Hillinger Placeline

So I have written here many times about how many places our family is from, and that most are recent places in our family history, so I thought it would be interesting to track each family name through the places we've lived over the history I have gathered. I will be starting with the most recent person in that family line and working back in time to the earliest time I have recorded for that line. So without further ado, here is the story of the places the Hillinger line has lived.

One note here: Bolded locations are ones where a major life event happened, either Birth, Marriage, or Death. Italicized locations are places where the family lived, but there were no big events in that person's life at that location.

1. Me

I'm not a person who has wanted to live anywhere other than where I currently live. Because of that, there are going to be only two locations in this part:

A. Seattle, Washington. I've lived here in Seattle from day one, and even had my wedding here in Seattle. I can't imagine living anywhere else.

B. Bellevue, Washington. My birth location was only a technicality, as my mother's doctor practiced in so that's where I was born, but that's the only other place I've lived, even if for just a short time after my birth, so I figured I'd include it here.

2. My Dad

My father's story is a little more complicated than mine, though he really hasn't moved from our city since the family moved here when he was quite young. 

A. Seattle, Washington. This is where my father lives as well, and has for most of his life, as I said above. 

B. Port Orchard, Washington, on the other side of the sound from Seattle. He and my mother did live here for a time in before coming back to Seattle again. 

C. Columbus, Ohio. Before Dad and his parents moved here, they lived for two years in Columbus while his father attended Ohio State. 

D. Frankfurt, Germany. Dad was born here. His parents had been serving there in the armed forces before my father was born, so that my father spent the first few months of his life there.

3. Sam Hillinger, my Grumpy

Grumpy is where my family journey starts to get interesting. While he and my Nana lived here in Seattle for more than half their lives, and nearly all of their married lives together, Grumpy lived many places in his time between his birth in Europe and settling here in Seattle.

A. Barcelona, Spain. Though Grumpy never actually lived here, it was the place he and Nana were visiting when he died. The only other location I will be including where we didn't truly live for at least a year, and only because a major life event happened there.

B. Seattle, Washington. As I said, Grumpy lived here most of his adult life, though he and Nana traveled a great deal in their lives together, including the place they had just arrived when he died. 

C. Columbus, Ohio. As I said above, he attended college at Ohio State here for two years. 

D. Frankfurt, Germany. Grumpy served in Europe during and after the war, and this is where he and Nana married. It is also where they started a family with my father. 

E: During the war, Grumpy was stationed a few places, starting at Camp Crowder, Missouri, and spending at least some time in Weissbauden, Germany. I'm not sure how long he spent in either place, though dad says he mentioned Weisbauden a lot, so it's possible that one deserves its own entry.

F. Chicago, Illinois. This is where Grumpy's family finally settled in the US after several moves around the Southern US. Grumpy lived there with them before he was finally able to enlist to join the Army during World War II. 

G. Before they settled there, Grumpy lived in several places between 1941 to 1942 in Arkansas and even Louisiana, doing odd jobs and attempting to join the war draft. 

H. Eldorado, Arkansas. Grumpy lived at he lived here for about a year. I believe this was either for a job of his own, or for his mother's job as a cook at various locations.

I. Hot Springs, Arkansas. The family lived here for two years while Dora worked as a cook in either a hospital or a school, though I'm not sure which. This is where Grumpy finished his schooling. 

J. Memphis, Tennessee. This is the first place the family lived in the US, where his Grumpy's aunt Anne and her husband lived. 

K. Paris, France. Grumpy and his family spent about a year in Paris while his father gathered the money needed to get them to the US. 

L. Frankfurt, Germany. This is not only where Grumpy got married, but also where his story began. He and all his siblings were born and lived there, attending school and enjoying the community of Jews that gathered there after World War I. They lived there until their father realized that they needed to get out of Germany while they could. So even though Grumpy and dad were both born in the same city in Europe, it was separated by a long period of movement for Grumpy, and a world war.

4. Alex aka Elias Hillinger, born Elias Seneft

Alex's journey from Birth to America is even more extreme than his son's. 

A. Chicago, Illinois. This is where the family had just settled when Alex passed. In fact, much of his paperwork still lists the family's location as Hot Springs for his death location, so obviously they were still settling at the time.

B. Hot Springs, Arkansas. Where the family lived for several years between Chicago and Memphis. 

C. Memphis, Tennessee. Where the family first settled near his sister and her husband after they arrived in the US.

D. Paris, France. Where the family lived between Germany and the US while he worked to secure visas for his family to go to the US.

E. Frankfurt, Germany. This is where Alex's story becomes different from his son's. He traveled there after the first World War because he had been expelled from England where he had been living with his family until the war. Despite being forced into a country that later tried to kill him and all his family, it did give him one bright spot. It was there he met and married my great-grandmother Dora, and all their children were born in the city before he felt they had to flee the country.

F. Camp Douglas, Isle of Man, UK. During the war, England imprisoned him in a place called Camp Douglas for people they considered enemy aliens. Since he was of Germanic descent, he was forced to go there. After the war, England forced him to leave the country. Because of this expulsion, our family name changed from Seneft, his father's name, to Hilinger (which became Hillinger in America), his mother's, because the German government did not recognize his parents' marriage as a legal one, because it was a Jewish ceremony. 

G. London, England. Before the war, Alex lived with his family in London for many years. They emmigrated there when he was young.

H. Shendishov, Galicia, also known as Sedziszow Makopolski. This is where Alex and his siblings were all born before the family left Galicia to find a better life in England.

5. Mendel Hilinger

I know very little about my great great grandmother. In fact, I might not know anything about her were it not for the fact that my great grandfather was forced to take on her surname as his own. But because we have a name for her, I was able to find a record that showed her gravestone in London in 1913. 

A. London, England. I know that she died in London, and that she and her family lived there for at least 14 years before that, as I have a record of her son being in the UK military in 1899, at the very least. As I said in Alex's part, I don't know when they arrived, but hopefully their life improved for her before she passed in 1913.

B. Shendishov, Galicia. Before England, I know she lived in Shendeshov with her husband and children, but I do not know if she was born there or not. So I currently only have those two locations for her. All I can hope is that someday I will find something more about her.

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And that is all of the locations my Hillinger line has lived, from Galicia to Seattle, Washington. 14 locations total in this line. Quite impressive.