Germersheim is a town in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, of around 20,000 inhabitants. It is also the seat of the Germersheim district. The neighboring towns and cities are Speyer, Landau, Philippsburg, Karlsruhe and Wörth.

Coat of arms

The coat of arms features a golden crowned eagle on a blue background. The eagle derives from the fact that, at one time the town was ruled directly by the emperor of Germany.

History

After his invasion of Gallia, Gaius Iulius Caesar made the Rhine river the border between the Roman Empire and Germania. Some small areas east of it were later invaded and added to the Roman province of Agri Decumates...

My father grew up in a house boat, which was built by my grandfather Philip Columbus Ohmer. Below is a model my uncle Cleveland Ohmer made of his childhood home. My grandparents and 6 (at that point) children lived in that simple 3-room home. He shared how he remembered his father getting up and starting the wood stove, fixing coffee, and waking the children. The boat tied behind was used for everyday travel, fishing and trapping. Eventually, this houseboat was pulled onto the family property in Amelia, Louisiana – my uncle Cleveland added onto it and raised his family in it.

My father told me how he’d take a boat to school, since he lived on house boat that no road could reach...

_{This material was taken from the Inventory of the Parish Archives of Louisiana, No. 4 Assumption Parish (Napoleonville), prepared by the Louisiana Historical Records Survey, Service Division, Works Projects Administration, sponsored by The Department of Archives, L.S.U., Dr. Edwin A. Davis, Archivist, and co-sponsored by the Assumption Parish Police Jury. It was published in March 1942, and has been condensed from the original and annotated by Audrey B. Westerman. (Taken from Terrebonne Life Lines, Volume 18, No. 2, Summer 1999. Published on the Internet in September 1999 with the permission of Audrey B. Westerman and the Terrebonne Genealogical Society.)}

First Residents, the Indians.

When French explorers, about the beginning of the eighteenth century ve...

My GGG Grandfather, Tobias Ambre Ohmer, sailed from LeHavre, France to New Orleans on the ship Carack, arriving in April of 1851. The following is an account of the the burning and eventual sinking of that very ship in the year 1857.

Built 1849 in Thomaston, Maine
Ship Carack, 874 tons
Built by R. Walsh
Chief Owner W.J. Fales, Robinson, Ambrose Snow

Telegraphed to the New Orleans Picayune

Steamboats Passed Vicksburg

[By the National Line]

Vicksburg, Aug. 1 — The John Briggs passed down at 7 o’clock this morning.

Later from Key West

Probable loss of Bark Pacific

The annexed letter from our Key West correspondent, giving an account of the destruction of the ship Carack, by fire, and the probable loss of the bark Pacific, with other marine intelligence, came to hand th...

Tobias Ambre Ohmer, my ggg grandfather, sailed from LeHavre, France to New Orleans, arriving on June 16, 1851. The Captain was listed as W. J. Fales.

The Aug 1, 1857 edition of the New York Shipping and Commercial lists that the Carrack was bound for Liverpool from New Orleans when it caught fire and sunk Southwest of the Tortugas. It states that the ship was owned in Thomaston, Maine and was built December 8, 1849.

The Cutler files states the Master was A. Snow and the owner was R. Walsh. She was surrendered Aug 7, 1857.

Ship CARACK, (Not COSSACK,) from New Orleans to Liverpool, was the vessel as before suggested destroyed by fire S. W. of Tortugas. A letter to the Charleston Courier, from Key West, says that her cargo consisted of 2780 bales of cotton , and that the ship was v...

Through clever visual trickery, vital West Coast warplane plants were made invisible to prying enemy aerial eyes.

By Bill Yenne

When I was a young boy in Seattle, my father told me about a fake town that had been built on top of Boeing’s Plant 2 during the war. This naturally fired my imagination. What an ingenious way, I thought, to fool the enemy bombers that might being coming over the Emerald City to wreak havoc. He told me about it with exaggerated caution to underscore the fact that it had been top secret during the war. Nobody was supposed to talk about it, although everyone in town knew about this faux neighborhood that employees called “Wonderland.” By the time people in the know were allowed to talk about Boeing Wonderland, the company was tearing it down.

Wonde...

by Susan Catherine Ohmer

This supplement to the Ohmer Family Tree compiled in 1951 by Rose Ohmer Leach, daughter of Michael Ohmer, was written in 1970 – 71 by Susan Catherine Ohmer in response to a number of requests to know “what those people in the Family Tree did.”

Much of the information was obtained from a biographical sketch of Nicholas Ohmer in the Montgomery County (Ohio) Atlas of 1875.

The rest was compiled by Susan from family diaries, letters, and personal reminiscences. As Susan says on page 2, this chapter of family history is concerned mainly with the descendants of Nicholas Ohmer. For her it was a labor of love. She gives it to succeeding generations to carry on. She is now working on a collection of family stories and anecdotes which promises to go on– and on.

Origin/Meaning:

The arms are a combination of : the lion of the Pfalz, representing the area of the Oberpfalz ; the arms of Franken (Franconia); the panther of the Counts of Ortenburg in Niederbayern; the three lions of the Dukes of Schwaben and the escutcheon with the arms of the Wittelsbach family (the longtime ruling family in Bayern)

The arms of Wittelsbach were taken from the arms of the counts of Bogen, who became extinct in 1242. The Wittelsbach family was related to the counts of Bogen and inherited their possessions along the Danube between Regensburg and Deggendorf...

Bavaria (German Bayern), a state in southeastern Germany, is bounded on the north by the states of Thuringia and Saxony, on the northeast by the Czech Republic, on the southeast and south by Austria, and on the west by the states of Baden-Württemberg and Hesse. Munich is the capital and largest city. Other important cities are Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Regensburg. Bavaria is the largest state of Germany. It is drained by the Main River in the northwest and by the Danube River and two of its tributaries, the Inn and Isar rivers, in the southern and central regions. North of the Danube the land is a rolling upland. Along the border with the Czech Republic is the Bavarian Forest, which reaches an elevation of 1457 m (4780 ft)...

Origin/Meaning:

The arms were granted on May 10, 1948.

The arms are a combination of the lion of the Pfalz, the wheel of Mainz and the cross of Trier. The major part of the present State belonged to either the Pfalz or the bishops of Trier or Mainz.

The lion of the Pfalz is the lion of the Staufen family, who used the lion in their arms for the Pfalz. The family ruled the County (later Principality) of the Pfalz from the 11th century until 1214. In 1214 Ludwig I of Bayern (Bavaria) came into possession of the Pfalz. He adapted the lion as the symbol for the Pfalz and the lion still forms part of the arms of Bayern...