Musings of a Genealogy-Nut

My mother's paternal grandparents were both German immigrants. They came to America on the same boat at the same sailing, but didn't meet until both had settled in Saginaw, a hub for German Immigrants.

Rheinhold died many years before Johanna and my mother doesn't really remember him. She did tell me stories about the bitterness against Germans during the war. Her grandmother, who lived with them, spoke ONLY German and, with his son in the war, my grandfather would allow NO German to be spoken in his house. My mother said her grandmother didn't speak for the duration of the war. She would, however, listen to the radio (in English) and cry over names of towns she knew and possible relatives and friends in the midst of the war. She had a grandson on one side of the war, and nephews fighting on the German side. How hard it must have been for her.