The question, “You’re one of “A”s kids, ain’t ya?” could have been asked of any one of Meg & “A”s children in the 1950s or 1960s as they walked through the streets of Summerhill to go to school or meet friends at the community playground. 

It came from the man pictured above, their paternal grandfather, Edward T. Bodenschatz, Sr., who typically added a not-so-soft tap from his cane on the head of the grandchild he was acknowledging.

Edward was the youngest of the twelve children of Andrew Michael Bodenschatz, Jr. (whom we’ll call “AMB” for short) and Margaret “Maggie” Bodenschatz, née Schmidt, both of whom were immigrants to the United States.

AMB emigrated from the Bayreuth region of Upper Franconia (now part of Bavaria, Germany) in the spring of 1867. He established a farm in a rural area located in the Pennsylvania hills just above the towns of Summerhill and Wilmore — stops on the Main Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad that connected Philadelphia with Pittsburgh via Harrisburg.

AMB is pictured above, working in one of his fields during his later years. The rural area where he settled comprised parts of two adjacent townships (Summerhill Township and Croyle Township) and is known informally as “New Germany.”

Maggie, who also grew up in a town in the Bayreuth region of Upper Franconia, Bavaria, journeyed to join AMB in New Germany about a year after he arrived. They married in the summer of 1868 in the German Catholic Church, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which served as the center of their farming community.

Maggie passed away in 1909 at the age of 59. AMB lived into his 90s and even made an ocean voyage home to Upper Franconia, Bavaria, to visit his family when he was 72 years old.