Oberotterbach.
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