there ain't enough Excedrin on the planet

Okay, my zeal for the translating has completely degenerated into a headache the size of... well what's bigger than the Universe? So i decided to try to find more Gerbstadts by using some married names as bait. Guess how you know you are the only one interested in a topic. The answer:
Because your own blog is the number two find on a search engine.
Yeah... hilarious. Apparently the Heupels that Erna married into aren't looking for the rest of the nuts on the tree. I did find a few people with the surname: reporters, geneticists and a couple of bankers. Mostly links to a geneticists trying to uncover the link to hydrogen peroxide in the body.
Yeah... who knew our bodies made THAT! And that is why our hair goes grey. Apparently the older we get the less we cvan get rid of so it just discolors our hair. Like it does right out of the bottle.
I must be insane or tired to be that interested in these kinds of tangents. No, wait. I'm a geek. That would explain some of it. Not enough of it though.

Also found...

A last Will and Testament for Armin and Anna (Lina) Gerbstadt. It turns out that Grampa had another sister, Martha. Erna married a guy named Heupel. And according to the will, Grampa and Aunt Erna lived in Pasadena in 1926. Stunner! The real stunner was the other sister. It makes me wonder how many sibs Grampa really had. And why we didn't know about them.
I am working on a better, detailed translation but that is the highlights. I sent James a more detailed list as he is going to be in Berlin. But I will put as much of the document up to this site; ya know, just in case any one knows someone who knows more German than I. Geez, I better make some German friends.

clarification

The Gerbstadts that I have traced are from North/Northwestern Germany while the names originate in the East. There is at least 600 years of migration to get from Thuringa/Sachsen/Bayern to Hannover and Hamburg. The names and places were the result of trying to document my guess as to the sefinitions of the surnames. I did not expect to find castles and cities and such.
I have written to an administrator in Gerbstet with the hope that he can put me in touch with the organization that erected miniatures of famous but ruined places in that region and within the city itself. If anyone can tell me where and when the name started and who the cities' founders and protectors were it would be that historical society. Will let you all know when a response arrives.
As for the particulars that I know, I am still trying to write something up regarding the research. Even though this is for the family, I'd hate to plagerize.

Yeah TADL Friends

The friends of the Traverse Area District Library have purchased a subscription to Ancestry.com. With this subscription, anyone can walk in an look up their family with access to the full range of services that Ancestry provides. This means that any of you can do what I did yesterday:

• Look at Grampa Gerbstadts registry at Ellis Island
• Look at the vessel which brought Grampa to the States
• Look at Grampa's naturalization tag registered with Wayne County MI
• Find addresses for the Gerbstadts remaining in Wayne County MI
• Look at his Uncle Emil's requests for a passport; one request was to return to Germany in 1922 in which he lists his father as deceased
• See the Census records for Gerbstadts living in Wayne County in 1900, 1930
• Gain access to ship manifests and immigration records of trans-Atlantic crossings
• be disappointed that Gramma Ada shows up NOWHERE in these records

Ancestry also has a feature that puts the information that you plug into the software into an easy to read, genealogically correct format. Between the translating and the web searches, compiling the information will take just a little while longer. In the meantime there is the column to the right.