Back to the earliest German ancestor we have been able to find for the Heiden family, Friedrich Heiden born in 1755, all of our ancestors were born and raised in very small rural villages. This includes the Rambow branch which also came from this same area of northern Germany.

These communities range in size today from around 300 to 1,000 people but they may have been bigger before the mass emigration in the late 19th century. August and Rika (Knaack) Heiden with their first three children lived in the village of Gross Wokern. August was born there in 1838 while Rika was born and lived in Mamerow about 4 miles away. They were married in the village of Klaber in 1868.

Other Heidens, Rambows and related ancestors lived in the towns listed below. At the time, they were all part of the district called Mecklenburg-Schwerin (now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) and were situated about 30 miles east of the coastal city of Rostock on the Baltic Sea.
 

Any of you from the Arthur and Mildred (Roggerman) Heiden branch of the family should know that the Roggerman family came from a place called Rügen Island just off the northern coast of Germany in the Baltic Sea. This is about 80 miles northwest of Gross Wokern, the home of August Heiden and Heinrich Rambow.