Information received from Fred Gahimer
Greetings from the central Indiana Gegenheimer families. I am Fred Gahimer. My ancestral German family, Johann Jacob Gegenheimer and his wife Marie (DePrez) and their three children came from the small village of Freckfeld, just east of the town of Worth in southern Germany near the French border. They sailed in 1832, landed in New Orleans, boated up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers to Cincinnati, where Marie's sister and husband had come to the previous year. They all went by wagon up to the Shelby and Rush County areas in central Indiana and were among the early settlers in the wilderness. They later Americanized the name to Gahimer. I have a lot more details about their history.
There are several families in Indiana who still use the Gegenheimer name. My information from the records in Freckfeld is that the last male carrying the name there was killed in WWII, and the last female with the name died about 20 years ago. I have copies of the early church records of the Gegenheimers. Johann was the only son of George Gegenheimer. Johann was born May 18, 1801.
Do you see any connection between our families from what I have told you?
Fred
