I’m an American from Louisville, KY digging into my family genealogy and recently traced my paternal line back to Seckmauern, in Odenwaldkreis, Hessen. My ancestor Johann (John) Adam Hess was born there in 1771 and later immigrated to the U.S., where he died in 1843 in Louisville, Kentucky.

His grandfather and father were Johann Nicolaus Heß (1691–1773) and Johann Nikolaus Heß (1728–1800), who have gravesites in Friedhof Seckmauern.

I’m hoping to visit Germany in 2027, and Seckmauern is definitely one of the stops I’m most excited about. I’d love to visit the cemetery, walk through the village, and learn more if possible about why they left.

For anyone familiar with the area:
• Is there much to see or do in or around Seckmauern and the Odenwaldkreis region?
• Any local archives, churches, or small museums where I might find more historical info or records?
• Any tips for exploring small towns like this as a family history visitor?

Also, if anyone happens to know anything about the Hess / Heß families from that region, I’d love to hear!

Thanks in advance!

by Traditional_Brief867

23 comments

  1. Assuming you don’t speak German, throw the wiki page through google translate. It’s a village of 1.5k people. Based on the wikipedia page, I guess you could try to go for Carnival?

    [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seckmauern](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seckmauern)

    > I’d love to visit the cemetery

    If you’re expecting to be able to find the graves of your ancestors, that’s not how it works here. Graves are generally cleaned up and removed after a couple decades.

  2. I know this village 15 KM away from me. Very small village

  3. You can definitely visit the Schloss Mespelbrunn, which is a 30min drive from Seckmauern. The Odenwald in general is really beautiful and there are many hiking trails in the regions. I would recommend the app “Komoot” to plan any hikes there.

    Regarding the small village, it always make sense to chat up with some locals, but I doubt they will be speaking English.

    Also a thing maybe to look out for:
    Rudolf Hess (Heß) was the Deputy Leader in the German Nazi Party. Their family is also from near that region:
    [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Hess)

    They dont need to be related, but maybe interesting to find out.

  4. You could try to contact the local parish and ask if you could visit their Kirchenarchiv to learn more about your family. But you would need to understand at least basic German to make any sense of it (and maybe practice reading sütterlin)

  5. The Odenwald had a reputation for being backwards and dangerous for travellers well into the 19th century if you want me to look up some cool local folktales and historical tidbits.

  6. A bit out of left field, but maybe see if you can include the “Auswanderermuseum” in Bremerhaven in your trip?

    Afaik it contains lots of information about people who let germany for the us, so it might be of interest to you regarding wht your ancestor left

  7. If you hike, that’s a beautiful area for hiking.

  8. You may not find any graves of these specific relatives. But you may find graves of more remote cousins who died and were buried more recently.
    Graves in Germany are only retained for a certain duration, which varies between locations, the type of burial, and the type of grave. Some types are renewable, while others are not. Most cemeteries keep grave around for 20-30 years by default.
    If it’s renewable remaining living relatives would have to pay for the grave’s renewal. However, at some point most families opt to not retain the grave of a relative they may not have ever met.

    There are however exceptions for those who who fell in the wars, which do not expire as long as their war casualty status was properly recorded. The respective federal state the cemetery is located it is responsible for the upkeep of these graves.

  9. Seckmauern is a district of the municipality of Lützelbach. Tassilo Schindler is the mayor of Lützelbach from 2023 to 2029. You could [contact](https://tassilo-schindler.de/pages/contact) him beforehand and ask if there are any records about your family in old archives or if any descendants still live in the area.

  10. Try the churches in the town. We had calls from americans for things like that from americans and two groups eventually visited and it was a very fun encounter.

  11. So I’m from the neighbouring town. If you want to visit the region i would suggest staying in Aschaffenburg, which is easily reachable by train from Frankfurt Airport. In Aschaffenburg you can visit the Castle and the Pompejanum, a recreation of a Roman villa.

    In Seckmauern i would say you won’t see too much interesting stuff as it is quite the sleepy town.

  13. > Is there much to see or do in or around Seckmauern

    Seckmauern is a village of 1500 people incorporated into the municipality of Lützelbach which has — gasp! — about six or seven thousand inhabitants. Wikipedia lists Seckmauern’s main attractions as being its traditional carneval procession, a sports club, a playpark, a boules playing area, and one Protestant and two Catholic churches. There is a Roman fortress called Seckmauern, but it’s actually just over the border in Bavaria and there’s literally nothing to see there. It’s… just a field.

    > and the Odenwaldkreis region?

    The Odenwald itself is a forested highland, nice for hiking if you’re into that. Nearby places to visit include:

    * Wörth am Main, a typical small town on the river Main
    * Klingenberg am Main, with a ruined castle used in the summer as an open-air theatre
    * Miltenberg, a stereotypical olde worlde German town, also with a castle
    * Amorbach, also full of timber-framed houses
    * Heidelberg, a famous tourist attraction
    * Darmstadt
    * Würzburg

    > Any local archives

    You might try getting in touch with the local historical society (“Heimat- und Geschichtsverein Lützelbach e.V.”). Most historic towns and villages have societies like this, run by usually elderly volunteers who are passionate about preserving local history — some are run better than others, so it’s a bit of a lottery, but they’ll probably be delighted to help. Contact details:

    HGV Lützelbach
    Furthstr. 6
    64750 Lützelbach

    E-mail: vorsitz@hgv-luetzelbach.de

    There may be a bit of a language barrier, but it’s a reasonably safe bet that at least somebody in the society knows enough English. They’ll welcome you with open arms: this is the kind of thing they live for. If you do get to meet them, I would suggest a small donation.

  14. Since you as an American Citizen most likely don’t know this since it is not part of the US “freedom”, be aware that in Germany there is a general right to roam. That means, unless some house or land is fully fenced of, you are free to just walk around, go on stalls, take small or big hikes to explore.
    And the Odenwald Area is from nature and landscape quite nice.
    I also recommend to utilise train and bycicle when you can, don’t rely on the car like you know it from the US.

    In the Odenwald area you can also find old castles from the middle ages, free to visit of course. Just do a bit of research, or buy a travel guide or traditional book for that.

  15. Visit the Felsenmeer – you can learn a lot about Roman history in that region.

    And you can visit a part of the limes wall in that region.

  16. You could use Google Streetview to get a first impression

  17. Armorbach is great. So is Michelstadt. Wald Michelbach as well. And you can go for some great hikes and good food or wine in the second smallest wine growing region (Hessische Bergstraße) in Germany

  19. Driving through the “Mainschleife”, the valley that the river “Main” follows has some nice spots. I liked the view there, and there are some towns with typical german inner cities. There are some castles and castle ruins in that area if that’s something you want to see.

  20. Run some searches on [https://landesarchiv.hessen.de/](https://landesarchiv.hessen.de/) for “Hess Seckmauern” , maybe your ancestor sued a neighbor and the court file still exists.

    You can reach out to [https://www.odenwaldkreis.de/de/buergerservice-2/mitarbeiter/HES:employee:44053/kreisarchiv/](https://www.odenwaldkreis.de/de/buergerservice-2/mitarbeiter/HES:employee:44053/kreisarchiv/) and ask whether they have any records that might interest you.

    Note that if you want to look at old records you need to be familiar with old German handwriting.

  21. I’ve checked Wikipedia and the name Hess or Heß is actually quite common:
    The name is a variation that was first documented around 1394 and means “of the tribe of Hessen” (Hesse/n is also the name of the state where your family originates from).
    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hess_(Familienname)

    Its also a common jewish name. As there have been multiple times in history when jewish people have been driven out its also a possibility that your ancestors fled to the states.

    I also checked the local phone book and there are still some families called Heß living there. But > 200 years later its very likely that you guys aren’t even related, its not a super uncommon name, especially for this region.

  22. Not familiar with the town itself, but the region is full with old monasteries (Kloster Engelbert has pretty good and affordable food in the restaurant of the monastery), castles, some roman ruins and many other places to visit.

    Personally I would get a Hotel in Miltenberg and explore the region from there, it’s relatively close to Seckmauern and is a beautiful old town full of half timbered houses (the local brewery is pretty good too)

  23. Hey, „Odenwälder“ here 😁. I grew up in Bad König and lived there until I was around twenty.

    Not that familiar with Seckmauern (only went there once in a while to play football against them), but I quess I can speak for the „Odenwaldkreis“ as a whole.

    If you like nature, hiking and stuff it is really a cool area. So if you don‘t need any action, you will find things to do. Besides hiking or walking through the small villages, there is also a thermal bath in Bad König (Odenwald Therme), a small animal park with some roman ruins (Eulbacher Park), since the Limes went trough this area. A „castle“ (Schloss) in Erbach and and castle ruin in Breuberg (Burg). Also the center of Michelstadt is pretty historic and nice looking. The benefit of these small villages and towns, is, that they were not bombed in the war, so pretty much everything is still the original. That being said, don‘t expect to much, all these things are nice, if you are already in the area, not to visit them from far away. Only exception would be the christmas market in Michelstadt, people love that thing and get carried on with busses.

    If you want more action, you have to visit the sourrounding bigger cities like Darmstadt, Aschaffenburg, Frankfurt, Würzburg (please don‘t confuse it with „Würzberg“ which is a small village in the „Odenwaldkreis“), maybe even Heidelberg and Mannheim. Be also aware, that the Odenwald has almost no infrastucture, meaning, the only busses there are school busses, there is one train driving through the area a few times a day, but stations are mostly in the bigger towns. I would highly recommend a car to get around (as a teenager we were dying to get our drivers licenses and cars to get as many people in them and drive to Darmstadt oder Aschaffenburg to get to a night club). Also if you want to go to one of the bigger cities be aware that there is no „Autobahn“-connection, you will take some time.

    If you go around may or july, you could visit the „Bienenmarkt“ in Michelstadt (may) or the „Wiesenmarkt“ in Erbach (july). Basically these are county fairs, but pretty much the two biggest things besides christmas markets.

    One more thing, in there where any relatives of yours still in Germany during both world wars and they fell in battle, in every village is a soldiers memorial (mostly both wars combined) and for most of the time the names are engraved, maybe you can find something there. The cementary, like one person already pointed out, will not have any graves from this time.

    Sorry for writing that much, but it doesn‘t happen very often, that there are questions about the Odenwald on Reddit. 😅

    One last fun fact about the „Kreis“:
    It has the lowest population in the whole of Hesse, not Germany, only Hesse, but area wise the third biggest city of Hesse is „Oberzent“ in the „Odenwaldkreis“. This happened 2018, when a bunch of towns and villages decided to become one big city and every field, forrest between them is now considered as part of the „city“ 🤣

    Hope that helps and you‘ll have a wonderful time there.🙂

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