RootsTech Follow-Up - Oktoberfest

October is known by most as the month for Halloween, the time when our kids run around the neighborhood looking for treats. For those of us who do family history October is Family History Month. And for those of us who are of German heritage, it is the month for Oktoberfest. Growing up in Ohio, many of the local towns, such as Minster, had their version of Oktoberfest. But now that I am living in Florida there aren't as many towns that celebrate Oktoberfest. My current town had its first ever Oktoberfest this weekend. I went and found out that it is pretty much like all the other festivals here. Lots of booths selling driftwood art, t-shirts, candles, and other crafts. The big difference was that many of the food venders were selling bratwursts instead of hot dogs and there were more beer tents.

But back to the reason I am writing this post - German heritage research and family history. Did you realize that RootsTech had several dozen talks about German research? These talks are still online and can be watched at your convenience. I'll highlight a few that might be of interest to you:

1. Discovering Online German Archives by Miles Meyer - Yeah, this one is mine but you still may be interested. This talk covers many of the online German Archives and how to do research in them. There is an extensive handout that provides links and information on each collection.
2. German Research for the Everyday American by Karynne Moses - This presentation is a bit longer than most RootsTech presentations at a little over an hour but it has a lot of information to cover. This presentation helps the beginning researcher find resources that help to bridge the gap between the United States and Germany.
3. Genealogical Research in Germany by Andrea Bentschneider - This is a three-part series consisting of German Church Books and Civil Records, Other Interesting Sources, and The German Archive System.
4. Finding Your German Ancestors by Richard Lynn Walker - This is a two-part series by an employee of FamilySearch. The first part discusses basic resources while the second part goes into more depth by discussing various websites where additional resources can be found.
5. German Immigration from Hometown to Final Destinations by James Beidler - This is a three-part series on resources to find your German immigrants and their hometowns. The parts are not found together as a series but you can find them at these links: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
6. Finding German Records Using FamilySearch by Dana Palmer - This presentation covers the German record collections on FamilySearch. Step-by-step instructions are given to help users find records that are relevant to their research.
7. German Records, Words, and Scripts by The Family History Guide - I had to add this one not just because I am the Education Director for The Family History Guide but there are some great tips in this presentation to help researchers recognize common words and read German script.
8. German Vital Records: Finding the Clues You Need by Katherine Schrober - This presentation covers the main vital records (birth, marriage and death) and the information that you can find in those records. 
9. Useful Tools for Finding German Ancestors by Danna Palmer - Find out about some of the best sources to begin your German research in this presentation. Learn about using the FamilySearch Wiki and handwriting pages which will give you a start on your research.

So, there are a dozen great presentations from RootsTech 2022 that should get you motived to start researching your German heritage. I hope you have fun exploring these links and have a great Family History Month/Oktoberfest/Halloween!

RootsTech London 2019 - Day 2 - October 25, 2019

Day 2 of RootsTech London is over. It was another great day. I spent most of the day attending classes on German research.

The first talk I attended was Sources and Structures for Successful Genealogical Research in Germany by Dirk Weissleder. This presentation covered primary sources such as church and state registers. Civil registrations in Germany didn't start until 1874. Prior to that church registers are the primary source of information for German researchers. In the lack of primary sources many researchers have to rely on secondary sources such as tax lists, court documents, address and telephone directories, and town or village chronicles. Other sources of information can include Ortsfamilienbuecher (village family books), and Leichenpredigten (Protestant) and Totenzettel (Catholic) which include funeral cards and funeral mass records. More records are going online at various sites including compgen.de. You might even get lucky searching the Familienkundliche Literaturdatanbank at http://famlit.genealogy.net.

Marc Jarzebowski presented How to find German Church Records on the Internet. His talk focused on the two major sites for German church records - Archion for Protestant records, and Matricula for Catholic records. Archion has been able to digitize at least part of all but three of the regional churches in Germany. Bremen, Schaumburg-Lippe and the Reformed Church are not included in the Archion collection. Matricula, on the other hand, is not as complete for Germany, with only five diocese being partially represented in its collections. However, Matricula does cover additional countries including Austria, Poland, Serbia and Luxembourg. If you are lucky enough to find records on Matricula, you will not be able to download them. Another difference is that Archion is a subscription site while Matricula is free. As a note, church records found in the state archives are usually the duplicate records while those found on Archion and Matricula are the original records. These original records may include notes that are not present on the duplicates. If you find the duplicate records but can't find the record on these two sites, you will know which parish they came from and can request a copy of the original record from that parish.

Public Records in Germany in 19th Century - Standes- and Zivilstandsregister by Roland Geiger was also a very interesting talk. He went into detail about what information can be found in various record types. One of the interesting bits of information he mentioned was that civil marriages were required even if someone was married in a church. This resulted in two sets of records for the marriage which may have different dates for the marriage event. He also mentioned that civil records are not always held in the local town, they may be in nearby towns or regional archives. This could cause problems if you are trying to research in the local archives.

The last talk of the day was Getting Started with German Family History Research by Ursula Krause. Ursula is a Progenealogist with Ancestry. She provided a sponsored talk to discuss the resources available on Ancestry for German research. There were a couple things that she said all German researchers need to be aware of in their research. One was that the boundaries have changed over time, from independent cities and states to the consolidated Germany. Another thing that we need to be aware of is that religions might change in an area based on who was ruling. These changes may result in records being found somewhere other than where we expect to find them. We also need to be aware of name variations and how first names may be abbreviated. For example Freiderich may be abbreviated Fred. or Fr. or could be spelled Freiderik. Additionally, some records, such as passenger records from Bremen, were destroyed so it could be difficult to find some of the records we need in our research.

These presentations will help me to increase my success in researching my German ancestors. However, German records were only a portion of the presentations given today. There were many other topics including Irish, DNA, Italian, Chinese, Scottish and others on the schedule for today.

The keynote talks were by Steve Rockwood, CEO of FamilySearch; Tamsin Todd, CEO of FindMyPast; and Kadeena Cox, British Paralympian. Kadena talked about her mother's life growing up in Jamaica and immigration to England. Kadeena was a promising Olympian until her stroke at the age of 23. After her stroke she continued to train for the Olympics and then was diagnosed with MS. Now she competes in the Paralympics and will be participating in the Paralympics World Games in in Dubai in November.  Tamsin Todd spoke about a few new collections at FindMyPast including the 1921 UK Census, additions to the British Newspaper Archive, and tree-to-tree matching. The entertainment was provided by Tre Amici.

Tre Amici at RootsTech London.

Tomorrow is the final day of RootsTech London. I hope everyone has a great day and learned something new while they were here or watching the live broadcasts of classes.

RootsTech 2019 - Friday - 1 March

Crowds at RootsTech

Three days into RootsTech and I am still alive. There are so many things to do here that many genealogists are overwhelmed trying to learn everything we can in only 4 days. They have said there were 15,000 pre-registered attendees for the conference. Saturday is Discovery Day and the crowds are expected to increase by several thousand more.

Today was my day to focus on some German research classes. One class I attended focused on German Family Research in the Digital Age. This class was led by Dietmar Cziesla of FamilySearch and Andreas Hedwig from the Hessisches Landesarchiv. There were a couple major points presented concerning how Germans feel about the use of social media and sharing information. While 50-60% of Germans have Facebook accounts, they don't share information like Americans. They tend to use the WhatsApp app because they feel it is more private. This is evidenced by the fact that between 83% and 96% of Germans, depending on age group, have WhatsApp accounts. Also, Germans are not as likely to do DNA tests but Ancestry and MyHeritage are trying to increase the comfort level so more will provide DNA samples and more matches might become available in the next few years.

Currently there are 50 million German record images available online, 30 million of those are from Hesse. The physical records in Germany are held in 65 different archives and consist of over 1,000 miles of shelves. One collection that was mentioned was the War Maps collection. I found it interesting that this collection contained detailed maps of the east coast of the US. The oldest records in the German archives date back to the 8th century and church parish records start in the 14th century. The partnership between FamilySearch and the Hessisches Landesarchiv has resulted in 11 million digital record images being put online. They are now working on hand writing recognition applications and expect surname indexes to be available within the next couple years. Place searches are already available for these records. One great resource in the German archives is the website www.arcinsys.de. Check it out to see the number of collections already available. Additionally, FamilySearch has five digital camera crews currently working in Germany to digitize new records and they have a partnership with Ancestry to index the German Lutheran Church records.

MyHeritage DNA AutoCluster

MyHeritage talked about some of their new DNA tools - AutoClusters and the Family Theory of Relativity. Both of these will make DNA relative discoveries much more efficient. The AutoClusters organizes shared DNA matches into clusters of related individuals. Each cluster likely has a common shared ancestor. Once you find a cluster (a block of similar colored boxes), you can begin to determine how that group is related.

MyHeritage's other new DNA tool, the Family Theory of Relativity, uses data from various sources including family trees from MyHeritage, FamilySearch and Geni, along with records such as censuses, and DNA matches to build an estimated family tree which shows how you may be related to a DNA match. All that is required to develop a theory is for both individuals to have a family tree on MyHeritage with at least 1 person in the tree connected to the DNA sample. Users are expected to review these matches and provide feedback as to the accuracy of the estimates.

MyHeritage also announced an extension to their DNA Quest program which was started at RootsTech last year. That program contributed 15,000 DNA kits to adoptees and provided support to find their biological families. This year, they will provide an additional 5,000 kits. The program starts today and runs through April 30. Adoptees can register for the program at www.dnaquest.com. 

I hope you have enjoyed reading my posts about what is happening at RootsTech. I will be speaking tomorrow so I don't know how many classes I will be attending. So, I'll say goodnight for now. 

German Newspaper Collections

January 1, 2019 - So, it's the first day of 2019 and I have been on furlough since December 24 due to the Federal government not passing a budget. I won't get into all of the politics of the situation but I do hope to make the best of this extra time off and get back into posting a few more articles while I am off.

One of the topics that I have been focusing on lately is my German research. I have discovered many great websites over the last couple months. I will try to discuss some of them in my next couple posts.

One of my favorite resources are newspaper collections. Not only do they contain valuable genealogical information but they also tell the story of what was happening during a person's life. But how do you find German newspaper collections?

Over the last decade, Germany has been working to make its newspaper collections available and many of these collections are now online.

One such collection is found at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin website. This site has over 276,000 issues from 193 historical newspapers. Most of these newspapers are from Germany but they also have some German language newspapers from abroad including Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and other areas. Some of the papers have full text search capabilities but I have not found their metasearch to be very helpful unless you are looking for towns. Most of the newspapers in their collection have publication dates from the later part of the 1800s to the mid 1900s but they have a few from the 1600s and 1700s.

The Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek also has an extensive collection of newspapers with over 1050 titless and 6.5 million pages digitized. I had better luck searching surnames from this site than I had in the Berlin collection.

But do you have time to search around for the newspapers you need to further your research? Most of us don't want to spend hours looking for a page that might be useful. So, how do you find a list of sites to start with?

One of my favorite collections of newspaper links is Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a list of online newspaper archives from around the world. You can select the country of interest and see what collections are available.

Another great list can be found at the BYU Harold B. Lee Library's website called Euro Docs. From the Euro Docs website you can select the country of interest and search under several subtopics to find the resource you are interested in. For example, you can find the Historic German Newspaper collection by clicking Germany>>Historic German Newspapers and Journals Online>>Local Newspapers (See Historic German Newspapers Online) or just use the hyperlink I provided. To make it easier to use, the Historic German Newspapers are listed by city of publication.

Now for the hard part - can you read German Fraktur? One way to learn it is to research the alphabet to determine which letters they are writing. BYU provides a great tutorial for reading the Fraktur letters. Once you are able to read the letters, you can try Google Translate and begin typing in the words you see to see what they are translated as. If you have a well typed document you might be able to upload it as a pdf and have Google translate it but that is often questionable because so many Fraktur letters look similar.

These are only a couple of collections but they should be enough to keep you busy for a while. Good luck.

German Genealogy - Using Social Media

Gooood Morning! It's a beautiful day down here in South Florida. The forecast is for sun and in the mid 70s all weekend. Our plans for today are to go to the farmer's market at the beach and then to the home show at the fairgrounds. But before I get out and about, I figured I would get another blog post in. Today's post is about using social media to help in your German research. These tips are good for any type of research on social media but I will be focusing specifically on those pages and groups that deal with German research.

First off, if you aren't using Facebook for your research you are missing out on a treasure trove of information. I know some people aren't comfortable using social media, but you have control over what you post and who you friend. So, be selective of your interactions if that is your concern. Others may not be comfortable because it is a new world for them. But how many times have you tried something new just to realize that you have been missing out on the benefits because of your fears. Social media is the new world for genealogy research and we should embrace it and learn to use the tools that are available.

So, let's get started. Why should you use social media for your genealogy research? The answer is that there are over 1.3 billion people using Facebook and you have the ability to interact with every one of them. That is nearly 20% of the world's population! For the developed countries, the percent participation in Facebook is much higher, sometimes over 50% of a country's population. Your chance of running into someone who can help you in your research are extremely large. And of course, with all those people online, there are a large number of groups that they have created. I won't be able to discuss them all, but Katherine Willson has tried to build a directory for all the genealogy related pages. This directory now has over 10,000 Facebook groups listed that deal with genealogy. You can find this list by going to her blog and clicking on Genealogy on Facebook List. Be aware that this list is now nearly 300 pages long, so you might not want to print it out. For Germany alone, she has over 50 groups listed.

How do you find a group that can help you? Groups and pages are set up by administrators and deal with specific topics. Some groups may address research techniques like using a specific software program. Other groups may address specific record types like photographs. While others may specialize in a certain region such as a town, county, state, or country. I suggest that after you log into Facebook, you do a search for the term you are interested in. One thing to remember though, is always read the purpose and guidelines/rules for the groups. Some admins are very strict on what they allow to be posted or the number of posts you can do in a day. If you violate these rules they can kick you from the group. So, always read the rules.

First, let's start in the United States. If you search your immigrant ancestors' home county you will find many possible groups to join. If they lived in a larger community you may want to search for that location also. My ancestors settled in Auglaize, Shelby, Darke and Mercer counties in Ohio. These counties are all adjacent to each other in the west central part of Ohio along the Indiana border. So, knowing that I have joined the following groups: Auglaize County Ohio History & Genealogy, Darke County Ohio History & Genealogy, Mercer County History & Genealogy, and Shelby County Ohio History and Genealogy. In these groups you can ask questions about your ancestors, discover new cousins, and discover research tools that fellow researchers in your area use. Once you join, you should post an introduction of yourself and something about your research interests. Now that you have your local area covered, you should expand and possibly join state groups; for Ohio there is the Ohio Genealogy Network, Ohio Genealogy, and the Ohio Genealogical Society. There are also regional genealogy groups such as the US Midwest Genealogy Research Community.

Now, that you are a member of your local, state and regional genealogy groups, be active. Post queries about your research. Let people know who you are researching by posting specific information about your ancestors. Ask for help in finding a specific record or learning about a new site that the group believes may be helpful. The more active you are, the more information you will receive.

Jumping across the Atlantic, you will find a large number of groups focused on German research. One of the site you can start with is the German Genealogy group. Since many of the people I have been researching came from the Baden-Wurttemberg region I use the Baden-Wurrtemberg Genealogy group often. One thing I was able to learn from this group is how to effectively use the Baden-Wurttemberg Archives website. Also, you might want to join the German Family Book (Ortsfamilienbuchen) group if you want to learn about the German family books. These books can be a treasure trove of information for your German research. But now that you are over in Germany, what do you do with the German records that you find, especially if you can't read German. You need to find a translator to help you, but that can be costly. Well, Facebook has a fix for that also. There are groups, including Genealogy Translations and German Genealogy Records Transcription, where you can find volunteers to help you translate your documents.

There are many, many other Facebook sites that can help you discover your ancestors. Try them out, be actively involved in conversations, use the tools they present, and you will discover new information at every turn. Good luck, and get social!

German Research - Using Maps

I'm back again with another post on tips for researching your German genealogy. I have three previous posts: one from last year on the German census records, and two over this weekend addressing the basics of starting your German research, and immigration and emigration records. This post will provide some tips on finding your ancestor's home region and possibly finding potential relatives in Germany who can assist in your research.

As you do your genealogy research you should always be asking yourself the following questions:

• When did my ancestors immigrate?
• Where did my ancestors live?
• When did they live there?
• What were the borders at that time?
• Which religious denomination were they?

As you can tell from many of my previous posts, I like to use maps to aid in my research. Maps provide a visual representation of the world as my ancestors may have seen it. They also allow me to see relative locations of different families. There are many great mapping websites available. One site that all German researchers should know about is the Meyers Gazetteer. You can find this Gazetteer on several sites but I like the site www.meyersgaz.org the best since it translates the descriptions into English, provides a view of the map, and also lists all the ecclesiastical parishes in the area. You can also leave your e-mail and a list of the surnames you are researching for each town. 

Here is an example of how the information on the meyersgaz.org website can be helpful.

My wife's family is from the small village of Ellmendingen, Pforzheim, Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany. The Meyers Gazetteer has the town described as follows:

Ellmendingen entry in Meyers Gazetteer

Below you can see the contemporary map of Ellmendingen provided by the Meyers Gazetteer website.

Map of Ellmendingen

You also can get the list of churches in the area.

List of local churches.

As you can see, this area was heavily Protestant. Since the only church in the village was Protestant we started our search in those records. We were able to find the birth record of many of my wife's ancestors in the Protestant church records in Ellmendingen. 

Surname mappers allow you to see where the family name is concentrated today. These surname mappers use various algorithms but usually rely on phone books or other civil register information. Below are a few examples of the results I received searching for Woessner, the way the name was spelled in the mid 1850s. Today the family goes by Wessner.

www.verwandt.de

http://www.verwandt.de/

www.gen-evolu.de

http://www.gen-evolu.de/

geogen.stoepel.net

http://geogen.stoepel.net/

As you can see, all three sites indicate that the Woessner name is most common in the southwest part of Germany in Baden-Wurttemburg. The Geogen map also provides alternative spellings of the name that can be displayed.

The maps that I have provided links to can be used to see what the area was like when your ancestors lived there as well as track down potential relatives in Germany. One additional map that many of us may use regularly but not for genealogy is Google StreetView Maps. Google StreetView Maps allow you to travel virtually in your homeland. It is pretty cool to see what the area looks like today and can be used to familiarize yourself with an area before travelling there. But let's go one step beyond StreetView. Did you know that there is an app available for your VR goggles? Do you have VR goggles or do you know what they are? VR is virtual reality. These goggles use apps to fully immerse you in the virtual world. They are a full 360 degree view in 3-D. The VISO Places app translates Google's StreetView Map into a virtual world, where you can see everything with just the turn of your head or the movement of a controller. I have used them to "walk" the streets all over the world. It is incredible.

Well, that is enough for tonight. I hope you have fun exploring the maps of your ancestors world and have the opportunity to look into the future with the VR apps. 

German Research - Getting From Here to There

Hello again. I am continuing my series of blogs on German research, but these tips can be used for any nationality. Today I will present ways to discover when your ancestors came to the US and from where they originated with a focus on immigration and emigration records. But before I start that discussion, I wanted to talk briefly on a little project I did last night. Yesterday my wife and I went to the Vero Beach Antique Show and found a vendor who was selling antique cabinet card photos. For a brief history, cabinet card photos originated in the 1860s and were approximately 4" x 6" photographs on heavy card stock. These photos were common through the 1890s and faded in popularity early in the 20th century. I picked up 8 photos and brought them home to research who they were and possibly reunite them with their families. Five of the photos were of the Haycraft family taken in Louisville, Kentucky; Des Moines, Iowa; and Ocala, Florida. The pictures ended up being of a father, his wife, one son, a 6 month old granddaughter, and a nephew. Two other photos were of the Wood family from Dayton, Ohio. These ended up being a mother and son. The last photo belonged to the Helm family from Huntington, Indiana. I was able to link them all to their respective person and add their pictures to FamilySearch. Now I am waiting for replies from the messages I sent to see who is interested in having the original photos.

Now, back to the topic at hand. Almost all of us have immigrant ancestors somewhere in our lines. Some will be easier to find than others. I will be focusing on the time frame of the mid to late 1800s when there was a large influx of European immigrants, especially the Germans. German-Americans are the largest ancestral group in the United States with approximately 15% of Americans claiming German ancestry.

There were several waves of German immigration. The first significant influx of German immigrants was in the 1680s to New York and Pennsylvania. These were the Quakers and Mennonites who were seeking religious freedom. They were predominantly from the Lower Rhine region.

The next major wave of German immigrants was the Palatine migration which took place in the early 1700s with the majority occurring in 1709. This wave accounted for approximately 15,000 immigrants. These immigrants came from the Palatine region in southwest Germany. They cited poverty as their main reason for leaving German and settled predominantly in New York and North Carolina.

About half of the immigrants between 1728 and 1820 were "redemptioners". These were poor Germans who came to America as indentured laborers. They worked to pay off their debts.

There was another major influx of German immigrants during the 1830 to 1880 period. This is the time frame that my ancestors arrived in the US. Between 25% and 37% of all immigrants arriving in the US during those years were German but their home regions varied depending on the period. Between 1830 and 1860 most of the immigrants came from Hesen-Darmstadt, Hessen- Kassel, Westphalia, Hanover and Oldenburg. Between 1870 and 1880 most of the German immigrants came from Mecklenburg and the Prussian provinces of East and West Prussia, Pomerania, Posen and Brandenburg. These immigrants were generally small farmers leaving Germany due to the political upheaval and revolutions which climaxed in 1848 with a series of revolutions in Western Europe. Most of them were destined for the Midwestern states and arrived in cities like Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee. From those cities they often spread out to acquire farm land in surrounding counties.

These German immigrants usually departed from ports in northern Germany, Belgium and France, including Hamburg, Bremen, Antwerp and Le Havre. The availability of their emigration records varies depending on which port they departed from. For example, the Hamburg emigration records are a good source of information but many of the Bremen records were destroyed by fire.

So, how do we determine which wave our ancestors belonged to and where they originated. The first set of records that you should investigate are the US Census records. These records provide useful hints as to your ancestor's place of birth as well as possible immigration dates and status. But the extent of information varies depending on which census you search. My suggestion is to look at all of the available censuses for your ancestor and use the information to help narrow your search. Here is what I consider to be the most useful census information:

• 1870 census - This census gives place of birth of the individual. Additionally it has a column for "Male Citizens of the US of 21 years of age and upwards". If a person was of foreign birth and this column is checked he would have been naturalized prior to 1870.
• 1880-1930 censuses - These censuses list the place of birth for the individual's parents as well as the nationality of the individual.
• 1900-1930 censuses - These censuses list the person's year of immigration. I suggest that you look at each census to see how much the immigration year varies. It will give you a hint of the approximate year but usually varies with each census.
• 1900-1940 censuses - These censuses list the person's naturalization status. AL=alien, PA=first papers, NA=naturalized
• 1900 census - This census lists the number of years in the US. This can be used to help narrow down the immigration year.
• 1920 census - This census lists the year of immigration as well as the year of naturalization.

With this information in hand you can take the next step, searching the emigration and immigration records. Many people search the immigration records but never go the next step of looking for the emigration records. So, let's discuss how each can help you in your research.

Immigration records are the records of arrival in the US. Two of the most used ports of entry were Castle Garden and Ellis Island. Castle Garden is located in New York and was open from 1855 to 1892. It was America's first official immigration center. Over 11 million immigrants came through this port. You can find the records for Castle Garden at www.castlegarden,org. Ellis Island opened for processing in 1892 and has processed over 52 million immigrants. The Ellis Island records can be searched at www.libertyellisfoundation.org/passenger. But these were just the most used facilities. There were many more ports of entry to the US. The National Archives has records of arrivals for various immigration centers between 1820 and 1982, with microfilm copies available up to 1955. There are also some sporadic records prior to 1820, including the Port of New Orleans (1813-1819) and Philadelphia (1800-1819). More information on the National Archives collections can be found at www.archives.gov/research/immigration/passenger-arrival.html. FamilySearch also has digitized passenger lists for the Port of Philadelphia (1800-1945) and Port of New Orleans (1800-1945). You can also search an extensive collection of online books about immigration at books.familysearch.org. Another port of entry was Galveston, Texas. Records are available for Galveston from 1846 to 1948 at ghf.destinationnext.com/immigration/search.aspx. There is also a group of sites for German immigrants that is broken out by decade from the 1850s until the 1890s. These lists can be found at www.germanimmigrants1850s.com, www.germanimmigrants1860s.com, www.germanimmigrants1870s.com, www.germanimmigrants1890s.com, and www.germanimmigrants1890s.com.

These immigration records may provide you with the following information:

• Nationality or place of birth,
• Ship name and date of entry in the US,
• Port of departure,
• Physical description including age, height, eye and hair color,
• Profession,
• Place of last residence,
• Name, address and relationship of people they are joining in the US, and
• Amount of money they are carrying.

Once you know the name of the ship, I suggest that you check out The Ships List database at www.theshipslist.com and the Immigrants Ships database at immigrantships.net. Here you may find passenger lists, histories of the ship, and many more bits of useful information.

Now that you have the port of departure and name of the ship you can start looking to the emigrant data. There are many sites that have German emigration data. One tip you should use is searching for the term auswanderer along with the location of origin for your ancestor. Auswanderer is German for emigrant. The German Emigrants Database includes records of emigrants from 1820 to 1907. It can be found at www.deutsche-auswanderer-datenbank.de. The Bremen passenger lists can be found at www.passagierlisten.de. Since the emigration records were usually issued from the home state in Germany, you may also want to look at individual states archives. For example the Baden-Wurttemburg Landesarchiv has their emigration information online at www.auswanderer-bw.de. 

These emigration records may provide the following information:

• Physical traits, 
• Age, 
• Names of family members,
• Occupation, 
• Residence, and 
• Many more pieces of useful information.

Additionally, many areas of Germany provided a document know as the heimatschein. This document certified a person's home village. During certain periods citizens needed permission for many of their activities including marriage, emigration, and internal relocation. The purpose of these regulations was to control the talent and services available in a given area. You may be able to find these records if they were required for your ancestor to emigrate from his home village.

I hope these steps are helpful in your search for your immigrant ancestors and determining their home village. I will continue on soon with the next in this series of researching your German ancestors. Have a good day.

German Genealogy Research - The Basics

Wow, it's a new year - 2017 - and time to get back to business. I have been thinking about how to include a research plan for German genealogy as one of my blogs. Of course, everyday I have a different idea on how to organize it and each day I forget what that plan was. So now I decided to just start writing, my typical solution to everything, and see how it turns out. This was inspired by a discussion I was involved in on the German Genealogy group on Facebook. I plan on doing a multi-part blog post stepping you through the resources that I know about for German genealogy and how they can be of help. So, let's get the year off to a start.

Over the last couple years, I presented two talks on German genealogy at various venues. One dealt with German immigration and the other was about German research in general. This series of posts will be based on those talks and the resources I discussed as well as a lot of other sources that are available. There is some duplication in these presentations but they were given for different audiences. If you are interested in seeing the actual presentations you can find them here:

• German Genealogy - A Discussion About German Resources - https://1drv.ms/p/s!Am0w7RkB299GlGUrfB5Lee-fEFnz
• German Immigration Resources - https://1drv.ms/p/s!Am0w7RkB299GlHIcU80Co5huowP5 
• Handout for German Genealogy - https://1drv.ms/w/s!Am0w7RkB299Gl2LeVBqHbFOXeJaz 

The first thing I suggest to researchers is that they learn the basics of the native language, especially those words that are important for genealogy research. You need to know if you are looking at a birth record or a death record. You need to learn to read the dates. You also need to be able to tell the difference between locations and people's names. I had a person come into the Family History Center the other night who told me she had mistakenly thought the town name was a person's name for quite a while. This led her on a wild goose chase looking for records on a person who didn't exist.

So, what words should you know? First, start with some of the basics like:

• Born - Geboren which is often abbreviated as Geb. This could also be used to indicate the maiden name of a wife.
• Baptism - Taufen
• Confirmation - Konfirmationen
• Died - Gestorben - often abbreviated as Gest. This may be indicated by a cross (+).
• Wedding - Trauungen - This may also be indicated by interlinked circles.
• Funeral - Beerdigungen
• Protestant - Evangelische
• Catholic - Katholisch

With those words under your belt you now will be able to determine the type of record you are looking at, and if it is a church record, what religion it is.

The next set of words that are important are the numbers. Many records write out the dates long hand and since we are used to looking for numbers we may miss them when they are spelled out. You should start with the basics (1-12). The teens (13-19) are usually built off of the base numbers and then adding ten. For example 3 is drei, 10 is zehn, and 13 is dreizehn. When you get into the 20s-90s the numbers are based on the base number drei (3) with zig added to the end. So, 30 is dreizig, 40 is vierzig, etc. Numbers like 31 become 1 (eins) + (und) 30 (dreizig) or einunddreizig. Hundred is hundert and thousand is tausend.

You should also be able to recognize the days and months along with the words for year, month and day.  Year is Jahr, month is Monat, and day is Tag. Often, a person's age is given as 45 Jahr, 3 Monat, 14 Tag meaning 45 years, 3 months and 14 days. The days of the week are Montag, Dienstag, Mittwoch, Donnerstag, Freitag, Samstag, and  Sonntag. While the months are Januar, Februar, Marz, April, Mai, Juni, Juli, August, September, Oktober, November, and Dezember. I do think the months are the easiest part of the language. 

Now that you know a few words you need to learn to read the writing. German has several fonts and writing styles or scripts, all of which may make it difficult to read various records. My suggestion is to learn the various writing sytles or schrift. FamilySearch has a great German handwriting tutorial in their wiki (https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/Germany_Handwriting). From there you can find examples of script, online lessons, and other advice for reading your documents. There are also several websites that you can type a word into and it will be shown in various scripts. Two of these sights are http://www.suetterlinschrift.de/Englisch/Sutterlin.htm and http://altdeutsche-schrift.de/adsschreiben.php#schrifftfeld. 

Now that you are able to read the script you will still need translations. Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/) is a great place to start. Even if you can't figure out all the letters, Google Translate will provide suggestions of possible words to insert into the text to translate. Another great site for translating your records is the Genealogy Translations group on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogytranslation/). The volunteers on the Genealogy Translations group are wonderful and are able to translate almost any language and document type. As a final resort, you could always get your own translator. I have a guy in Germany named Fritz who does a lot of my translating. We met on social media and he uses the opportunity to brush up on his English while translating my German records.

I hope this basic introduction to German research techniques has been helpful. I foresee several more posts in this series including using social media, immigration resources, using FamilySearch, and possibly even more since this is such a large topic. Also. please see my previous post on German census records at http://milesgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/09/german-censuses-where-do-i-find-them.html. Good luck and best wishes for 2017!

German Census Records - Where Do I Find Them?

Good morning! I have been wanting to post more stories to my blog but keep forgetting what the topics are. Maybe one day I will start writing notes to myself to remind me what I am thinking about. So, since I couldn't remember what I intended to write about, I figured I would take an old presentation and discuss that.

As I do my genealogy research and teach others how to do their research I rely heavily on the US Census records which are widely available online. As we start to go back to the original immigrants this resource becomes less helpful and we need to begin looking for records from their homelands. Many regions have great church records available in the digital collections online but finding good census records is more difficult. In my case, I need to find the records for several German states. As you look for the German census records you are told by many that those records don't exist or they were lost in the war. In some cases that may be true, but not always.

Last year I was privileged to hear a talk from Dr. Roger Minert at RootsTech2016. He had spent a great deal of time researching the German Censuses, looking in the corners and boxes of various archives, and compiling what is actually available. Earlier this year he published a book compiling the results of his research. This book, German Census Records 1816-1916: The When, Where, and How of a Valuable Genealogical Resource, is available from Amazon.com for under $35 or you can see if your local library has a copy by looking it up at WorldCat. In the book, he describes the history of German censuses and the status of the census for 34 German states.

Did you know that some German states held censuses every three years? Or that Prussia had 16 censuses between 1818-1864? Or that the German Empire held 10 censuses between 1871-1961? Just like in the US censues, the amount of information in each German census has increased over time, beginning with the haushalts bestandsliste which only records heads of household and number of residents in the earlier censuses and ending with the urlisten which provides information for each resident in the household.

But where are these records kept? Most of the censuses (~85%) are held in city and town archives. The remainder are held in state/federal archives (~5%) and regional archives (~10%). You can find some of these records in digital format on FamilySearch.org. A very few are available online in various archives. But since many are in regional archives you might need to visit the fatherland for the time being until those are digitized and made available.

How do you know where your family was from in Germany? Well, prior to 1871 when the German Empire was formed, Germany was just a consolidation of various states with constantly changing boundaries. The best way to determine where your family may have been from is using maps from their time. The Meyers-Orts und Verkehrs-Lexikon or Meyers-Ortz Gazatteer from 1912-1913 includes the farthest extent of the German Empire. This Gazatteer can be found on Ancestry. The search is by letter and is found in the Browse This Collection box to the right of the search page. But remember, everything is written in German. If you have trouble reading the original German version of the Meyers-Ortz Gazatteer it has been translated to English at www.meyersgaz.org.

Example of a page from the Meyers Gazatteer.

So far, I have only found a few examples of the German censuses digitized and searchable online. They consist of the following:

Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1867) - FamilySearch - Ancestry - MyHeritage
Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1890) - FamilySearch                  - MyHeritage
Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1900) - FamilySearch - Ancestry - MyHeritage
Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1919) -                        - Ancestry

In addition to those listed above there are a few sites in Germany that have census indexes. The Arbeitskreis Volkszahl-Register claims to have 3,188 censuses with over 1.7 million individuals indexed. The Arbeits-Gemeinschaft Genealogie Schleswig-Holstein website has an incomplete index for a variety of censuses from Schleswig-Holstein region including 1803, 1835, 1840, 1845, 1855, and 1860.

If you are interested in reading up on the older German census records, there is a good article by Rolf Gehrmann at http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2009-023.pdf.

I hope these tips help you in finding your ancestors in Germany. Viel Glück!

Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany Archives

Welcome back everyone. Since I talked about the Alsace-Lorraine, France archives yesterday I figured I would jump across the Rhine and mention the Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany archives today. These archives have been a great help in researching my wife's ancestors. Her German line came from Ellmendingen in Karlsruhe.

The Baden-Wurttemberg archives can be found at https://www2.landesarchiv-bw.de. As you view this page you will see the main search categories. Remember, if you can't read the German, either use the translate function in the Chrome browser or go to the bottom of the page were you will see a note that says View This Page In English. The search section is pretty helpful and is shown below.

Search area of the Baden-Wurttemberg Archives (English version).

Once you know which area of Baden-Wurttemberg your family originated from you can select the correct department and search from there. Since most of the images are not yet indexed you will have to search page by page within the town your ancestors came from. In order to select the town, just type it in the search box and see which records show up. Make sure you search under each category  on the page because you may get different results. Sometimes I like to search page by page because you never know what you will find. Many times I have run across familiar names when I was looking for one person in particular. In many of these records I have found at least one person from my file on each page I looked at.

Example of records found in the archive.

Good luck with these German records, and happy hunting.

US, British Commonwealth & German Veterans Gravesites

I am a little late for Veteran’s Day but it is never too late to remember your ancestors who fought in the various wars including WW I and WW II. This article will focus on some online databases which can be used to search for veterans from the British Commonwealth, United States and Germany who died during these wars.

I received the idea to write this article concerning war veterans from a friend of mine at work. He has been searching off and on without much luck, for his grandfather and other relatives who fought for the British Army during World War II. He asked me if I knew of any sites where he could find information on these veterans and frankly, I didn’t know of any right off hand. I had been able to find my relatives who died during WW I and WW II online a few years ago. Many of them happened to be Germans who had mostly died in France during the wars and their cemeteries had been indexed. This made some interesting reading even though none of it was written in English. I had also been able to find records for many of my ancestors from the United States who had fought in these wars. But I hadn’t tried to find any British records even though most of my wife’s ancestors are of British descent.

Well, a little research later and I am able to say that I have found an excellent website that contains details about the veterans from the British Commonwealth nations including Britain, Canada, Australia and others, who died during these wars. The site is managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and can be found at http://www.cwgc.org/. This site contains the records of over 1.7 million men and women who died during these wars and the 23,000 cemeteries they are buried in. The search screen is very intuitive and the results include name, rank, serial number, date of death, age, regiment, nationality, and cemetery. A detailed view is also available which may include names of family members and a description of the memorials that commemorate these brave men and women. You can also see lists of the veterans buried in each cemetery if you are interested. There are also histories of some battles, videos commemorating some of these veterans and educational materials on this site. Many of these materials can be used as educational materials to explain what life was like during those times.

There are many databases on the internet that provide information on US veterans. Most of you have probably heard of the Draft Registration Card indexes at Ancestry.com and KindredKonnections.com. But another site that I have used is the Nationwide Grave Locator run by the US Department of Veterans Affairs. This site is located at http://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/. The search screen is also very easy to use and it provides the details of veterans who have died since 1997. You can find the branch of service, dates of birth and death, and the location of the cemetery where the individual is buried.

While I am at it I might as well talk about the website that I used to discover my German war veterans also. This site is the Deutsche Gräbersuche Online and can be found at http://www.volksbund.de/graebersuche. The site includes records from 4.4 million veterans who died during the war. One thing to remember when using this site is that it is written completely in German. If you can’t read German, I suggest that you use one of the online services such as Google’s translator at http://translate.google.com/ to find your way around the site. This site asks you for your name and some other basic information before it allows you to search their records but all of the results are presented to you at no cost.

Have fun digging up your veterans!