Bureau County Genealogical Society to host Ron Weitzel to tell stories of German immigrants in Illinois

The Bureau County Genealogical Society will present a program 7 p.m. Thursday, March 28, at 629 S. Main Street, Princeton. The public is invited to attend this program by Ron Weitzel.

The program is entitled “German Neighbors Then, Illinois Neighbors Now.” Weitzel tells the story of 75 former residents of Oberhilbersheim, Germany, who settled near each other in a 90 square mile tri-county area roughly bounded by Mendota, Compton, Sublette and La Moille. The 75 immigrants were from 14 families, descendants of whom still reside in that area. At the March 28 BCGS meeting, Weitzel, who is a descendant of some of those families, will present a slide program about those immigrants. With family documents and BCGS maps, the program explains the political situation of resulting difficulties with measurements and calendars and the challenges of living in a new country and environment.

Weitzel is a retired high school German teacher and a previous BCGS presenter. As a teacher he was the coordinator of a German/American student exchange program for 20 years and volunteered on German/American cultural projects in Peoria. He is a cemetery board member for the old St. Paul’s evangelical Church of La Moille and has posted the cemetery’s records on the find-a-grave.com website. He has also helped Three Sisters Park in Chillicothe establish a hands-on historical program for grade school students on farm life in 1918. His previous presentation to the Bureau County Genealogical Society told the story of Henkel School, a one-room school in the Sublette area.