What is a family?  According to Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, it is, “any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins.”  Another definition is, “all those persons considered as descendants of a common progenitor.”  The noun family may elicit various emotions like “self-doubt” from parents’ judgments, or “guilt” from oppression.  But members of families provide necessary balance to ensure survival of the bloodlines.  Along with judgment come compassion and the willingness to forgive transgressions.  At its best, families accept all members’ behaviors and through forgiveness, they gain understanding of themselves and their neighbors.

        The earliest records for births, deaths and marriages were kept by the churches, with the pastor being responsible for the record keeping.  For some records in the 1600s, in a birth record, only the father’s name and the name of the child and the date of birth and baptism, plus the sponsors, was given.  The mother’s name was completely omitted.  The writing skills of the clergymen varied greatly and names were often misspelled.  The old German writing, faded over time, challenged the best of translators.  Adding yet another layer of confusion was the practice of our families repeated use of the same first and middle names for succeeding generations.  Moreover, the Heuer families moved from village to village, albeit not any great distance, and their movements had to be traced.  Churches were in charge of record keeping until 1874 when civil records were finally introduced in Prussia in October of that year.  This practice was carried over to many states in the United States.  Civil records were not mandated by the state of Wisconsin until after 1907.

        We attempted to reconstruct the conditions under which they were living in Prussia, and how, under adverse circumstances, they developed personal attitudes which may have induced them to leave their homeland.  Research showed that most 19th century European immigrants thought of themselves not as ex-citizens of a national state (which, in the case of Germany, for instance, did not even exist) but as speakers of a common tongue, or residents of a particular village or province.  The Prussians were lured by the vision of unlimited economic opportunity and greater freedom than Central Europe offered in the post-Napoleonic era.  They brought culture in varied forms, from singing groups to vineyards to poetry societies.  More pioneering than some other ethnic immigrants, they helped develop America’s hinterland, from Ohio westward and south to Texas.

        When an immigrant reached America’s shore, his paper trail began with a record of his arrival.  How much information contained in individual records depended on the year and port of arrival.  In the nineteenth century, the United States government, on numerous occasions, drafted passenger laws to place controls on immigration and to relieve overcrowded and unhealthy conditions aboard passenger ships.  No federal restrictions existed until 1875, when criminals and prostitutes were forbidden to enter the United States.  Until that time, each state placed its own restrictions on the influx of mentally ill and disabled persons, criminals, and paupers.  It was only with the Passenger Act of 1882 that ships’ captains were ordered to keep lists of passengers.  Information to be recorded for each steerage passenger included name, age, sex, occupation, native country, and intended destination.  Previously, beginning in the year 1820, the lists were required to include only the passenger’s name, age, occupation, and the country to which he owed allegiance (not necessarily his native country).  From 1820-70, immigrants from Germany totaled more than two million, with the majority of that number – 951,667 – immigrating during the decade of 1851-60.

        During this research, we uncovered many family names that we had heard numerous times before but never made a connection to the Heuer name.  We found a large number of Heuer descendants who, when interviewed, were unaware of their Prussian heritage, and others fervently contended that there were no “Heuers” in their ancestry.  This book will serve to help dispute those debates and will undoubtedly prove to be a valuable tool for future genealogical research of related branches of the Heuer family tree.

        Some families were unwilling to provide information necessary to complete their family history.  In those instances, we used what we could obtain from other family members and sources, or we simply left the voids.  Obituaries were used to provide the background information for many of our deceased relatives; however, to make the book flow and easier to read, contents were paraphrased into narratives, rather than directly quoted.  A point of interest and a precaution for future researchers is that obituaries oftentimes contain erroneous information and they are not reliable sources.  Further research on an individual usually provided more accurate information than was obtained through an obituary; however, sometimes all the information and the only sources on certain individuals were their obituaries.