Nostalgia, that wonder about the past, is a part of life. People often wonder what it was like in the old days and how their ancestors lived. Some even wish they could have lived during those earlier times. Those of us with German genes sometimes wish we could experience the "good days" in the storybook land of Germany as it was several hundred years ago. To "reconstruct" the everyday life and times of our Palatinate kin, let's return to a region of small villages around the turn of the 18th century. This rural setting in the southwestern part of the country is the area from which most of the earliest Germanic immigrants came in colonial American days.

Villages in Germany at that time were virtually isolated, especially fi they were not situated on a navigable stream. The average village was located along a small stream which was impassable for boats and rafts. Roads, then were the only routes to towns, other villages, and the outside world.