Gottholdt Donet and his wife Rosine Brickner came to the US in 1871 and settled in the city of McKeesport, PA. When I first began working on the genealogy of this side of my wife's family in 1999, I was fortunate to get some pictures from relatives.
One of the pictures was of three people standing in front of a house. The back of the photo had the following inscription:
Allerstedl
Brickners Haus, Herr Brickner,sen,mil Enkef . Vie Mutter.
Herr Brickner jun. und'geine Frau kuicken ausdem Fenster.
Below this in handwriting added later was the inscription "Grandmother's father"
"Grandmother" in this case was Rosine Brickner and in research done by other's in the family, her father was said to be William Brickner.
In 2001 I was contacted by Tom Donet, my Mother-in-law's second cousin. He had not had much luck in tracking down the Donet side of the family until he found this website but over the next several years he made great progress in adding to the information we had.
One thing we were never able to track down, however, was the origin of the Donet or Brickner families in Germany. Tom finally obtained a copy of the original picture including a scan of the back and was able to find the town of Allerstedt in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany.
In March of 2007, Tom sent out 10 letters to Brueckner and Donat families within a 50 km radius of Allerstedt. One month later he was contacted by a Brueckner family still living in the same house, over 100 years later:
The family currently living in the house are descendants of Rosine's brother, Franz Bruckner
Sources:
Maryanne Orman - Brueckner House photo - then.
Manuela Brueckner - Brueckner House photo - now
Tom Donet