You can now view your ancestry leading back to Konrad. Take this
link to a page in rootsweb.com. Then enter your name. Example,
Doe, John. Then click on LIST.You will be amazed. This page contains
more than 11,000 individuals, and all have a kinship connection to you if you
are a descendant of Konrad Schwenk, 1601-86.



 
 

So, who is Konrad and who are his Kids?  Reasonable questions. Konrad (spelled also as Conrad) Schwenk is my earliest documented paternal ancestor who lived in the linen weaving village of Laichingen near Ulm north of the Danube from 1601 to 1686. He was a weaver. He and wife Magdalena had four sons who survived, married and had children there in Laichingen. 

Konrad's Kids are his living descendants who have computers and send/receive electronic mail. At this point in time (7/12/01) there are 94 known Kids. All but six are descended from Andreas b. 1641. 12 of these live in Konrad's home village (now a city of 10,000); They are descended from Bernhard b. 1650 & Heinrich b. 1645 (see image below the map). 

In January, 1996 when I first came online, there were only six of us, that is, six online descendants of Konrad that we knew of. As time went by, more and more of our known kin came online. Then in January, 1997, our SchwenkNet Website was created (as of 11/00 defunct). Through visits there by internet users who had entered Schwenk into search engines, nearly a dozen other distant online cousins have come to light and are now "Subscribers." 

So, what is this Konrad's Kids' Klub?  What is its purpose? Nothing in particular. It is simply a network of diverse people on two continents who can trace one line of their ancestry back to a common ancestor. The other thing obviously in common is that each is online. Volunteer editors send a monthly newsletter to each "Kid" via email which announces birthdays and wedding anniversaries for that month; It tells of new cousins discovered, of newly- found facts of our Schwenk ancestry, et cetera. Since  3/99, this newsletter has been posted in this Uncle Don's Corner Website. The map below shows the geographic location of each Kid. 



 
 
 

Here is a graph showing all the online descendants of John Schwenk, 1839-99 and his immigrant siblings.  These are all relatively close cousins. 35K
Here is a graph showing all the online descendants of Konrad Schwenk, but excluding those in the other graph. 37K

 
 
    Click on image to enlarge it and learn more about Laichingen and our kinship connections to Konrad Schwenk (79 K).  For a more detailed  chart,  see the Schwenkbeck Clan page.
Click above to see the faces and names of  Konrad's Kids.  ca. 280
K.
 
 

 

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This page created on 9 March 1998
and updated on  07 Dec 2000