Ramcharan-Crowley

Introductory letter from Marg Saunders: Alice Mosley Siedelman and Barbara Mosley Peck have been working for over twenty years researching our family's history. A few others have joined with them, but the bulk of the work and time has been theirs. Recently Janet Fries of Bloomington received some very interesting papers and she passed them on to Barb and Alice. These papers are 12½ single spaced, typewritten pages. They were compiled by Abbe Raymond Seeman of Grussenheim, France. This is a part of his ongoing search for the descendants of the villagers of Grussenheim. There was only one problem with these papers. They were written in medieval and modern French and German. We tried, unsuccessfully, to find someone who would translate the papers for us. Being stubborn and naive, I decided to translate the papers myself. I was fully immerged and in eminant danger of being fully submerged, when a good friend came to my rescue. Inga Kremeyer is a well educated lady who speaks German and French. She was raised in Germany and has a good understanding of German-French history. After I had researched each word, and listed all the possible meanings, Inga and I would place ourselves mentally into the historical time frame and then Inga would translate. As she read, I would check the words against my research and sometimes I was able to correlate English words or terms that eluded Inga. There is one word that we were unable to translate: SIGRESTEN. If you know the meaning, please let us know.* I have placed this document in notebook form so that it can be expanded. When we have more information we will share it. At the end of the papers you will find a form that you can use for your own family history sheet. - I have used slash marks (/) to separate my own comments from the main body of the translations. I hope these comments and explanations will clarify the more confused parts of the papers. You will also note that the European method of dating has been used. Example: 29.5.1856, 29th of May, 1856 — day/month/year. If you can add anything to our information about our family, we would like to hear from you. ------ *As we go to the printer's, we have found the meaning of the word "Sigresten". It is of Swiss dialect, a sacristan, an officer in church entrusted with the care of the sacristy, a sexton.