George’s Journal

This article appeared in the October 2008 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) Emilie (Woelfel) Michalk was born in Thorndale on January 31, 1898, to Nicholas and Magdalena Woelfel. Eighty-six years later, she told Edward Bernthal the story of her life. Although her heritage was German, she married a Wend, […]

This article appeared in the July 2009 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) The postcard pictured here is part of the Anne Blasig Collection which was donated to the Wendish Museum in 1991 by Carolyn Walther. The collection, along with other significant items, is stored in the museum’s vault, which

This article appeared in the April 2012 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Historical Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) Even though Johann Kilian is the one pastor who is readily identified as a Wendish clergyman in America, there were at least seven more who fit the classification. These are Hermann Kilian, Andreas Schmidt, Johann Pallmer, Gottfried

I began writing this sketch of my mother many years ago and came back to it recently – in time for my sister’s eighty-fifth birthday. Her immediate family had planned a celebration and she wanted something for the children and grandchildren to read about the environment in which she was raised. While I try to

This article appeared in the October 2013 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) In an era of political correctness we have learned to be aware of how groups choose to be named. It was not always that way and on occasion. The very group that had been labeled with a

This article appeared in the October 2014 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) A working definition of the word zombie would be “the walking dead.” If such a being or beings could actually exist, I suppose there could also be zombie ideas. These would be ideas that are not valid

This article appeared in the January 2015 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) Robert Wuchatsch, a researcher of and writer about the Australian Wends, found about a dozen notices placed in the classified section of the 1854 Budissiner Nachrichten several months prior to the departure of the Ben Nevis migrants.

The article appeared in the January 2011 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) While Wendish farmers in Europe lived in little villages and walked to their fields, Wends in Texas built houses on the lands they cultivated. As long as the farms were located near the Serbin church, traveling to

This article appeared in the April 2011 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) On September 4, 1854, when the main body of Wendish migrants boarded the train at Bautzen, they did so without their pastor, Johann Kilian. Because someone lodged a charge against Kilian for inciting a person to emigrate,

This article appeared in the January 2012 Newsletter of the Texas Wendish Heritage Society of Serbin, Texas. (www.texaswendish.org) When the Kilians departed for the journey to Texas they left behind the graves of three infant children in the church cemetery at Weigersdorf. Nathanael Martin, Tabitha Lydia, and Theresia Helena all died in infancy. Only two-year-old