FAVORITE PHOTO - 52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS - WEEK 3 #52Ancestors FAVORITE PHOTO


 

#52Ancestors 2024  

Favorite Photo

Wedding Photo

of

Lucia Ida Marie Hegenbarth & Josef Hans Zapf


My Favorite Photo

This would have to be one of the easiest topics today as I am catching up with my #52Ancestors

 

I recently visited Germany where my father immigrated from in 1953. I’ve started recording his story and you can check it out by clicking HERE.

 

My father’s family still live in Germany, he has two living brothers there and a sister who immigrated to Canada, the same year that he left Germany.

 

I’ve seen a lot of photos from his brothers and sisters over the years but not a lot of pictures of his parents, my grandparents, Lucia Ida Marie Hegenbarth and Josef Hans Zapf. There were always two large pictures of his parents on the dressing table that was located in my parent’s bedroom of the last two houses that they lived in.

 

As I hadn’t met my German grandparents, this was all I had to go by for the first seventeen years of my life. Even when I first visited Germany in the 1970s, they had passed away in the 1950s and I got to visit their grave site in 1975 in the Bamberg Cemetery, Bamberg, Germany.

 

ZAPF FAMILY - BAMBERG CEMETERY 
 


So, before I visited Germany in December 2023, I had sent an email to my eldest cousin, Wanda asking if she would be able to share with me any photos, memorabilia, documents, etc. I had been lax with my communications with some of my relatives and Wanda was one of them. But she was really generous and came and collected me from Bamberg when we were staying for two days driving me to her home, 26 kms from Bamberg.

 

Once we arrived, we caught up on the time gap that had occurred. But it didn’t really feel like it had been in excess of 45 years since we last saw each other. Then we got down to the business of my visit. She bought out a pile of documents and pictures. I was very excited and thrilled to see what she had for me.

 

I gasped with surprise at what was there. It was a cornucopia of several generations of both my grandparent’s families. I was in heaven. But there was a lot to go through, so I had to start photographing the pictures immediately as we had to be back in Bamberg by 7 o’clock at the latest that night for dinner. I was thinking that this was going to be a much bigger task then I had expected. I was right!!!

Here is my FAVORITE photo of all the pictures that Wanda shared with me:

 

Lucia Ida Marie Hegenbarth and Josef Hans Zapf

1926 Banz, Staffelstein, Lichtenfels, Oberfranken, Bavaria, Germany

 About ten days earlier, just after Christmas, my eldest surviving uncle and his wife celebrated their 65th Wedding Anniversary. When we arrived at their home, the night before the celebration, there was a column of photos on the wall in their living area with some old ancestral pictures. Amongst them was a cropped version of the above photo. I had never seen either version of the wedding photo, so I was really excited to see that there were several versions of this photo distributed throughout the family.

 

I’m sure you agree that the photo of Lucia and Josef is just beautiful.

 

Until next time…thanks for reading!

 

Fiona

Sharing my passion for family history

#52Ancestors #FamilyMysteries #LegacyUnveiled

 

Stay tuned for the unfolding chapters of our family's intricate narrative.


MISSED A WEEK CATCH UP HERE - CLICK ON THE BLOG YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BELOW:

Week 1: FOLK LORE

Week 2: ORIGINS

Week 3: FAVORITE PHOTO

Week 4: WITNESS TO HISTORY

Week 5: INFLUENCER

Week 6: EARNING A LIVING

Week 7: IMMIGRATION

Week 8: HEIRLOOMS

Week 9: CHANGING NAMES

Week 10: LANGUAGE

Week 11: ACHIEVEMENT

Week 12: TECHNOLOGY


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