I think part of it was that they were trying to leave the "old country" behind. My father was proud that his father had been born here (of German immigrants) while his mother was an immigrant from Wuerttemberg. She never spoke English very well, I understand. Now it is sort of okay to keep your language and teach it to children, but it was not when I was a child. Everybody seemed to want to be totally American. I am 76, but do not know how far back the wanting to be American went. My mother's father, from Hesse in 1885, tried to leave his German behind also. With a name like Fuehrer, it might have been harder. Elizabeth C Kathy Cochran wrote: > I always hated history in school. The way it was taught, it was so dry, and > it may have had something to do with a couple of really bad (or so I > thought) teachers. UNTIL I took "The Social History of the US to 1865" at > UCLA. I was MESMERIZED and then it started coming to life! But you're so > right, it was so "white-washed" that there wasn't anything left of any > "color" to learn about. The internet has certainly opened things up for new > information, hasn't it? Now I want to find a book about why the > German-Americans so often swept their German heritage under the rug. I > understand about WWI& WWII, but my Germans came to the US in 1837 and > earlier, and one branch even changed their name from Reiss to Rice! And > that seems to be the branch that fostered the "fairy story" that we were > from Alsace-Lorraine, instead of from Alzey, Hesse-Darmstadt. > > > > Kathy C > > > > From: hesse-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:hesse-bounces@rootsweb.com] On > Behalf Of Elizabeth Cunningham > Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 9:33 AM > To: hesse@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [HESSE] Jumping to conclusions > > > > I never heard about it either. On the other hand, one of the teachers > at my children's school pointed out that a tavern in the neighborhood, > still fairly raucous, was the local headquarters for the Bund. I did > not live here then, so this is second-hand information. Interestingly > enough, that particular 3 blocks is now mostly black. I wonder what the > Bund would have thought? > > Elizabeth C >