After reading other success stories, I decided to share the success story of my search for the German roots of John Frederick Kasling, my Great-Grandfather. My search for my Mother's Grandfather's German roots began some fifty years ago in 1949, when I wrote a family history report for my high school history class. My Grandmother Kasling was 83 years old and she told me what she could remember about her father-in-law, John Frederick Kasling. She told me that he was born about 1832 in Bavaria and had come to the U. S. A. when he was about 19 years old and had lived with an aunt in Springfield, Sangamon Co., Illinois. He married Elenor Quigley, an Irish immigrant, and after their children were born, they moved around 1880 to Linden, Cass County, Texas (my birthplace). My Grandmother Kasling gave me no dates other than the date of my Grandfather's, Edward Stephen Kasling, birth 28 Aug 1857 in Illinois. My Grandparents, Edward Stephen Kasling and Nancy Caroline Givens, were married in 1885, so, the only information that I had was what my Grandmother Kasling knew about John Frederick Kasling from about 1885 until he died 15 October 1892, two weeks before my Mother was born.

In the 1960's, after I was married and beginning my chosen profession and our children had been born, I became interested again in tracing the Kasling lineage. I found John Frederick Kasling and his family in the 1880 Texas Census but could not find him in the 1870, 1860 or 1850 Census of Sangamon Co., Illinois, where my Grandmother had told me the Kaslings were from. Even though, John Frederick Kasling and Elenor Quigley Kasling were buried in a Protestant cemetery in Linden, Texas, next to my Kasling Grandparents, my Grandmother Kasling erroneously believed her Kasling in-laws were originally Roman Catholic, and I was never able to find any church records for them in any Roman Catholic Church in East Texas or Illinois. So, for the time, I gave up my search for these Great-Grandparents.

As I neared retirement in 1996, I returned to my search for these elusive Kaslings. I again checked census reports for Springfield, Sangamon Co., Illinois and as a last resort, I checked the Chicago, Cook Co. census records. Nothing. On a whim, it occurred to me that right next to Sangamon County, Illinois, was Cass County, Illinois and since my Kaslings had come to Cass County, Texas, why not look at Cass County, Illinois. I wrote to the Genealogical Society of Cass Co., Illinois and got a quick response. No Kaslings in Cass Co., Illinois, but in the neighboring Morgan County that also bordered Sangamon County, the Genealogical Society found John Frederick Kesling and Elenor Quigley Kesling and their children in the 1870 Census of Morgan County in Jacksonville, Illinois. They also found the marriage record in 1856 for John Frederick Kesling and Elenor Quigley. This was my first realization that the spelling of the name Kasling or Kesling was probably not the original spelling of the name. I quickly verified that the Morgan County, Illinois, ôKesling familyö was my ôKasling Familyö. My Grandfather and his sisters were all listed in the 1870 Census of Morgan County, Illinois. I then began my search of all the books listing German immigrants
between 1850 and 1856. In the book ôGerman Immigrants, List of Passengers Bound from Bremen to New Yorkö, I found my Great-grandfather, Johann Friedrich Kiesling, from Quellenreuth, Bavaria, listed on the ship manifest of the Bark Constitution sailing from Bremen, Germany, arriving in New York on 16 April 1852, with a destination of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

By 1997, I was on the Internet searching for Kasling,Kesling and Kiesling descendants and ancestors for John Frederick Kasling/Kesling/Kiesling. I found none other than my one Kasling cousin and his family who I knew. I soon discovered that Kasling, Kesling and Kiesling were all Anglicized versions of the German surname Kiessling/Kie ling. It was then easy to accept that John Frederick Kasling had three spellings of his last name from the time he stepped aboard the Bark Constitution in Bremen in 1852 to the time he arrived in Texas by 1880.

The ship manifest gave me new hope. I verified the ship manifest on NARA microfilm at the local LDS Family History Center and everything began to fit with what I knew. I now knew that John Frederick Kasling's German name was Johann Friedrich Kie ling, that he was born in 1832 in Quellenreuth, Bavaria, and in 1852, he had come to New York. He then went to Pittsburgh, Pa., and by 1856, he was in Morgan County, Illinois. There, he married Elenor Quigley and with their children they were in Linden, Cass Co. Texas, just before the 1880 Census.

My next step was to find out where Quellenreuth was in Bavaria. By sheer luck, I was given the name of a young man in Bavaria whose last name was Kie ling and we started an e-mail correspondence. He was not sure of a family connection, but he told me the location of Quellenreuth: a small village in Bavaria, Northeast of Munich, South of Hof, and close to the Czech border. Future e-mails told me that the Evang. Lutheran parish Church for the area was St. Gumbertus in the town of Schwarzenbach an der Saale and that the village of Quellenreuth was only a mile or two away. St. Gumbertus had a web site, and once I clicked on the web site, I quickly found the name of a person who did genealogy research there at the Church. Unlike many other Evang. Lutheran Churches in Germany, St. Gumbertus church records are all intact and they are still there in the Church. The original church was built after the early founding of the Evang. Lutheran Church by Martin Luther in the 1500's.

After an exchange of several e-mails, this researcher told me that there were Kie ling birth, baptism, marriage and death records there in the Church. This researcher quickly found my Johann Friedrich Kie ling's recorded birth, 24 July 1832, and a notation in the margin of the records that Johann had gone to North American in 1852. Johann's parent's and sibling's names, dates of birth, etc. soon followed.

Today, I have 250 years of Kie ling ancestors before my Great-grandfather came to the U. S. in 1852. I now have some 13 generations spanning 400 years from just before 1600 to my Granddaughter who was born in 1993.

Fortunately, as a bonus, I am now in contact with a distant Schodel cousin who lives in Quellenreuth, Bavaria. Even though the surname of this new found German cousin is not Kie ling nor Schodel, her family lives in house No. 3 next to my Great-Great-Grandparents house No. 2 and her family farms 110 acres of the original farmland purchased in the early 1800's. This German cousin's great-great-grandmother was a sister of my Great-Great-Grandmother, Elizabetha Schodel Kie ling, mother of John Frederick Kasling.