Tag: Tontz

• Notes from the heartland (Part 2: Kansas and Missouri)

  

  It’s our second day on the road to Fort Worth, and Spence and I are traveling through the rolling hills of the Kansas and Missouri borderlands. Yesterday I told you a little about my 3x great-grandmother’s brothers, John and George Hitz, and how they settled in Iowa with their mother Maria Tontz Hitz after the…

  Jesse Rude

  November 5, 2025

  Family history

  Camp Crowder, emigration, Hitz, immigration, Kansas, migration, milling, Missouri, Neosho, Newtonia, Reiner, Signal Corps, Smith, socialism, The U.S. Civil War, Tontz, Wells, World War II

• Notes from the heartland (Part 1: Iowa)

  

  I’m on a kind of pilgrimage through America’s heartland with my trusty companion, my six-year-old Golden Doodle, Spence. This isn’t your average road trip; we’ll be traveling through time as well as space. We have a destination — my brother’s home in Fort Worth, Texas for our family’s off-schedule Thanksgiving (what we call Rudesgiving) —…

  Jesse Rude

  November 4, 2025

  Family history

  emigration, Hitz, immigration, Iowa, Madison, migration, Polk County Iowa, Reiner, Seewis, Smith, Switzerland, Tontz, Wisconsin