Food, festivals, genealogy, language and cultural exchange.
Those are the main elements of the new Jackson County German Club.
Plans for the club have been in the works for years, and in 2022, those plans finally came together when Solomon Rust and Andrew Schubert met in April at Rust’s business, Schwätzer’s German Restaurant, in downtown Seymour.
Schubert, who lives in Elkhart, was doing genealogy research for his family, took a DNA test through ancestry.com and had hits in Seymour. Come to find out, he’s a distant cousin of Rust.
“When my brother, Alex, passed 10 years ago, I started looking at family history,” Rust said. “You always hear family stories about things or this mysterious person that came out of nowhere, but then you look at the family history and lo and behold, it seemed like my dad’s entire side, I was able to trace them all back to Germany.”
Rust went to Strassenfest in Jasper, Oktoberfest in Germany and Oktoberfest in Seymour, and around the same time, the idea of opening a German restaurant in Seymour came about. He wanted it to be a place for the community.
In May 2022, the restaurant had a booth during the second Frühlingsfest in Seymour.
Then in June at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Seymour, around 90 people attended a presentation by Dr. Wolfgang Grams and the Rev. Arthur Schwenk on the historical connections between Venne, Germany, and Jackson County. Rust said Venne in northern Germany is where a lot of Jackson County residents can trace their ancestry.
Back at the restaurant in November, nearly a dozen people attended the first Jackson County German Club meeting.
The next meeting is set for 7 p.m. Feb. 15 at Schwätzer’s, 113 Indianapolis Ave. A newsletter recently was sent out recapping 2022, highlighting language classes and a Germany exchange trip and listing the next two meetings.
There’s no cost to join the club.
“It’s trying to connect people that have the common background,” Rust said. “If they just have interest in it, our focus is Jackson County, so that’s where we’re going to focus our efforts. But if somebody wants to come and join, it’s an open-door policy kind of thing.”
At each meeting, Rust said they will work on organizing the exchange trip to Venne in 2024 and getting people together who are interested in going. Then in 2026, the plan is for Venne residents to come to Jackson County, where they will be hosted by club members.
“Some people might want to travel over, some people might want to host folks that are coming here or maybe they want to do both, so that’ll be the most consistent thing that we do,” Rust said of the quarterly club meetings.
There also will be rotating topics based on the time of year.
At next week’s meeting, the topic will be secret German cemeteries. Rust said there are local churches that have a German cemetery or a heavy German section of immigrants and their descendants, and there also are some hidden cemeteries, like the one he recently found for his great-great-great-grandfather in the middle of the woods near Borchers.
“As you talk to people, there are more and more of those that have just been abandoned over time, and usually, only the property owners or cousins might realize it, and they are the ones that keep the cemeteries up,” Rust said. “Outside of that close family group, nobody really knows. That’s the secret part of it.”
While Schwätzer’s covers the food element of the club and is the site of the quarterly meetings, it also takes care of the language aspect by hosting German classes.
Through January and this month, Amelia Shaw from the Columbus North High School world language department is teaching the class at 7 p.m. Tuesdays. The cost is $5 per class.
Rust said they will do another group of classes in March and April. Then for the remainder of the year, they will do stammtisch, a free, informal class for people of any skill level who want to speak German.
“Then get back to doing classes in January and February and March and April,” he said.
As for genealogy, Schwätzer’s already has hosted one event about the Mellencamp family, and Rust said the club is looking to do sessions for other German heritage names.
His half-sister, Ruth Ann Hendrix, led the Mellencamp discussion, and people shared materials.
“A lot of questions were answered actually of just us all coming together and talking to each other,” Rust said. “Usually, you only talk one at a time. This is getting a whole group to talk through it.”
Rust has ties to the local German festivals, including serving on the Seymour Oktoberfest board. With 2023 being the 50th anniversary, he said they are looking to do really big things.
That includes working toward Seymour getting its own maypole. In Germany, Rust said a maypole typically has placards showing the professions of people in the community. That could be done here and feature local sponsors.
“As things settle out, what are some ideas that we want to make sure that we start incorporating that might tie back to more of those German roots without changing the feel and what people know the Oktoberfest is, keep that core but add a couple things?” he said.
For information about the Jackson County German Club, contact Rust at 812-498-5554 or [email protected].