How this site came about

Sam Heidt

This site was created by Sam Heidt. I'm a retired computer professional living in Hilton Head Island, SC. I was born in Savannah Georgia and most recently moved to Hilton Head Island from Atlanta Georgia. My Salzburger ancestor is Johann George Heidt who arrived in Savannah Georgia on the Charles Town Galley on 2 Oct 1749. From there he made the 25 mile trip up the Savannah River to New Ebenezer.

My motivation in building a site like this comes from an interest in sharing Salzburger data among us Salzburgers.

I happened to meet another Salzburger, Lee Lineberger on a casual basis while enjoying the sunsets over a few adult beverages at the Skull Creek Boathouse on Hilton Head Island. We had known each other for over a year when I mentioned that I was born in Savannah and was a Salzburger. He said he was also. That lead to discussions about our Salzburger heritage.  My great grandfather was James Harmon Heidt and Lee said his great grandfather was James Harmon Lineberger. My middle name is Branch and Lee said his grandmothers last name was Branch.

James Harmon is a family name in our Heidt family. My brother was a James Harmon and I named my son James Harmon. Also I have been trying to find out where the Branch name and the Harmon name might have originated. Might there be a connection between our families as we had these names in common. All of this really peaked my interest. Possibly researching the Lineberger family might provide a clue.

Also, Lee had a book that had been written by Joe Lineberger about the Lineberger Family in 1985. He said it was out of print but he had a copy. He also wanted to reproduce it so his family could see their family background. 

Now here comes my first mistake. I told him I would look at it and see if I could scan the book and possibly put it up on a web site for all to see. But I would need permission from Joe to do such.  We corresponded with Joe and he said yes with a few conditions that were reasonable so off I went.  After months of trial and error I settled on a process of scanning each page and converting the scanned document to electronic form.  Unfortunately, every page had scan errors that had to be corrected by hand. Being stubborn I kept at it until done. After that I had no interest in a web site or anything else to do with genealogy.

But time cures all pain they say. After a year or so break, I found that I still wanted to build this web site. So I took on the conversion of the Heidt Family Book by Evelyn Hendricks written in 1981 with the same stipulations. I could use it on a web site but the family retained the copyright as did the Lineberger family.  This book should have been easier as it had already been scanned and converted to PDF format by the Hendricks family. Yea, right. I must have a learning disability.  I didn't learn anything from the first experience or maybe time just eased the pain. But the job eventually was done.

So off to build a web site. This should be the fun part as I was a computer pro and have recently developed and supported other web sites in my retirement. The operable word in the last sentence is "was". I won't bore you with the technical details. 

And here we are. The motivation for me was/is to provide a means for Salzburger families to share information. I have no illusions about how successful this might be. I tried to setup something like this years ago and everybody was very supportive but not much happened which was disappointing. But I realized that a basic structure for information sharing was not in place.  

This site should provide the basic structure to build Salzburger genealogy data and family history. Now we need to get comments, add data and see if it works. I'm hopeful. I do understand that there will be a big maintenance requirement to add data.  Volunteers will be needed to help. But lets get started and solve problems as they occur.

There is no charge for anything at this time. I have a small company Lowcountry Technology that is funding this project and responsible for it. We may need additional funding in the future and possibly require donations or advertising to support this project but that is not a consideration at this time.

If you are interested in contributing or helping with this effort, send an email to:

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  And "NO" I'm not converting anymore books - well not for a few more years.