Please visit   barjwhit.com  our genealogy/ family stories resource center.

Georg Wurth was born in Hemsbach, Germany on August 9, 1868. 
Er betrieb längere Jahre eine Wirtschaft in Hemsbach, später betätigte er sich in einer Fabrik zu Weinhem.
He died on January 17, 1904.  We heard that there was some sickness that killed many people at that time.

Georg Wurth was the youngest child of Georg Adam Wurth. 
He had a brother and two sisters:  Anna (1859), Heinrich (1864) and Katharina (1867).

Anna Thron was born on October 7, 1870.  She and Georg Wurth married in Hemsbach on February 2, 1891.
Anna and Georg had seven children.

After Georg died, Anna married Adolf  Balles.  Their son, Theodor was born on  November 4, 1910.
Anna died on September 10, 1911.

When they were young adults, the Wurth/ Balles children immigrated to the U.S. from Hemsbach, Germany. 
They settled in Schenectady, New York.

Henry Otto Wurth came to New York City 1913.  He was 19 years old, an able-body young man, who could work here and save money to bring the others over.  He found work in NYC for a few years and became a member of one of the Turnvereins in the area.  In 1918, the Turnverein sent him to Indiana University Normal School in Indianapolis for one year to study to be a physical education instructor.  In 1919, he moved to Schenectady, NY to take a job for the Turnverein there.  

In 1922, he began bringing the rest of his family over.  Katy and Anna came next. They were able to do housework for affluent people to pay for their keep and save some money to send home. They worked for the family who owned the Mohawk Carpet Mills in Amsterdam, New York. (Those mills were still a very successful enterprise in the 1950’s, when I was growing up.)

 As time went on, the married people (Gus and Emma) and their families came.  Herman Setzer, Katy's boyfriend came, too.

As I heard the story from my mother, Reiny, who had polio when he was young and was left with a limp, was unable to come under the quotas from Germany. He traveled to Brazil, and then immigrated to the U.S. under their quotas.

Rudy, the eldest Wurth son, came to America in 1923, and later decided to return to Germany.

Teddy Balles came, too, in about 1927.

There is a wonderful website called  http://www.ellisisland.org/  where immigrant records, as recorded on the manifiests of the ships they traveled on, are available to us.  I was able to find the records of all of the Wurth siblings, except Teddy.  Here is a chart of the data Wurth Immigrants .  Be sure to check out the Ellis Island site.  It is fascinating.

Various siblings and families lived together at various times.  At one time, they had a house in the country, in Alplaus.  And, at another time, they lived in a two family house on Pleasant Street in Mont Pleasant.

While living on Pleasant St., they all pitched in to build my Grandpa Gus' house at 73 Roosevelt Avenue.  I recently learned from Henry  that two Thron cousins, Herman and Fritz, who were also here from Germany, stayed in the rooms upstairs on Roosevelt Ave, when the house was first built.  Both these men eventually went back to Germany, where they married and did their lives.

Eventually, Henry and Adam Thron  built Henry's house  on  Garfield Avenue.

Herman Setzer, the carpenter,  built his own house  in Burnt Hills.  It was hard for the brothers to go out there to help him because it was so far away from the city.  In those days, no one had a car.  You had to take a trolley to get to Burnt Hills.  It took a long time for Herman to build his house. 

We believe that Fred Schroeder built his own house on Park Avenue?  Does anyone know the details of that?

The Wurth brothers and sisters were very close.  They all settled in the Schenectady area and got together often.  Here is a picture that we are guessing is from the 1960's.

Not only were the brothers and sisters close, but so were their children, who were all first cousins. We grandchildren knew our great-aunts and uncles, our parents' cousins, and their children, who were our second cousins. In some cases, even the next generation, the third cousins knew each other. Siblings and cousins stayed in touch at weddings, showers, and holidays.   Here's the   Family Tree

The Turnverein,  a German heritage organization, had an chapter in Schenectady.  The Wurth family was very active in this organization.  Henry Wurth was the gym teacher.  Men and woman sang in the respective choruses.  Family members were on the Board of Directors at various times.  The woman were active in the auxiliary and most family wedding receptions were held in the Turner Hall.  We have gathered a lot of memorabilia from the Turnverein  and have created separate webpages to share them.

In the 1960's, there were not too many weddings and showers, and the women in the family felt a need to get together more with their extended family, so Kaffeeklatch was born. The first official Kaffeeklatch was held at Tante Katy's in March, 1962. 

Once a month (the third Monday), the women of the family gathered. Each month two hosted: one offered the hospitality of her home; the other baked the goodies. M-m-m-m great kuchen! Your turn came up about once every two years. 

We had a secretary that made reminder calls to us all, kept notes about the event, and had us each sign the attendance roster. We have those records and look forward to including some of the best stories, as we have time to transcribe or scan them.

In the 1950's, we were still having big family Christmas parties. As the first cousins married and had their own families, a party during the busy Christmas season began to lose its appeal. So, the Family Reunion--an all day picnic in the spring or summer-- was born. It was the first cousins who took the organizational leadership. Many a planning party was had around our dining room table at 2742 Broadway, with Palkovic's, Thron's, Edick's, and others.  This was a vital family event for two decades. 

The first reunion was held in 1958 in Turner Park.  It was a rainy day, so the family spent most of the day in the pavillion. 

 Henry Jr. (who was 26years old then) remembers that Uncle Gus (who was 64 years old then) gave a passionate speech about how wonderful it was for us all to be together.

In 1959, the reunion was held in Richter's Grove in Mariaville Lake.  See the picture below.
Eventually, we moved to the Firemen's Grove in Burnt Hills.  Wolfy Schroeder was a fireman in this town.

In the 1980's, interest in organizing and coming to a reunion waned a little until the event ceased. It was later picked up by some second cousins who hoped to revive it. Although the crowds were smaller in those later days, those who came always had a good time. 

Here is a family picture taken at the family reunion in 1959 (46K)

To view a larger picture, click   here (122 K)

---

Henry and Adam Thron.

Henry and Adam Thron are brothers.  Henry married Anna Wurth.  Adam and his family were always an integral part of the Wurth family.  Here is a picture of the Thron family. 
(Thanks to Dick for this picture.)

In the 1950's, Elise Thron's niece, Karin came to the United States from Germany.  She married Seigfried Schwind, and they and their two children were also a part of the Wurth family.

In reality, this is the Wurth-Thron Family because the mother of the Wurth immigrants was Anna Thron.
Her daughter, Anna Wurth married her cousin, Henry Thron.  Adam Thron was also Anna Wurth's  cousin.
Henry  and Kurt  are first cousins through their fathers; they are second cousins through Anna and Adam.

There were also other Throns from our family  who come to the United States in the 1920's and then returned to Germany later.

In 2005, when Henry Wurth, Jr. was in Hemsbach, Germany, he found  Wurth relatives, Paul and Sonja.  They are the grandchildren of Heinrich Wurth, the brother of Georg Wurth.

Henry, Jr. also shared some of his wonderful memories of that trip to Europe in a chronicle he calls  Once in Eighty Years .

With so many people in this family, we should be able to get a lot of fun stories and a lot of history about the Wurth siblings that brought our family to the United States.  We may remember things differently or remember different things.  All that makes for a fuller, more complete story.  Let's hear from you--in English or auf deutsche.

We have recently begun to put the ancestors of our family on the website, www.ancestry.com  I'm hoping that we may connect with more of them.   Maybe we can link this webpage to our ancestry.com  file.  Time will tell.

Family Library

We also maintain a digital library/ resource center where family members access more information.  Email us if you would like to register to have access to this free site.

Return to top of page