Where are we from?

the luxembourgers among us
Table rock & steinauer

This article by Sharla Sitzman first appeared in Newsletter 2020 #3.  It has been slightly revised.

The Duchy of Luxembourg, which included the canton of Luxembourg

“Gudde Moien."

Long ago and faraway, a life-changing conversation took place. “Gudde Moien,” a man named Theodore Grof may have said to Nick Goodenkauf, “Wei geet et?” Good morning, how’s it going?  And then he told Nick to leave his homeland.  “Firwat?” Nick might have asked. Why? Theodore would have started talking about his new home in the American Midwest, a place called Nebraska, a town called Table Rock. 
The year would have been around 1879. 

The place would likely have been in the canton of Mersch, which is in the central part of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. 

The language would have been Luxembourgish, which is one of three national languages there. The languages of government are German and English, but Luxembourgish is the “language of the heart” and generally the one spoken among friends and family. 


And then Theodore Grof may have gone to see his friend Dominique Mertes and had a similar discussion. “Gudde Moien!”  it may have begun. 


I really don’t know what was said or when, though. I can only assume where they were and that they were speaking Luxembourgish.  However, I do know that it was Theodore Grof who was the one who persuaded Nick Goodenkauf and Nick’s brother John Peter (who went by Pete) as well as Dom Mertes to leave Luxembourg for Table Rock.  Theodore also persuaded his sister Mary Katherine to come.  (This proved fortuitous to Dom Mertes, who would eventually marry her.)


Today, Luxembourg is one of the most well-to-do countries in the world. Not so back then. Then, before the Industrial Revolution, it was an intensely rural country and it had a problem.  The laws of inheritance had been changed so that the family farms did not pass intact to one of a generation but rather had to be split amongst all of the children.  Within a couple of generations, the farms were too small to sustain  them.  The alternatives were two: starve or leave. 


Whatever was said in Luxembourg, when Theodore Grof returned to Table Rock, he was joined by his sister Mary Katherine, by Nicholas and Pete Goodenkauf, and by Dom Mertes.  


Today, quite a number of people here and from here owe their Nebraska roots to  conversations that took place long ago in a language they never learned.  Nick Goodenkauf’s 13 children are the great grandparents of a host of Goodenkaufs, from the fantastic ballplayer Dale Goodenkauf, Class of 1958, to the gregarious Jim Goodenkauf, known as Barney in high school, Class of 1971. to the long-time mechanic at Wilbur Buchholz’s garage, Doc Goodenkauf, whose real name was Alfred.  Dom Mertes and Katie Grof’s marriage has given us Donnie Mertes, Doug Mertes, Patti Stevens, Bennie Mertes, Art Mertes, all of their children and grandchildren, and -- don’t get me started!  And that’s only the Goodenkaufs!


Luxembourg – Not a Lot of Space


A portion of Luxembourg includes the Ardennes Mountains, but the larger part is a rich farming area called Le Bon Pays or the Gutland (German for the “Good Land”).  It is from le Bon Pays that all of our  Luxembourgers came. 


There was a contingent in Steinauer and most of them were from canton Grevenmacher, but those who came to Table Rock were from places not far from Grevenmacher, mainly canton Mersch. 
Luxembourg is small.  When I say Luxembourg is small, I mean small.  It has fewer than 1,000 square miles – 998 to be exact.   Pawnee County is 433 square miles.  Double the county and add a dollop of whipped cream and a cherry on top, and it would be the size of Luxembourg.  Or take Pawnee County and add Richardson County together and add half of a cherry.  The two counties together have 985 square miles.                             


If you drove from here to Nebraska City, you would have driven the same as from top to bottom of Luxembourg. If you drove from here to Falls City, you would have driven the width of the country.  It is 35 miles by 51 miles at its greatest length and breadth.  Pawnee County is 18 miles from north to south by 24 miles.


Luxembourg is divided into cantons, and each canton has a number of towns. Saying someone was from canton Mersch and someone else from canton Esch is not much different than pointing out that someone came from Pawnee City versus Dawson.

Luxembourg - the Names 

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was not created until the mid 1800s out of land occupied by French, German, and Flemish speaking people. 

Many were the persons with mixtures of French and German and Flemish names.  Living in Luxemburg long ago, you may have run into Nicolas Goodenkauf or Guillame (William) Muller or Joseph Anton Reuter, with French first names and German last names. 

According to genealogist Deb Holden, in its earlier years the country was under the control of one or another of the adjoining countries.  When the Germans were in control, the records were kept in German, and the same with the French. Moreover, those with German last names may have been of French extraction from early days, with the maternal line preserved in the first names, as in the name of Nicolas and Pete’s father – Pierre Goodenkauf.   Or, like Joe Reuter’s mother, they have been French and Flemish – her maiden name was Angelique Cloos. That, apparently, is Luxembourg for you, even today.  The current deputy prime minister is Etienne Schneider.

To Table Rock

The Goodenkauf brothers and Dom Mertes were not the first.  The  Reuters were already here, and the new arrivals stayed with them at first, at least the men.  Katherine Groff stayed with the Howe family. 
The Reuters were from Lorentzweiler, in canton Mersch.  Johann and Margaretha Reuter, who had died in the 1830s, had eight children. What became of three of them we don’t know.  The other five, though, came this way. 

On March 11, 1867, they, with their families, disembarked from the SS William Penn and set foot on American soil in New York City.  Thank you to Deb Holden for that information and the details that follow!
The Reuters siblings who came were four sisters and a brother — Marie, Anna Maria, Anna Katherina, Magaretha, and Joseph Anton.  They ranged in age from 34 to 50 and they came with spouses and a total of 23 children.

Here are the Reuters who came.  There was Marie and her husband Pierre Jung (later Young).  There was Anna Maria and her husband Guillame (William) Muller ).  With Anna Maria and William were their 8 children, ranging in age from five months to 15 years.  There was Anna Katherina and her husband Michael Thinnes, and with them their 6 children, ranging in age from 5 to 18 years old.  There was Magaretha and her husband John Hansen and their 6 children, who were from 10 months old to 9.  And there was Joseph Anton Reuter and his wife  Maria, with their 3 children, aged 2, 6, and 8.  

Why Table Rock? I don’t know!  But Table Rock it was. Some stayed, and their descendants still remain, while others moved on.

William and Anna Maria— Mary — Muller had more children in America.  They changed the name to Miller as war began in Europe after the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and German names became unpopular.  After World War I, they kept the name Miller.  Anyway, the youngest two sons, William and Joseph, eventually took over the homestead.  William later sold his share to his brother Joseph, and the farm was eventually taken over by Joseph’s only son, Albert Miller.  Albert’s daughter Marilyn was the mother of two lifetime members of the Historical Society, siblings Gregg and Marla Clement.
Joseph Reuter and his wife Maria—Mary — had children in America, too.  Their son John was the first American-born child, born in Nebraska in 1868. 

TO STEINAUER

My first memory of hearing about Luxembourg was in school.  We were asked in class where our ancestors had come from.  “Luxembourg,” said my classmate Cathy Bernadt, now Cat Tucker.

Cathy lived in Table Rock.  Her dad Carl Bernadt had been born in Steinauer in the middle of the influenza pandemic, the Fall of 1918.  Carl’s dad, Joe Bernadt, had been born in Steinauer in 1879, to a family headed by a Luxembourgish-American father who had already been in Pawnee County at least a decade, John Bernadt.  John Bernadt and his wife Maggie, both born in canton Grevenmacher, had come to Steinauer with their daughter Mary.  It was 1858.  Maggie died three years later. John then married Maria Wenzl, a young Bohemian widow who had  arrived with her child in 1867.  They were the parents of Cathy’s grandpa Joe Bernadt.
John and Maria Bernadt’s many children have multiplied, and some descendants remain in the area.  In current days, you can find people in Steinauer like Doug Bernadt – a nephew of Carl’s – who still bear the Luxembourgish name. But you can also find  Bernadts who have taken a married name, like Mary Bernadt Marteney, now of Pawnee City. .

And the Schmits!  What the heck!  The Schmits are Luxembougers, who knew!  And from the same place as the Bernadts.  John Schmit came in 1882.  He married Anna Ketter, a Luxembourger whose father — Jacob Ketter — had come in 1861 and whose mother was Mary Bernadt, daughter of John Bernadt and his first wife Maggie.  One of the kids of John and Anna Ketter Schmit had three people who have been well known – Delores, Don, and Byford. Don Schmit!  Don Schmit was in my class, too!  I had learned of Cathy’s Luxembourg roots when we were in grade school. Don joined us when the Steinauer high school consolidated with Table Rock.  I never asked Don about his roots, and he never said.  I just assumed that his roots were in Germany.
Then there is the Conradt family from the Steinauer area.  Yep. As Luxembourgish as Bernadts and Schmit, and also from the same town as them! Peter Conradt came in 1882, the same year as John Schmit.  Peter married Anna Kaufman, the daughter of yet another Luxembourger family from the same canton, different town.  The family of Joseph and  Anna Kaufman had come in the late 1850s. Peter had a brother, Michael, who married his wife’s sister,  Margaretha.  I remember Marty Conradt from school, the class ahead of me, another Steinauerite who came to our school.  Luxembourger? He never said.   And Jim Goodenkauf, same class!  Ditto!

I’ve discovered that there gave been other families besides the ones that my schoolmates belonged to.
In 1856, Joseph Kaufman arrived from canton Grevenmacher.  It was the same year that Steinauer was settled by three Swiss brothers, Joseph, Nicholas, and Anthony Cont’d next page Steinauer.  Joseph Kaufman, the Luxembourger, was 25. Within a couple of years, he married Anna Nye, also of Luxembourg. 
In 1857, Catherine Kaufman arrived, Joseph’s younger sister.  She was 20.  Within a few years, she married Joseph Steinauer. According to Terry Wagner of the Steinauer Heritage House museum, Joseph & Catherine Steinauer  have about 2,000 descendants.  Bob Steinauer of Steinauer is one of  those many.  I see him at church at St. Anthony’s.  Who knew that his great grandma was a Luxembourger? Not me. I always thought of Bob as having Swiss roots.

In 1870 came Michael Pettinger, born in Luxembourg.  He had first gone to Wisconsin in 1862 at age 21.  There, he married a young lady from canton Grevenmacher, Mary Siebanaler.  The young couple to Steinauer in 1870. They may have had family in Steinauer ready because the 1860 census shows a John Pettinger already there, a 30-year-old farmer. 

In 1872, the Uri family arrived (not to be confused with the Uhri family).  Ray Musil of Dubois is a descendant of that Uri family.  His great great grandparents John Peter and Barbara Uri came to America with children Mary and John, Jr., in 1872. John, Jr., was 8 and Mary – Ray’s great grandmother -- was 3. They farmed west of Steinauer, where another child, Joe, was born.  Daughter Mary Uri married Peter Klein, who was from Germany, and Mary and Peter Klein’s daughter Anna Klein married Mike Ullman .  the son of a couple born in Bohemia. Thus the Luxembourger name is gone, but the descendants live on.
In 1892, Nicholas and Marguarete Fournelle from canton Esch-sur-Alzette.  They came with their children, the youngest of whom, Peter John, was 10.   The last Fournelle of Steinauer was Leonard Fournelle.
Finally, there came some of the children of Nicholas Weber.  Nicholas Weber came to America in about 1893.  He was a widower with 8 children, ages 10 to 30.  His oldest daughter had come to Holt County, Nebraska a decade before and Nicholas went there. However, some of his children came to Steinauer.  His son John married another Luxembourger from canton Grevenmacher, Barbara Stemper.  Their wedding was at St. Anthony’s in Steinauer. So was the wedding of Nicholas Weber’s daughter Louisa, who married Albert Wenzl.  And the wedding of Nicholas Weber’s son Mike. 

Mike Weber married Mary Josephine Wenzl and they had two daughters, Marguerite and Josephine.  Marguerite married Norbert Puhalla and Josephine married his brother Emil Puhalla.  Many of the Puhallas, then, are Luxembourgers. That would include my classmate Elaine Puhalla Parde and her siblings, Robert, Ronald, Evelyn, and Emma.  (Ron Puhalla was editor of the Pawnee Republican for decades.)  It would also include Mike and Mary Puhalla and the late Leon Puhalla.  Mike Puhalla married Delores Schmit, doubling the Luxembourg roots of their children. 

It’s all so complicated! But it’s all so fun! Did you know you were rubbing shoulders with Luxembourgers as you were growing up around here?  When I started this story, I thought I was writing about the Bernadt, Mertes, and Goodenkauf families, but I was wrong!

Jim Goodenkauf, descendant of Nick Goodenkauf

Donnie & Katie Grof Mertes, descendant of Dominik Mertes

Gregg Clement & Grandson, descendants of William and Anna Maria Reuter Muller

Mike Puhalla, descendant of Mike & Mary Josephine Wenzl, with Mike's late wife Delores Schmit Puhalla, descendant of John and Anna Schmit

Ron Puhalla and his wife Bev, also descendants of Mike and Mary Josephine Wenzl

Long ago, the children of John and Luella Bernadt -- Dennis, John, Jim, Tom, Cat, Mary, & Patty. Dennis, John, Jim, tom, Cat, Mary, & Patty Bernadt. They are descendanrts of John Bernadt, who came to Steinauer with his fist wife in 1858, and his second wife, Maria Wenzl.

Graduates of Table Rock or Table Rock—Steinauer High School Bearing Names
Of Their Luxembourger Families
 

BERNADT. There were 14: Dennis Bernadt, Class of 1960; John Bernadt, Class of 1961; Jim Benadt, Class of 1964; Tom Bernadt, Class of 1968; Doug Bernadt, Class of 1971; Cat Bernadt, Class of 1972; Galen Bernadt, Class of 1974; Joe Bernadt, Class of 1978; Brian Bernadt, Class of 1984; Bruce Bernadt, Class of 1987; Melissa Bernadt, Class of 1994; Jamie Bernadt Maloley, Class of 1995; Jennifer Bernadt Saathoff, Class of 1996; and Crystal Bernadt, Class of 1998. 

MERTES: There were 13: Zelma Mertes Kessler, Class of 1930; Leonard Mertes, Class of 1933; Art Mertes, Class of 1934; Mabel Mertes Morse, Class of 1938; Dorothy Mertes Kamen, Class of 1946; Marjorie Mertes Ullman, Class of 1949; Darlene Mertes Cortez, Class of 1953; Harlan Mertes, Class of 1959; Karen Mertes Stoney, Class of 1964; Patti Mertes Stevens, Class of 1965; Ben Mertes, Class of 1967; Connie Mertes, Class of 1968; Doug Mertes, Class of 1986.

GOODENKAUF: There were 9: Felicia Goodenkauf Miller, Class of 1912; Josephine Goodenkauf Uerling, Class of 1919; George Goodenkauf, Class of 1927; Frank Goodenkauf, Class of 1934; Arley Goodenkauf, Class of 1934; Dale Goodenkauf, Class of 1958; Bryan Goodenkauf, Class of 1966; Bob Goodenkauf, Class of 1970; and Jim Goodenkauf, Class of 1971.

SCHMIT: There were 8: Don Schmit, Class of 1972; Gail Schmit, Class of 1973; Teresa Schmit Cooper, Class of  1983; Dan Schmit, Class of 1986; Lisa Schmit Farmer, Class of 1988; Wendy Schmit Horalek, Class of 1989; Stefanie Schmit Gottula, Class of 11991; John Matthew Schmit, Class of 1992; and Eric Schmit, Class of 1997.

MILLER. There were 4: Gladys Miller Knippelmeyer, Class of 1934; Lawrence Miller, Class of 1939; Mabelle Miller Welch, Class of 1943; and Marilyn Miller Clement, Class of 1950. 

REUTER: There were 4: Leonard Reuter, Class of 1923; Gladys Reuter Gutzmer, Class of 1930; Ann Reuter, Class of 1963; and John Reuter, Class of 1957

CONRADT.  There were 3: Frances Conradt, Class of 1944; Jerome Conradt, Class of 1967; and Marty Conradt, Class of 1971.
This list is our best effort to identify our Luxembourgers.  If you’ve been  missed, please email [email protected] to have you name added!