This reminds me of some archived stuff in my "basement of wonder":

My grandmother studied German (just the language, AFAIK) in college about 100 years ago, and was therefore able to translate some of her grandfather's letters received from his relatives "back home" somewhere in Westphalia.

We still have these translated pages. One such letter -- from a brother, I believe -- said that they'd finally found use for the grove of trees my great, great grandfather had planted before emigrating. They cut them down an burned them, of course!