Are you a LUECKE? If so, this may be your lucky day!

February 23, 3:45 PMGenealogy ExaminerSusan E King

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Photo Credit: Google Maps 2009

In route to a 5 day seminar, I made a quick detour from the Houston area to New Orleans for what turned out to be a 24 hour Food Fest with my family before traveling on to Scottsdale, Arizona.

What was most interesting is I chose a window seat, which is quite unusual.

About midway through the flight, I was thinking to myself how "lucky" I was to have had the opportunity to spend some time with family and friends before attending this "life changing" event.

Imagine my surprise as I looked up and gazed out of the window and saw the word "LUECKE" spelled out on the ground below. I was jolted a bit in my seat, closed my eyes for a second, wondering if I was indeed hallucinating.

Granted the spelling varied a bit from the way I was feeling, but it was close enough for me to register this as a very interesting synchronistic event.

With a very minimal knowledge of Texas geography, suffice it to say, the very first thought was we had passed over Luecke, Texas or Luecke, New Mexico. Determined to discover a bit more, as soon as I hit the room, I did a quick search.

For those of you with LUECKE ancestors, you will be interested to know that this is not a name of a town, but the name of a rancher whose property is located 3 miles north of Smithville, Texas.

From what I have been able to gather, the ranch is owned by a Jimmie LUECKE who definitely intended to leave his mark upon his land. The word LUECKE is carved out of trees 3 1/2 miles long and not only visible from an aircraft, but is visible to the Shuttle. In fact, it has been reported that NASA has used it as a means of evaluating distances on pixilated images.

My interest was piqued even further when it appeared no one really knew who this individual was.

Texas happens to be one of the few states where birth, marriage and death records are readily available on ancestry.com, making the genealogy of Texas families very easy on short order.

What I found confirms some notes on various web sites with discussion of this sighting.

The owner of this ranch comes from a long line of farmers. His great great uncle Carl LUECKE was a well known gin distiller in Schulenburg, Texas.

The earliest ancestor was a Wilhelm LUECKE or LÜCKE who immigrated to Texas circa 1846 with his wife, Johanna RAABE from Hannover, Germany. Wilhelm had 6 children, one of which was Friedrich (Fred) Will LUECKE, Jimmie's grandfather.

Following the family from the time of immigration to recent marriage records, you can connect this family to small towns and rural areas surrounding the current LUECKE ranch from Bastrop, Smithville, La Grange, Rabbs Prairie, Rutersville, Oldenburg, Nechanitz, and Giddings, Texas. The distances between these locations are within a 30-40 mile diameter.

While it was also possible to identify wives, his children, cousins, uncles and many other family members, for the sake of privacy, we have chosen not to publish it here.

A unique genealogical adventure it has been and I am choosing to stay out of the great environmental debate.