Halfway between the castle and the riverside town stood the stone walls of a small cathedral, the Gothic Wernerkapelle, partially constructed 700 years ago but never finished. The windows sills were ready for glass, the walls were solid, but it was open to the sky, and the floor was nothing more than packed earth.

Any amateur genealogist tracing his family's history back to the Old World knows and understands that gnawing worry: that the research will lead you back to some industrial, Old World dump better left forgotten. After all, why did your ancestors emigrate elsewhere? But how can you resist not knowing? The Ellis Island records show one side of my mother's family arrived from the German city of Büdingen, in Hesse, so off we traipsed to a medieval village outside of Frankfurt, in hopes we'd be charmed, not appalled.