About the Compilers

Connie (Zehnder) Prok

The compiler, publisher, and distributor of “The Zehnders of Frankenmuth A Family History -1981, ” Connie was encouraged by Ronald Siebert to get this whole thing started. You won’t find her name until the last page unless you’re scouring the genealogy and find her there on page 35.

For years, she collected the information and worked on the book using her IBM Selectric typewriter, laying out the pages on her dining room table. She found a print shop that would publish her work, then distributed the books, often selling them for less than the cost of printing and eating the costs of shipping.

Her generosity and love forever paint this work and effort as a way to pay forward the warmth of community she received from the Zehnder family.

This is not Ron.

Ronald J Siebert

While principal of the school at St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Rocky River, OH, Ron was a genealogist who had compiled several family trees and was part of a group who assisted and advised each other on this kind of work. He encouraged Connie to start this project, telling her what information we had to gather on each and every living family member. He knew how to research existing records in Germany for birth and baptismal records as well as historical information on those courageous Germans; he was the one who gathered all of that as well as the immigration documents when they came here and the historical records from Herman Zehnder’s book “Teach My People.” He also got copies of Census records and tracked those that he could.

This is not Ken.

Ken Fraiburg

From the introduction to Ken’s book:
“In the fall of 2005, I became aware of the fact that six of the students in the seventh and eighth grade classes at Saint Paul Lutheran School in Westlake, Ohio were 2nd or 3rd cousins, all great great grandchildren of George and Anna Zehnder. I was told that they were in class together for quite some time before they realized that they were related. When they asked their teacher, Dale Lehrke, to explain how they were related, it took him some time to figure it out. Two were great grandchildren of Elsa Bracken, two were great grandchildren of Ada Hagedorn, and two were great grandchildren of Rupert Zehnder…
This event prompted me to try to create a record of this family’s members so that future generations could, if they wanted, have the history of who they were and how they were related to the Zehnder family, which they most certainly would hear about.”

Ken’s book, “The Zehnders of Cleveland – A History of the Children of George and Anna Zehnder” was nearly complete when he passed away from cancer. I (the website editor) am working with the family to take the next steps of bringing this book to completion.