Mahlstedt's family background information
Very surprisingly, in 1991 Robert Martens, a son of Katherina Mahlstedt, came to Germany in order to search for his ancestors. My parents got some information from him about the Mahlstedts family in America. My father and Robert wrote each other some letters, but unfortunately Robert soon died (in 1994). As he was a kind of a loner he didn't have so much contact to his American family. That's why he was only able to give us quite limited information about his relatives who were still alive at that time. He didn't know anything about Henry Mahlstedt's family, for example. My mother says, that probably George and Henry quarreled because of financial problems .... But that's only an assumption based on rudimentary rememberance of things told by my grandmother.
After our contact with Martens in 1991 his cousin Joanne Weber (her maiden name was Joanne Breininger, she was Henrietta Mahlstedt's daughter) sent us back an old bible which once belonged to Marion Smith, George and Henry's mother who once had come from Edinburgh, Scotland, (together with their family) to northern Germany in 1836 at the age of 12 and who married Lüder Dietrich Mahlstedt. Their farm still belongs to my parents. So through a 180 years' time this little bible made its way from Scotland to Germany, then to America and finally back to the little German village Hinnebeck.
If there is anyone reading this, having any information on the Mahlstedt's family, then please contact me:
Have a look at my old pictures ...