It was recently brought to my attention that this letter was written by Rev. James N. Watzke of Chicago, who visited Czechoslovakia in August 1985 and researched Watzke family history while traveling the area from the town of Usti on the Elbe River to Berlin where he met Fritz Watzke, with whom Watzke's who settled in New Orleans, Chicago, and Wisconsin shared an ancestor. Fritz provided Rev. James with information gathered from church records which traced the lineage back to about 1740.
If you read this document carefully, it will bring you from Auschine in 1740 to Madison, Wisconsin in 1850 onward to New Orleans, Louisiana 1852.
