At 6 am at the Rueduhiem Schloss we got an automatic wake up telephone call. We got dressed, packed up our suitcases and put them out in the hall for the hotel porter to pick up and take to our bus. Then at 7 am was breakfast time - a nice buffet with ham, bacon, scrambled eggs, hard rolls, pastry choices of cereal and my favorite fruit assortment - especially the slices of fresh pineapples. By 7:45 we had walked two blocks to the place where the bus was picking us up. The streets near the hotel were so narrow that no bus could drive to it, but it was a lovely hotel with garden nearby.

On the bus the ten of us bid goodbye to our Tour Guide Elizabeth at the Frankfurt airport after a two hour trip from Rüdesheim through the rolling hills of grain fields interspersed with trees passing by the Wiesbaden American Air Force permanent Station. The bus dropped us off at the Inter City Hotel near the train station. We checked in our suitcases, got our free public transportation passes. At eleven o'clock Ray, Celia, Lyle, Ruth and I searched for the right train to take to Friedberg -- In that town we walked several blocks but found no toilet and no cafe. Ray bought 5 chicken wings (5 flugel) from the back of a truck. We noticed a train was parked on the track. It said Nidda which was where we needed to go next. We were the only people on the train, we each ate a chicken wing and a package of wheat crackers with cheese, drank our bottled water as we rode through the country side. We saw several herds of sheep, a few cattle in a creek side pasture, nice riding horses occasionally, but mostly we saw vast stretches of rolling grain fields, wheat rye and another grain. Later we found out this "other grain" was rapes: the young plants are yellow flowers, later it resembled wheat only it contained smaller seeds like oats plants. Perhaps the spring crop was still yellow, whereas the winter crop was ready to thrash now. Rapes is thrashed and crushed for oil to use for table or auto fuel or heating fuel. It's been very cold and wet so harvest is late. Most combines were small yellow, red, or blue. One green 6600 John Deere.

At Nidda we got off the train, went underground and up to reach the bus just before it left for Ulfa. This bus (with the five of us and one other passenger) wound its way through some wooded areas where trees were so tall they touched each other above the bus, but also plateaus where the road seemed to be on a high area so we could see on both sides acres of rolling fields of grain like a patchwork quilt. No fences and no animals and no buildings were in sight anywhere. Just what would Ulfa be like I wondered.

We had been told there were three bus stops in Ulfa and that the one Ulfa "Denkmal" monument was the one nearest the church. As we stepped off the bus there was a large memorial monument with many names inscribed of those who'd lost their lives in wars. Across the street from the monument was a big old stucco building with a sign Evangelical Church on it stating the times for worship services, etc. Ruth took a picture of this building thinking it was the church but later learned it was a school building. The church was on up the hill and had a tall fence around it. As we walked along the street we noticed inside the locked gate was a flight of very steep steps leading up to the front door of the church. Gates were all locked except a children's playground near the church. So we went in there so Lyle and Ruth could take some pictures of the church. It was 1 pm when we got to Ulfa and by talking to a man in a yard Ray learned that all businesses are closed every Wednesday afternoon and through a phone call the previous day we knew the Pastor Frau Otto would not be there to unlock the church until 5 o'clock. So we had four hours to roam the streets -- tavern, bakery, etc. all closed. Luckily Ray talked to a man who invited us into his house to use their toilet and at a table we were served some apple juice, showed some pictures of the yellow growing grain crop. This man, Mr. Gottwalz worked at the bank so had the afternoon off. Ruth brought out her genealogical charts and we chatted about families they knew whose names were on the charts. They told us about friends and relatives who either live in the US or who had visited there. I had seen their name Gottwalz on the early 1800 records where I found the Holt baptism and marriage records. They agreed the name Gottwalz had been in Ulfa for a long time.

While we were at the table the phone rang. Cheerfully the caller was told that they had company--Americans were visiting. Mrs. Gottwalz had her shoes outside the door--she'd been weeding her flower garden it seemed. When we left she went back to do that.

The five of us started walking up the street until we came to a sign that said "Willkommen"meaning welcome to Ulfa. Flowers were nearby. Ruth and Lyle walked farther up the hill from where they took photos of the surrounding countryside and fields, where perhaps our Holt ancestors worked as farmers between 1805 and 1847. In recording births and baptisms the fact was always stated that the father was a farmer from Ulfa, so I presume they lived in the village and worked in the fields around there.

The southernmost outer street was named "Eselweg" meaning donkey's path. It is now a very modern hard-surfaced street with large new homes along it. Near one of the homes were a few pens with sheep or goats. As we turned the corner northward, we came by playgrounds with small children, and in the street were older boys appearing to be practicing their soccer skills.

This was in a low level area of town and could have been the area where Ulfa got its name. Oloffe (original name of Ulfa) meant marshland. Near here we saw a small building with the sign "Volksbank". That apparently was the "People's Bank" where Mr. Gottwalz was employed. We came to another bus stop. It appeared to be a teenage gathering place because there was a small group of bicycle riders talking to each other. Since the names of the two remaining bus stops were "Molkerei" (Dairy) and Ulfa Kindergarten, I imagine that this bus stop was "Molkerei" because as we walked along we came past some large typical German homes with big barns attached--definitely the older historical section here in the heart of the village, which had very likely housed many milk cows each evening in the years gone by. Now some open doors revealed stacks of wood or machinery but we saw or heard no animals.

As we headed in a westerly direction up the hill toward where we thought we could find the church again before the clouds decided to sprinkle some of their moisture on us, we were glad to rest occasionally on a bench on the sidewalk. One bench said Volksbank on it.

We met several grandmas each pushing a grandchild in a stroller. I started a conversation in German talking about the nice weather and why we were strolling along. Everyone we met was quite friendly. Occasionally someone would pop their head out of the second story window and join in our conversation and evidently telephoning others to spread the word why we were in town.

Once while we were resting on a bench, someone from about 100 feet away motioned and called for us to come down to their house. A lady introduced us to her mother, an 89 year-old-lady who had some information to share with us. She invited us into the home which she shared with her husband and her daughter and son-in-law. The older lady said that she had not known any Holts but had heard of some other names that were in our genealogical files. She also shared her ideas of things important in life. At one point in our chat we talked about flags of the various German provinces. Ray wanted to be sure that they meant flags and not coats of arms, so he asked about that. The German word for coat of arms is "Wappen" and the lady thought Ray had said "Waffen" the word for military weapons. She said Oh, No, that she had lived through two wars in Germany and she did not want that to happen again. Her daughter let her know the word Ray had used, but the conversation continued on that topic for a while. Ray mentioned that people from different countries getting to know each other would help avoid war. She said "Yes, and we all have the same God." Her husband said they had had 2000 chickens at one time in addition to other animals, but he had to go to war and his wife with 3 small children could not carry on with all the work. Things were never the same since. We were told most of Ulfa's residents now worked in near-by towns and some did a little farm work in the evenings. As we left I heard some pigs squealing as though they were being fed--perhaps by the son-in-law. A pile of manure was nearby . It had evidently been forked out of the hoghouse and waiting to be hauled away. We saw a few small tractors and wagons being driven along the street, but very few cars.

While we were waiting for the pastor at the church--a lady came by with her young grandchildren on the way to get some ice cream she told me. They waited at a certain intersection but the ice cream man never came by, so they played in the church's playground instead.

A little after five o'clock a young lady came towards the church. She was the pastor "Frau Otto" who unlocked the gates and church door for us. Most urgent of all was that she unlocked an outside door which led to a basement toilet, which we took turns visiting. While Lyle and Ruth used their cameras to capture the unique interior views of the Evangelical Church at Ulfa, Pastor Otto told the rest of us that she preaches at this church every Sunday and also at a church in another town.

She gave me back the letter I had sent to her in March telling her that I was looking for baptismal records of Conrad Holt. She said she did not answer my letter because she could not read the old time German handwriting and the record books were so old and flimsy. She was surprised when I told her that Ulfa's church records had been copied and put on microfilm and viewable at the LDS Family History Library in a town near my home. She was amazed that I had found 17 baptismal, marriage, and death records of Holts including direct ancestors of Lyle and Ruth. These were recorded between 1796 and 1847.

The sheet of information the pastor gave us told us that Ulfa in 1940 was a place of about 1100 residents in the vicinity of Schotten. The sheet was entitled "Where Hangs the Oldest Bell in Hessian Evangelical Churches?" The answer was it hangs in the steeple of the Evangelical Church in Ulfa. It was cast in 1334 according to the inscription on it. Perhaps the old bell tolled while Conrad's grandfather married Elizabeth Ludwig in 1796, and later when Conrad's Great-grandfather in 1813 and his grandfather in 1822 were carried to their final resting places. Because the bell is so old, it is now only rung on Christmas and New Year's Eve. Newer bells are also in the tower and rung every Sunday. The sound of chiming bells came from the church tower every hour while we were nearby.

Ruth snapped a last minute photo of the north side of the church building , just in time for us to catch the 5:45 bus to Nidda, then the train to Friedberg and then the S-bahn to the main Frankfurt train station. Our day concluded with a late evening meal at MacDonalds and sharing tidbits of our day's unbelieveable experiences with others at the Intercity Hotel.

 Another account of the day                        translated Ulfa history from internet

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