I will begin today by asking for forgiveness.  I am going to get a little naughty today.  I am going to talk about a family whose name was Heine, which would be pronounced “hiney”.  Eventually I will get around to talking about clean hineys, which, as you might expect, refers to a person’s backside.  Let’s start with the Heine family.

There’s really not much to say about the Heine’s, but I must say that this Heine story is a giant-sized mystery.  First, let’s look at the Heine name as we find it in the annals of the German Lutheran history of East Perry County.  In the book, Zion on the Mississippi, there is a list of people who were reportedly passengers aboard the ill-fated ship, Amalia, which was lost at sea.   Here is what is found in that book.

There are two folks with the surname, Heine.  There was Johann Samuel Heine and probably his wife, Friederika, both from Beesen, Germany.  Johann Samuel was a mason.

Here is the mystery.  We also find a Samuel Heyne with a wife named Frederica shown on an actual passenger list of the Republik, which was another ship that was part of the Gesellschaft.  The spelling of the name is different, but we see that this couple is also from Beesen, and Samuel was a mason.

So, the big question is this.  Did the Heine’s (Heyne’s) arrive in America or not?  Were they lost at sea, or did they land in New Orleans in 1839?  The Heine name does make it into our German Family Tree, but it only says what I have pointed out here.  No future church records for this couple can be found.  I did try to find information about this couple on Ancestry.com, but came up dry.  In the end, I do not know.  I have come to a dead end (a hiney of sorts).

Now let’s move on to the actual hineys.  First, let me give you a little background on how I came to hear about this story.  A day after the recent Super Bowl, a Facebook friend of mine who also happens to have East Perry County roots, Charlie Gemeinhardt, put a post on Facebook that said his favorite Super Bowl ad was the one done by Proctor & Gamble.  He noted that he was biased because his grandchild was the Charmin Bear.   You can watch the Proctor & Gamble commercial here.  It is a one minute video and the Charmin Bear Cub shows up at about the 45 second mark.

A previous post was written that included some information about Charlie Gemeinhardt’s family titled, Those Gemeinhardt-Fiehler Connections.  I will just repeat a few highlights here.  Carl Gemeinhardt was a teamster in Frohna in the latter years of the 19th century.  We see his property in Frohna, Missouri on the map below.

Carl had a son named Robert Gemeinhardt who once worked for the creamery in Frohna during the early years of the 20th century.  Then Robert had a son named Otto Gemeinhardt, who, along with his wife, Loyette, served in the military during World War II.

Charlie Gemeinhardt is the son of Otto.  Below is a photo of Charlie and his wife, Carol, who, if I remember the story correctly, met because they were both band directors living in Alabama when they met.  (I hope I have that right.)

Charlie and Carol are now active members of Christ the King Lutheran Church in Memphis, Tennessee, a congregation where my wife and I served as teachers for several years and the church in which we were married.  Charlie also attended the last Immigration Conference hosted by our museum.  Since he and Carol have much experience in the arts, it is not surprising that he would have a grandchild involved in the performing arts.

I’m not sure Charlie ever dreamed of having a grandchild who has now come to be known as the bear cub who has a clean hiney, but I know he and Carol are proud grandparents.  I cannot resist putting another video here.  It’s another commercial you likely have seen including the Charmin Bear Cub.

I will also add that Proctor & Gamble has a big factory in Cape Girardeau County, and many residents of East Perry County work there.  There are many folks around here that depend on that company being successful.

I could make so many snide comments regarding the topics in this post, but I am going to resist the urge to publish them.  Therefore, I am going to bring this post to a rear end.