I hope you will be willing to bear with my outlandish jargon after I tell you that I never majored in English language studies and that my language school was the 35th US Division from Texas. The only certificate issued to me was the award of the Bronze Star Medal for my service with the United States. I was with General Patton.
Luck was my partner when on a beautiful June day in the last year, in the city of Metz, I chanced upon Michael Senzig. Since that occurrence made it possible for me today to share the company of this fine flourishing branch of our family. Over a period of nearly ten years, my cousin, Helmut Lang, now deceased, and myself have been delving into our remotest family roots. We have been fortunate enough to authenticate the recorded history back as far as the year 1250. Now I am going to expound for you the five specific and essential features of the life story of our family:
Around the year 1250, a certain knight by the name of Anselme was one of the captains serving the Duke of Luxembourg. Indeed he served his master so satisfactorily that he was given a castle, a village and many acres of land to go with it, and above all a suitable number of vineyards. From then on, the knight was called "de Sentzich." How are we to know if the name derives from the appelation of the village or if the knight gave his name to the village? We won't worry about this detail.
However, he set a fine example to his future descendants by marrying the daughter of a rich lord: Affelis de Winteradorf who brought her husband a rich dowry in the shape of two castles with the surrounding lands called Winteradorf and Stienbruck.
Affelis had two sons and three daughters. The oldest of the boys, Peter, joined the Duke of Luxembourg's army and was killed in action in the thick of the battle of Wohring near Koln. He was 23 years old.
The younger boy, Conrad also served as a squire, or an armor-bearer, but he was lucky enough to keep alive and ensure the continuation of the family name.
Anselme's brother, a banker, married Waltrate. Thus starting another branch through their children who were wine growers while their cousins were away waging war.
We know the family came from Luxembourg and stayed there until 1500.
There we come across one Antoine (Anthony) de Senzig, a flour mill manager in the city of Trier (W.G.) On the Mosel River from 1523 -24. Then he became the owner of the Castle of Eilen in 1531, by the grace of Emporer Charles the Fifth, who donated the castle. He later was made Mayor of the city from 1535 -38. At his death he was Superintendent of the City Treasury.
He married Marguerite Dahm and had three children. Anna, who married Gerhard von Olewig, provost-master of the baker's guild of Trier, Margaret, who married Herrmann Dentgen, a judge in the High Court of Justice in Trier, and Vincent, who lived from 1536 -1584. He had 5 children. The family was in that area until about 1600. That was when Adam Senzig married a flour miller's widow...
The family emigrated to Lorraine, France. The first one was Jean (John) Senzig, a flour miller at Colmen near Bouzonville in 1643. Like his ancestor, Anselme, he married a rich widow. They had 5 children, all of whom the father established in flour mills not far from his own place.
The eldest son stayed with his father in Colmen, the others settled in the vicinity of Bouzonville: Neunkirch, Wolfling, all along the Nied and Saar rivers. According to the rule of Primo Ceniter, the eldest son takes over the father's milling business, the second settle about a half a mile downstream and so forth. Don't let us forget that at this time, the Saare country was French territory up until Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo on the 18th of June, 1815. From then on the Prussians became sole masters.
At that time our family was split into two: a French part and a German part. They were situated in Saarlouis Picard: Saarlouis is a city which was founded by the French Dauphin Louis the 14th, Picard was a French province whose inhabitants were brought to the place for the sake of populating the new town.
The two family groups went on living each on their respective side, carrying on their same trades, speaking the same dialect. That period seems to have been a happy one, the family kept on growing in numbers, so much so, thatcertain villages, on either side of the Franco-German border were up to three-fourths made up members of the Senzig families. The flour mills alone were no longer able to support all of them, so that from 1850-60 on they had to take up different trades: farmer, joiner, carpenter...
All of a sudden in 1870 in mid-summer, like a thunderbolt in a blue sky, the Franco-German war broke out, with the theater of operations in the Saar - right in the middle of the Senzig occupied territories. A disaster!
In 1871, the Versailles peace treaty awarded the entire province of Alsace Lorraine to Germany, the inhabitants becoming new citizens of the German Reich.
The brutal annexation offended a large number of persons who decided to emigrate, some back into France, which makes us acquainted with other members of the tribe as far away as Lourdes in the Pyrenees in south France, others again left the old country and crossed the big pond, the Atlantic ocean, for the land of the free. That's the starting point of the grand epic of your ancestor, Nicolas Senzig.
Born November 3, 1841, Nicolas Senzig had spent his life so far, at a place called Woelfling near Bouzonville, in France. From there, with his wife, Catherine Muller and his five children: Anna, Jean-Nicolas, Pierre, Suzanne, and Jean - respectively aged 11, 9, 7, 4, and 11 months - he undertook the long trek to freedom. By stages, he traveled from Lorraine, in France, to Antwerp, in Belgium. From that port, on a boat for emigrants called the "Belgien Land," he sailed on the 17th of April 1880 with the second big wave of immigrantion, the peak year being 1882 with over 800,000 arrivals in America. The transportation fare for three and a half passages, tickets for the entire family, was 478 DM 75 Pf - about $125 today.
They landed in New York, spent some time in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and then along to Lyndon Station, Wisconsin where the family settled.
I am sure that September 1939 must have been a great event with a memorable date for the family, since Jean-Nicolas (Nick) Senzig, residing at 209 9th Ave E in Ashland, was granted American citizenship and received his final papers granting him full civil rights as an American!
I am quite thrilled myself, when I think of a man being handed this precious document.
Now then, the family has made a permanent start, and is well established, as I can gather from the numerous representatives here present.
I don't feel like lapsing into Shakespear-isms and over emphases, but in the name of all of the European Senzigs, I wish to hail you with a hearty: BRAVO, and GOOD LUCK TO ALL OF YOU!