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Our family is from Chemnitz, Saxony, Germany. As far as records show, in 1856, John Robert Seidel came to the United States from Austria heading to be a weaver in Massachusetts. In 1858, Robert’s dad, John Christoph Seidel, a farmer, brought the women and children to the United States from Germany and was also headed for Massachusetts to join him. The family was settled in Holyoke, MA in 1858 to 1861 where at least two family weddings occurred as well as a baby or two were born there. In 1861, one sister moved north and ended up in Brattlesboro, VT. In 1864, John C. died in Pittsfield, MA. In the 1865 MA Census, Robert was a weaver in Pittsfield. Also, his sister, Ida, was there where she and her husband worked at a hotel. The widowed wife of John C., Agnes Caroline, was in Boston in 1865 washing clothes with her two youngest children, Mary and H. G. Seidel and her daughter Laura’s family living next door. Around 1867, Agnes, Ida and family, Laura and family and Mary and Gustavus moved west to Missouri. Laura’s family moved to Iowa then to Chicago. Mary married and moved to St. Louis, MO . Robert remained in New England eventually settling with his family in Rockville, Vernon County, Connecticut and working as a weaver in a textile mill. While the sister, Ida, and brother, Gustavus, remained in Phelps County, MO on their homesteaded farms.