We were motivated to find out about where the Schlotfeldt ancestors came from and what happened to all of the descendants when Fay's aunt, Leona Schlotfeldt Kruse, of DeWitt, Iowa passed away in 1986.  She was a retired school teacher and businesswoman, but most importantly had been an avid photographer all of her life.   She left many pictures of the families of the brothers and sister of her father and mother, Theodore Detlef "Ted" and Alvina (Rasche) Schlotfeldt of Gambril, Scott County, Iowa.       Fay says, "I felt an obligation to try to get some of these "snapshots" dating to the 1920s and 30s in the hands of the descendants.  Those, and copies of an old will identifying "Schlotfeldt family descendants" led me to try to make contact in whatever way I could.  The job became much easier in the late 1990s when I was able to use the internet.  Prior to that it was letter writing and telephone calls. (And not many of those, I might add.)"

Leone and her sister, Dayle Schlotfeldt Townsley, of Davenport, Iowa (where Fay grew up), had gathered some information from a cousin, Celia Schlotfeldt Dooley, who lived there.  Celia was a bonified "Genealogist".   She had been gathering family information for years.  In the process she found some clues about the area of Germany where our American immigrant "progenitors" had come from.  But not the specifics.   We knew that HANS HENRY SCHLOTFELDT, born 1808, and wife, CATHERINE MARGARET STOLTENBERG had sailed from Hamburg in the early 1850s and bought land and settled in Scott County, Iowa.   Just north of Davenport.   We knew that some of their children were born in Germany, but did not know if all were.   Today, most of those riddles have been solved, but we do not know the name of the ship on which they sailed.  We also know that one son, Claus, was a master violinst.  Family notes say, "He had studied with the Masters and they could teach him no more."  We are also told that shortly after landing in New York, he had contracted cholera, perhaps from the ship, and died shortly after playing a concert there.  We do not know where this young man was buried.

In the mid 1990s, after retiring to Arizona, Fay found the addresses of some Schlotfeldts in Germany from a telephone directory publication.   He wrote "blind" letters (translated to German) and mailed what he knew of the family to several who had common first names of the family, (such as Otto) or lived on intriguing streets, like "Schlotfeldtsberg Strasse".  He asked for anything they might know of Hans Hinrich (Henry) and Catherine's families.   (Included was a return envelope and a 5 dollar bill to help cover the cost of any material or inconvenience.)   Amazingly, he got replies from two of the people who lived on Schlotfeldtsberg Strasse, in Flintbek, Germany.  Hans-Hinrich and Helmut.  Helmut wrote a letter, and Hans-Hinrich sent a reply "in person", via his sister, Christiana and her husband who were making a trip to the Grand Canyon of Arizona and a baloon festival in New Mexico.  A big surprise!   He also received a reply from Otto Schlotfeldt of Eiderstede, not far from Flintbek and another from Walter Schlotfeldt, the father of Dr. Schlotfeldt to whom Fay had written.  Dr. Schlotfeldt had died, but Walter felt responsibility to take up the answer.  (Thank goodness for the German Post Office who went to great effort to find the father who lived in another city.)

   The German replies all provided small "Family Trees" of each of their branches back a few generations, but no known links to our "Hans Henry" and Catherine.  It was, however, the start of building a good file for the future.

It was during this period that an Arizona neighbor took a vacation to Alaska and came back with a photo.  It was of a monument to "Pioneer" families in Fairbanks, Alaska.  On it was the name of the LEO SCHLOTFELDT family.  The neighbors, Marv and Peg Glinck, asked if we had relatives in Fairbanks.   Well, the old will showed Leo Schlotfeldt to be there, and Leone's notes indicated roughly how they were related, so we said, "Sure".   It was enough to get Fay on the phone to place a call to Leo.  Leo was pretty much retired from his trucking business and living at the Fairbanks "Pioneer" Center at the time.  They made their links through some phone calls and letter exchanges.  Leo said "You should talk to my nieces and nephews, they have a "genealogy committee" and some just came back from Europe.  They may know more."

It was not long before Fay had a call from JANE BLAIR BRITZ of Yakima, Washington (her mother a Schlotfeldt).   That was another big link.  We shared what information we could and Fay and Jan stopped in Yakima on a detour from a vacation in Idaho and Montana.  There they met other members of the HANS DETLAF SCHLOTFELDT clan.  That was part of the branch of H.H. & Catherine's grandchildren who went west in the late 1800s and settled in Washington and Oregon.  (Some founding the brewery and the meatmarket in the early mining town of Roslyn, Washington.  Scene of the filming of the TV series, "Northern Exposure".)   Among those met at Yakima was, MARY (Schlotfeldt) LANGEVIN and her husband Darrell of Oregon.   Beside exchanging pictures and records, this began another big step in development of the worldwide tree of Schlotfeldt families.   Mary's brother, RICHARD Schlotfeldt, of St. Paul, Minnesota, was a computer software designer and had HIS OWN WEB PAGE! 

Shortly after that, Fay posted his first inquery on a genealogy search web site.  By some miracle, both Richard and WALT SCHLOTFELDT (Leo's son) of Anchorage, both logged on to that site, that day.  It began an exchange that folded into Dick's web page posting of what family tree we knew about.  His page had a place for a "message" board.   That led to the next BIG MOVE.   A message from CARMEN SCHLOTFELDT of Santiago, Chile.   She and her father, Enrique (Hinrich), had records of their family back to the 1600s in Germany.  "Were we interested??     WOW,  We were.  With Hinrich's fluency in German, and Carmen's resources at the University where she is a Professor, we received the chart in Power Point format!!   The BIG BREAKTHROUGH,   Carmen's chart showed us the links to the small trees we had received from the "blind" letters.  We now knew how we were related to Hans-Hinrich and Helmut of Schlotfeldtsberg Strasse and others.   A few more letter exchanges with them, some of their research, and we made a few more links.  Otto found our common ancestry from old land ownership records.  Later, CLAUS REESE of nearby Reesedorf, Germany found the actual land contracts back to the 1600s that expanded our verified ancestors. 

There are many others, including, ED SCHLOTFELDT, of Washington who shared German records he had ordered from Germany that pinned down the birthplace and marriage of our Hans Henry & Catherine.  The work of Ed's sister, EILEEN, before she passed away added many, many names to our American clan and is the key to our 5,000 plus tree.   The discovery of cousins MARGA SCHLOTFELDTof Meimersdorf, Germany and CORINNA BEHRENS TOMFORDE (a Schlotfeldt daughter), both of who can handle English well, thank goodness, opened the door to family communications in Germany.  Corinna now has a great Schlotfeldt web site from Hamburg, which I will show in links later.  (See our "Familytreemaker" site below, in the interim.)  DR. JIM SCHLOTFELDT of Washington, D.C. was a later link who filled in many blanks from his Alvord, Iowa branch of the family. He has visited and taken photos of churchyards & family in FLINTBEK & KLEIN FLINTBEK.  He's an active researcher.

This page is still in development and more names need to be mentioned.  I'll never get to them all.  For example:  In March of 2009 CHRISTIAN SCHLOTFELDT of FLINTBEK FARM in SOUTH AFRICA, found this webpage.  His father, CARL "Callie" has sent us a 1970 folder from a family reunion about their family and the trip from Germany to S.A.  He also has exchanged some great photos of the "ranch" (as we would call it in Arizona) and their family and fine cattle.  I may get a picture or two on the Family Treemaker site linked on our last page here.  They are true cousins in old Hinrick's line.

Let us know if we can help with your connections to the "Schlotfeldt brother and sisterhood."  We don't charge.  It's a labor of love.

If you write in German or Spanish or Portuguese it's OK.  It will just be a while before I can get it translated.

A Note:> In the early days of AOL (mid-1990s) when Fay looked for Schlotfeldt's in online lists, he would find only 3 or 4 Schlotfeldts.  Today there are many pages and Fay has been in contact with almost all of them and they are cousins.  Some fairly distant, but cousins.  So the family has grown.