The genealogy of Walter Lochbaum's family is up-to-date. His family history dates back to Schwegenheim, Germany, population 2,300, on the Rhine River, about 20 miles from Heidelburg, Germany.

Lochbaum reports there are about 50 families left in Germany.

His genealogy is current, up to two weeks ago, when a wedding took place. He plans to start putting pages of the history together for publication this winter.

After Lochbaum retired from teaching for 40-years, he found obituaries in an old family Bible.

"There were some discrepancies from what I knew about the family," Lochbaum said. That got him interested in his family's genealogy.

His great-grandfather settled in Waverly, Ohio, and had seven children.When Walter's grandfather married in 1866, he traveled to Meredosia, where they settled.

Walter's father, William Walter Lochbaum Sr., married Flora Ethel Morgan. They moved to Wheatland Township at Lanesville, between Springfield and Decatur. They had moved to Mechanicsburg, Ill., when Walter was born.

"Horatio Thurston Laughbaum wrote in his genealogical information that Lochbaum was not the correct spelling of the family name," said Walter Lochbaum. It was reported to the younger generation that the shipmaster wrote the name the way he heard it, which was Laughbaum.

Walter reports the last name changed about five more times to present time Lochbaum. In the interim, the last names were Loughbaum, Lockbaum, Laughbom and Laughbon.

"The family should never be ashamed of the name," stated Laughbaum, who was an attorney general in Oklahoma. He lived in Oklahoma City in the early 1900s.

His record of family history startsed with Joseph Lochbaum who came to the United States in the mid 1700s settling in Bedford County, Pa. He fought in the Revolutionary War.

When Walter Lochbaum became interested in his "roots," he discovered that by 1907, Laughbaum had about 100 pages of early family history written. However, Walter has not been able to trace that history with his family.

His great-grandfather, George Nikolaus Lochbaum, was 44 when he came to the United States in 1851. He and his wife, had seven children including Walter Lochbaum's grandfather, George Heinrich Lochbaum. George and his wife had six children.

The family had reunions until about 2001. They were held in Rochester, Ill. "With everyone getting older, the number of people attending dwindled," Walter reported.

One of the greatest disappointments to Lochbaum in his genealogical search is that he was never able to find the name of the ship that his predecessors came to the United States on.

"To my knowledge they came to the New York Harbor, up the Hudson River to the Erie Canal, came through Lake Erie, took the Ohio Canal on the east side to Waverly, Ohio.

They were all farmers so the Waverly, Ohio, territory suited them well as it was much like the land in Germany, along the Rhine River.