Family Ties in Toernich

Chris’ dad sent him some family history recently (thanks!). We were surprised and delighted to learn one of Chris’ ancestors was born here in Belgium! The town of Toernich is about a dozen kilometers from the border with Luxembourg, so we stopped to see if we could find any ancestral traces. We poked our heads in the local church and perused gravestones at the cemetery, but didn’t find any leads or similar last names.

This is the really interesting part though—the ancestor’s family name is Reding. “Isn’t that the same name on our neighbor’s mailbox?” I asked Chris. We had them over for an aperitif and brought it up (HI we’re your LOUD NEIGHBORS AND GUESS WHAT! We might be related!). Our neighbor said this spelling is uncommon and her family came to Brussels from that area as well, and from Switzerland before that. She said she’d look into it.

I was surprised to see how close were were to Alsace, where the Saugier family emigrated from around the same time Chris’ person was leaving Belgium for the States—just a few dozen miles or so! What did life look like here around the beginning of the 1800s? What was going on that made them want to leave? Did our ancestors ever interact? Ew, are we related? (Hopefully that’s not what our neighbor is thinking!)

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