I was born (1930) and raised in Rochester, Minnesota.
My mother, my brother, and I lived upstairs in my maternal
grandparents' house. Their family name was Gerths, pronounced
"Gertz." They would have been born in the early 1860s,
as nearly as I can reconstruct.

I don't know whether they were born in the US or in what
is now Germany, but they were raised in a little town in southern
Minnesota called Potsdam. They always pronounced that as
"Pot-stem". They had spoken German in childhood. They
seldom spoke German at home in my time (in the 30s and 40s),
except on the few occasions when they didn't want their
grandchildren to understand. My grandmother would frequently
go across the street to her sister Tillie's house, to visit
in German. I didn't know "Aunt Tillie", to speak of, so I
don't remember her speech, but my grandparents didn't speak
with a German accent, to my ears at least.

My grandfather's people came from Schleswig-Holstein, in northern
Germany, on the North Sea. I remember his referring to himself
as "a good Holsteiner". I don't remember ever hearing where in
Germany Grandma's people came from.

In his youth Grandpa Gerths had been a cowboy, and for a time he
had driven the stagecoach "from Pot-stem to Elby", both towns
in southern Minnesota, maybe forty miles apart. "Elby", by
the way, is spelled E-L-B-A.

My paternal grandfather died before I was born, and I was
only five years old when Grandma Oesterreich died, so I have
VERY little memory of her, and none of her speech. "Oesterreich",
just in case you don't recognize it, is German for "Austria".
I have no idea of when or whence the Oesterreiches came to the
US.

Dave Oesterreich