Mills County, Iowa
Emerson, Iowa

Giekau Heritage Fair

Genealogy was the word of the day, at the Giekau Emerson Heritage Fair, held August 5th, 2010? at the Emerson High School Building. 150 people attended, the all day Fair, and viewed the genealogy of the early settler's families that came to Emerson through Mineola, Iowa from Giekau, Schleswig-Holstein Germany, and also the Friends and Neighbors of the Giekau German settlers.

About 60 genealogists took part in showing their families genealogy. Workshops telling about the history of the Giekau Church district in Germany, History of Schleswig, Holstein, and what is Prussia were interesting to all, since our families came from there. Since Emerson is a 3 county town, each county Dixon, Dakota and Thurston had a workshop on telling about their counties and what can be found for records there.

Heritage Quilt workshop, Scrap booking workshop, Family Stories, how to search the Nebraska Archives in Lincoln, Computer classes in searching for German records on-line and putting your family information in a computer program.

The states represented at the fair were Iowa, Nebraska, Arizona, Washington, Michigan, Texas, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Wyoming, Arkansas, Missouri, and California. Lots of comments like "met cousins that I didn't even know I had". We are planning a similar one in 2008 possibly in Manning, Iowa where the "Hausbarn" has been rebuilt from Germany or in Mineola, Iowa where the first one was held in 2004. The site and times are yet to be planned.