Getting off the bus in Westerkappeln, we found the church immediately - all doors of the church were locked. Upon inquiring at the bank we learned that the newspaper was published elsewhere - no chance to buy July 1988 copies of the newspaper.

We went to the cemetery and found it to be quite large - thousands of graves. Shortly after starting to walk around and write down familiar names, we saw a person who appeared to be a worker in the cemetery and asked him where we would be likely to find some of the older stones. It turned out he had been caretaker of the cemetery for 22 years and after our telling him who I was and what we were looking for, he went immediately (from memory) to a Freese family plot where he indicated that my great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother would have been buried. He then led us to another Freese grave as well. After helpful advice from our friend and a good deal of discussion we continued to search for other familiar names and found many of the stones, including Bode, Becker, Twiehaus, Pieper, Schulte, Tiemann, Timmermann, Klausmeyer, Helmich, Hackmann, Schroer, Bierbaum, Jannaber, Tüpker, Hildebrand, Hildebrandt, Kuhn, Laumeyer, Niemeyer, Meier, Berlekamp, Schemme, Paul, Schwab, Ridder, Roloff, Bünemann, Brockmann and Richter.

We read grave sites till noon and then decided to eat lunch, check the church once more and then leave Westerkappeln. We ate lunch at a cafe on Bahnhofstraße and chatted with the proprietor, telling him who we were and the reason for our visit to the town. While we were eating, he drew us a map and insisted we should visit the home of Adolf Wiartalla, reporter for the Westfälische Nachrichten.

Following his map, we rang the doorbell of the Wiartalla residence, waited three minutes, then rang it again and waited another two minutes. Having no success in finding anyone, we decided to give the church another try and the leave Westerkappeln. As we were walking down the street Mrs. Wiartalla called out to us - she had barely heard the bell. We introduced ourselves - she invited us into her home and with utmost graciousness and hospitality, "took over".

She called her husband at the newspaper office, told him about us, told him I spoke German well (??) and asked him to come home. During the next hour she gave us a walking tour of"Haus Cappeln", a restored area of town that recalled the days when nobility lived there. We also stopped at Hermann Rehmeyer's sister's hours - she wasn't home.

Shortly after this, Mr. Wiartalla arrived home. He immediately gave us his last two available copies of the 21 July 1988 newspaper. He recommended our purchasing a copy of a book called "Westerkappeln" which details the names and dates of people from Westerkappeln who emigrated during the nineteenth century. When we expressed interest in purchasing it, Mrs. Wiartalla immediately volunteered to drive to the bookstore and purchase it for us.

We told him of my great-grandfather's home, now the Bente farm. He asked if we would like to visit them. I said, "No, we wouldn't want to disturb them, but it would be very nice if we could drive by and see the old 'home place'." He and his wife took Celia and me to the Bente farm, but drove in to the farmstead anyhow. He knew the Bentes, who invited us into their home. It was quite an experience, standing in the large living room before the hearth where my great-grandfather must have stood in the 1830's before leaving for America. On the hearth was carved in stone "JBJF- 1796" which stood for the year the home was originally built and the name of the owner at that time. (Johann Bernard Jurgen Freese)

After a long visit there (all chatting in German, except for those moments when I explained to Celia what I thought we had been saying) we left and Herr Wiartalla drove into the Tassemeyer farm, where the Freeses lived. He indicated they were related to the Bentes. Another enjoyable chat with the two brothers and their elderly mother followed, during which they recalled Alice Molitor's letter about their relatives. They dug through several drawers, found it and also a map of the USA on which their father, now deceased, had marked the location to which his four uncles had immigrated. After much food and drink we drove on.

We got to the Redeker farm - Mr. Wiartalla thought we should visit him. A most gracious man, whose home water system had just broken down - he dropped all his work to visit with us and dug out a huge envelope marked "Amerika". With a continuous twinkle in his eyes, he reminisced about "olden times". He remembered a story about an emigrant from Germany who had gone to America to live. Upon returning to Germany to visit, a friend asked whether he wouldn't now want to stay in Germany. The "now-American" declined saying, "Deutschland is schön, aber Amerika ist Amerika". Before we left, Mr. Redeker showed us with pride a cuckoo clock over 200 years old and a chest still older, as well as delicate china not much thicker than paper.

With phone calls by our hosts to be sure the church would be open, we arrived in time (again with Mrs. Wiartalla getting permission) to view the last part of a wedding ceremony in the church. Then we were introduced to the pastor who talked to us about the history of the church. This included a discussion about the 1000 year old tower as well as two explanations for the "slice marks" made in the rock wall of the church near the door. One legend has it that soldiers made the marks with their swords to make them dull. Another legend has it that soldiers chipped stone from the church that they would then grand up and mix with liquid and drink so as to have God's blessing in their battles.

Many hours after we thought we'd be back i our hotel room, we returned from the church to the Wiartalla home, chatted briefly, expressed our profuse thanks for all they had done and were on our way out the door when the phone rang. It was Mrs. Bente, wanting to talk to me, asking us to visit them again the next day. After I explained we could not do so, she asked some questions about relatives and then asked that we come again soon to visit. I promised Mrs. Bente that we would do so but mentioned that, in my childhood days, after my parents and sister and I had visited neighbors on a Sunday afternoon, my parents would say to the neighbors, "Now it's your turn to visit us!" so I invited her and her husband to come visit us in the United States.

We then again said our farewells to the Wiartallas and left to board the bus to our hotel in Osnabrück, feeling overwhelmed by the immense and genuine hospitality shown to us by everyone we met in Westerkappeln.

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