Hi Karen! Thanks for your new reply on 9/23/00. I wish we could link up our Hildingers. Because your Thomas Martin Hildinger also immigrated from Wurtemberg,
Germany, there is a possibility that he is a relative to my William(Wilhelm) Casper, Hildinger even though they lived in different
states! Looking at an Atlas of the states, I went to Ohio and found Hocking CO which is in the middle southern part of the state,s/e
of Columbus. Now, it is possible that your Thomas moved from Indiana to Ohio or my
William Casper moved from Ohio to Indiana. As
far as the last name spelling being Heldinger
instead of Hildinger, you will find many document from the 1700's 1800's mispelling
a lot of names. I have another name I was researching which was Isaac Miles and his Marriage record had his name spelled Miller!
Its a good thing that I knew his wifes name
or I might have dismissed that document. I think the reason was that our families came from other countries and they had heavy accents in their dialects and the compilers of records spelled the names as they heard them! Anyway, I feel that my William Casper Hildinger did not come over to this country alone. Most immigrants came with family or
families of their wives or husbands. On his death certificate,it does not show his parents names or anything new .
He died 23 Feb 1898 in Blairsville, Posey CO
Indiana. He was a Civil War Veteran and is buried with his brother in law,another Civil War Veteran, somewhere nearby. I hope we can continue to dig until we find something to give us a clue to their past from Germany.
keep in touch, Jean Stewart,e-mail is
ranjstew@home.com