Welcome to the Shimer Family Webring Newsletter!

Well, Summer is half over and I'm finally able to sit down and work on some family history! I've been serving with the US Army down in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina for the past 4 1/2 months; during that time I have received numerous emails and visits to my Shimer Family History Page. I want to thank everyone so very much for your support!

I have tons of information to go through; some of which I am going to try and post here to share with you. I recently added a link on the Shimer Family History Page to the genealogy I have been working on through the Ultimate Family Tree program. It is everything that I have so far on the Daniel Scheimer line. Only two days, and already I have more to add! This is in thanks to two Shimer descendants who I met through my guestbook; Penny Spencer and Robert Shimer. I want to thank them very much for their time and effort into research for the family. Rob wrote to me today and said, "I am still amazed at how many relatives I have on my dad's side of the family; when I grew up thinking I was the only one left." When he first left a message on my guestbook back in September of '98, Rob said that the only information he had on his Shimer name was a Civil War pension paper he believed belonged to his great grandfather. Now I find that Penny and he are distant cousins of mine, descending from Daniel Scheimer on a branch of the family I was totally unaware of!

I am glad that this endeavor has paid off for so many of us so far. I have found other distant relatives through this page. When I first started this page I received a visit on my guestbook from a Michael Jack Shimer, who is the grandson of my great grandfather's brother, Milford Shimer. This contact has put me back in touch with my family in Pennsylvania that my immediate family has been separated from for over fifty years! George B. Shimer had left a message on my guestbook, and through emails I now find is a descendant of my great, great, great uncle, Willis W. Shimer. I had been in smail contact with George's brother, Kenneth, back in '97; six months before I knew anything about html and web pages. It is a small world indeed! 

There are other Shimer lines in America other that those descending from one of the "three brothers." I'd venture to say that the descendants of Jacob Scheimer, which have been in America since around 1710, are far more numerous. From my research, a vast majority of these descendants live (or have family who live) in the area of eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey.

I try not to be partial to one side of the family, I am very interested in any information about the family; whichever branch that might be. I have a large amount of research on my line; but like I said before, this family is too small not to be connected. I have tried (not hard enough, sadly) to make that connection back here in Germany. As of this time it still eludes me. There are far fewer Scheimers left here in "ye ole country" than there are Shimers in America. If anyone is interested, I have a printout from Deutch Telekom (German phone company) that lists the address and phone number of every Scheimer on record here in Germany. Only about 30 or so left.

In closing, with the newsletter I have added a few new links below (check out the Shimer.com link - I don't know who created it but it is pretty cool!). I welcome any input, by email, guestbook entry or smail, that you are willing to share with the family. I still encourage any information, however trivial, that you might want to share. This could include stories, reunion information, links, genealogy, etc. If you email me with genealogy data , I would be happy to forward this to everyone I have on my address book. I would greatly welcome any guest writers to this newsletter! I will try to do my best to manage this (the darn Army just keeps getting in the way!), so any help would be appreciated.

LOL!

Mike Shimer, Baumholder, Germany - July 20th, 1999.

LINKS!!!