While in Prague we secured a rental car for a week from a local company, I’ll think of the name. We got a nice economy 4-door with GPS and Wif-Fi for a reasonable price and the nice fellow came to our hotel with the car. Of course we had to go back to his office to conclude the deal.

It was my first experience of GPS, complete with a woman’s voice telling me where to turn off and so on. Plus a map that changed as we drove. Amazing. Even so we were not immune from screwups. This can’t be right — been here already. Turn off the GPS, give the lady a rest, start over. Overall, though, I’d give it 9/10.

Why Bavaria? My ancestors Fechtig came from Baden-Wuurtemburg.

This is my great-great-great-grandfather Christian Fechtig’s and great-great-great-grandmother Susan’s gravestone in Hagerstown, Maryland:

Here’s his church birth record in the village of Waldangelloch, Baden:

Parish register of births, marriages, deaths and indexes, In Kirchenbuch, 1647-1963,  Evangelische Kirche Waldangelloch; on Church of Latter Day Saints FHL INTL Film 1189115. 

Here’s an index I think of his parents’ (my great-great-great-great-grandparents, or G4GPs) marriage in the town of Gerlingen, near Stuttgart:

This indicates his father Johann Ludwig’s birth in Neuenburg in Württemburg:

And this I take to be his mother Margaretta Hoescheler(-en)’s birth record:

Plausible scenario: dad from Neuenburg, mum from Gerlingen; married in Gerlingen; settled, or he was already living, in Waldangelloch, or why is there this duplicate marriage record in Waldangelloch?

Son Christian born 1759. Dad dies. Son immigrates to America 1783. Married Philadelphian Susan Herberger, a widow. They settle in Hagerstown. A son named George married Mary Elizabeth Yoe, and their son George, Jr, was a doctor in Hagerstown and he married Louise Harriet Doyle. Their daughter Rose Harriet Fechtig was my grandmother. Their son my great-uncle Alex Fechtig I met in Hagerstown in 1955, and it was Uncle Alex who got me interested in genealogy.

Alexander Fechtig and his brother Edward in Panama, 1914

On the way, in search of gravestones, archival records, any material residue, we discovered Nuremburg and spent three nights there. Then a night in Waldangelloch and another in Gerlingen. On the way back to Prague we overnighted in Regensburg and visited its magnificent cathedral.