It was the spring of 2000 and I was traveling with my parents on a quick whirlwind tour of Austria, Southern Germany, and Switzerland. We pulled off Autobahn 6, north of Stuttgart to get directions. Snatching a map from a convenience store rack, I quickly scanned for what I needed.
“Exit 40, just 50 km west of here,” I muttered to myself. Sticking the map back in the rack, too cheap to buy it, I left the store. I had what I needed—directions to Brettach, my ancestral village.
Brettach was the “Sensintaffar” branch’s ancestral village. And it wasn’t always “Sensintaffar.” Over the past three hundred years the surname had taken a few twists and turns. Our distant cousins in Germany were Simpfendörfers and as we drove into Brettach on that Sunday afternoon, they were who we were looking for.
All the shops were closed except for a wine shop. We stepped into the little store and after a few minutes of rudimentary German and charades, our purpose of our visit was communicated and the proprietor made a phone call. Within 20 minutes, Karin, was at the shop and she invited us over to visit her father, Kurt Simpfendörfer, the family patriarch.
Karl was about my dad’s age, an eighth or ninth cousin, best I could tell. And like my dad, he was an amateur genealogist. Excitedly, Kurt invited us into his kitchen. Reaching up to a high shelf, he pulled down a large rolled sheet of paper. Unfurling the paper onto the kitchen table, he revealed his family tree dating back to the 1500s. With Karin translating, he asked us a few clarifying questions and then triumphantly pointed down onto his tree. Looking over his shoulder, I saw my name. I was a terminal branch on his family tree. Enthusiastically, Kurt began peppering me and my dad with questions, updating and verifying portions of his family tree. He extended the branches further with names and birth dates of my children. I was no longer a terminal branch.
After the update, I asked Kurt about the name, “Simpfendörfer.”
“Where did our name come from? What does it mean?”
He laughs and begins a long explanation (in German). The only word I understood in his protracted explanation was “Everglades.”
Karin, laughing, prefaces her translation by explaining that her father had only visited the United States once with a trip to Miami and during that trip had visited the Everglades. And she went on . . . “It seems our name used to be Sumpfendörfer. Dörfer is a person who lives in a dörf or village. And the closest thing dad could describe “Sumpfen” was the Everglades.”
“Oh, so you are saying Sumpfen means “swamp? And Sumpfendörfer quite literally means ‘swamp dweller?’”
“Yes!” said Karin, laughing hysterically.
So when you see a marshy area or your sump pump goes out, think of me.
Dash Stories 