The general knowledge in my family has always been that our Drohman ancestors came to America from the area along the border between southern Germany and northern Switzerland. I remember as a kid always saying that our people were German. However, in my head, this was all about something that had happened in the very distant past and didn’t have much impact on my life.
However, in the late ’90s, well after the time when I lived in Paris and discovered my love for French cuisine, I found out, via an uncle who is nuts for genealogy, that I have Drohman relations who are French! The story my uncle uncovered involved two brothers who left southern Germany in the last part of the 19th century, with the intention of starting a new life in America. As fate and circumstance would have it, one brother stopped in Alsace near the town of Mulhouse, and the other continued on to the United States. They respectively founded the French and American branches of the Drohman family.
Today, most of the French Drohmanns (note the extra “n”) still live in Alsace, although I know of at least one, Marion Poirez (born Drohmann) who lives in Paris. Marion and her husband, mother and father recently made a trip to visit the West Coast of the United States, starting in Seattle. During their visit, I had the pleasure of introducing them to the Pike Place Market and of welcoming them for dinner at Le Pichet. And we hope to visit Marion and her husband when we are in Paris this month.
I seems that those people from the very distant past do have an impact on my life after all.
Hi Jim, I too have ancestors from Germany and England. My husband and I have made quite a few trips to U.K, but only two months ago we went back to find as I say “some ghost in my families closet”. We did and I’m proud to say that I actually stood on the soil that my ancestors toiled some 400 years ago in Gillingham, Kent. I am however finding it hard to trace back on my German ancestors because I’ve been told that all records were burnt during WWII, but I still intend to TRY to find something as family history I feel is very important to know where ones “grass-roots” are. Lovely to hear of your families history and that you’ve met up with some of them.
Half of my French ancestry is Alsace based (the other half is from the Loire). Alsace is a great place to hail from, and Dijon is one of the prettiest places in France!