Those GOTTSACKER signs

I have always been proud and intrigued by my family name. Kids on the playground in elementary school would sometimes tease about my name, but those kids didn’t have their name on big signs that said GOTTSACKER SELLS REAL ESTATE and GOTTSACKER SELLS CARS. Every time we drove from Madison to Sheboygan to visit grandma and grandpa, I couldn’t wait to see those signs as we got closer to Sheboygan. I always felt proud inside when we passed them in our old 1954 Ford.

Who were those other Gottsackers?

During those many visits to grandma and grandpa’s, we would do lots of neat things. We would always see my cousins, the Orths. We would always go to Sunday Mass at Holy Name Church, which when I was young seemed like it must be the biggest church in the whole United States. Dad would also call ahead to Johnsonville Meats to have a bunch of brats made up for the guys he worked with at the print shop in Madison. In those days, Johnsonville was a small grocery store with a meat counter. And if the Ripon Cookie man stopped at his storage building down the street from grandma’s, it would be a very special weekend–he’d always give us kids a generous supply of cookies.

One thing we didn’t do was meet or see many other Gottsackers in Sheboygan. We were told that the other Gottsackers weren’t related. With such an unusual last name, I always wondered if that was really true.

A family history we couldn’t read

Many years later, grandpa (Joseph P. Gottsacker) died–on the eve of John Kennedy’s election as President. Then, a few years later, grandma (Anna Landgraf Gottsacker) died. In cleaning out grandma’s house on 10th Street, my cousin Joannie found and kept some written chronicles and some old pictures of our family. Cousin Joannie provided other Gottsacker cousins in the Madison area with copies of these documents and many of the historical photos of the family. One of these documents was a family chronicle written by Frank Gottsacker Sr., son of Wilhelm Gottsacker, one of the original immigrants. It was written in old German script which we couldn’t read, so it wasn’t of much use in trying to learn about our ancestors. It turned out that Frank Gottsacker Sr. was my great grandfather, but I didn’t discover that until I started doing some family research.

Where is ‘Maishoss’?

In the early 1990s, when living in Irvine, CA, my wife, our son and I hosted several exchange students, most of them from Germany. One of the students, David Henseler, suggested we take the document written in old German script on a trip to Germany we were planning. On this trip, we had plans to visit David’s parents near Cologne. David knew his parents had an interest in German names and places and he thought his mother, Ursula, might be able to read and translate the document written in old German script. During the visit, Ursula read the documents we brought and noted that a specific town was mentioned as the origin of the Gottsacker family. The name of the town was Maishoss. No town of this spelling could be found on German maps or in books in the Henseler’s extensive library. Jo Henseler, David’s father, made a few phone calls to friends and came to the conclusion that this town was probably Mayschoss, about an hour south of Cologne. The Henselers suggested we go to Mayschoss on the weekend to see if we could find any Gottsackers.

A Gottsacker in Mayschoss!

So, that weekend we drove to the beautiful small village of Mayschoss. Even if we couldn’t find Gottsackers in Mayschoss, the village was home to the first vintners cooperative in Germany–turns out a Gottsacker was one of the founders–and we could at least taste some of the local wine. The wine alone would make it a worthwhile trip.

In Mayschoss, we stopped at a phone booth near a small coop grocery store to look for Gottsackers in the phone book. We found one, Franz Gottsacker, located on Dorfstrasse street. Since there are only two main streets in Mayschoss, it wasn’t difficult to find Franz’s house. When we found the house, I felt a special shiver when I saw the Gottsacker name on the plate below the doorbell. A man in his 70s answered the door. Jo Henseler and Franz carried on an extensive conversation in German, which I could not follow. While in the doorway, Franz and Jo were trying to determine if there might be a connection between his family name and my family name.

Are we related? Above, from left to right: Jerry Gottsacker, Franz Gottsacker, Jo Henseler. Debby Henseler took the photo.

Family connections discovered!

In the middle of the conversation in German between Franz and Jo, I heard Franz say the words National Demokrat (that’s the correct spelling) and I knew immediately there must be some connection. My great grandfather, Frank Gottsacker, Sr. (the one who wrote the family chronicle that led us to Franz’s doorstep), was owner and editor of the National Demokrat in Sheboygan.

We were invited into Franz’s house and spent that afternoon trying to figure out the connection between myself and Franz. Debby Henseler, the Henseler’s daughter (who had previously been an exchange student in Michigan) took notes in English during the conversations in German. At one point, Franz got up and retrieved a picture from a wall in his house. He told us he thought the people in the picture were from America, but he did not know who they were. He showed me the picture and to my amazement (and a big lump in my throat) it was a copy of a picture that I had at home. It was the photo below of all the children of Frank Gottsacker, Sr., including my grandpa Joe.

Franz said he had always hoped someone from America would come and tell him who was in the picture. In the picture are the children of Frank Gottsacker Sr. and Anna Brand Gottsacker. Sitting, L-R: Mollie Sukowaty, Sister Franka, Addie Schladweiler. Standing L-R: William, Joseph, Brother Giles, John, Peter. Joseph was my grandfather.

One answer, lots more questions

So, this discovery that I had real live German relatives (including several cousins I had yet to meet) turned a casual interest in our name into a commitment to get back home and learn as much as possible about who we are, where we are, who immigrated, and finally, which of my relatives was connected to Franz and other Gottsackers in Germany. The result is this Gottsacker family genealogy.

Above: In front of the Mayschoss wine cooperative on our special day in Mayschoss. From L-R: Roxanna Gottsacker (Jerry’s wife), Jerry Gottsacker, Franz Gottsacker, Jo Henseler, Judith Weller, Anita Gottsacker Weller, Ursula Henseler. Judith would later spend a year with us as a foreign exchange student in Irvine, CA.