Ramcharan-Crowley

Birth certificate witnessed by Jacques Wild, 35 year old laborer, and Michel Schnebelin, 37 year old farmer. Secretary spelled name wrong, "Amann."

There is a Michel Schnebelin on the FranceGen Web-site who was born on 22-dec-1797 in Bantzenheim. He would have been exactly 37 in 1834, when Amand was born. He is listed as a "cultivateur," or "farmer." This is the Michel Schnebelin (Amand's father's first cousin, the Mayor of Bantzenheim) who witnessed Amand's birth certificate.

My father claimed that a man, thinking Grandpa Schnébelin was German, sought to compliment him by telling him he looked like the Kaiser. He was so furious, he had his muttom-chop whiskers shaved off, but when he got home, Grandma said, "Now you look even worse. You look like an Irishman."

Amand, our grandfather, born about 1834 under the reign of Charles X, last Bourbon King of France, and named after the patrons saint of Alsace, an Irish monk who brought Christianity to the Rhine Valley. How Dad would have kidded Mom if he'd known that, especially since she was never shy about pointing out that, after all, St. Patrick is thought to have been French. Grandpa died at age 87 in August, 1921, just three months before I was born. He was a master maker of boots and shoes, "und a kindermacher too" as he once remarked to my Dad. In later years he specialized in orthopedic shoes, but felt he had too little education (three years) to go into business. As we know, he married Mary Magdalene Strauel, born in Grussenheim, Alsace, in 1870 when he was 36 and she 21, and they had nine children. Although she cried "for a week" when she discovered her new husband was ten years older than he had said, Grandma was not the young widow she feared to be. Grandpa loved the good life, kept a horse, forcefed geese for paté de fois gras, made "toddies" before dinner and drank wine with his meals, sometimes cooked the Sunday roast, and was proud of his artistry and his big healthy family. He was playing euchre at the corner saloon when my mother was born, and he took his wife dancing into his '70's.