Last night (19 May 2020) I presented a webinar called “Discover the Holdings of German Archives,” hosted by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG) and Legacy Family Tree Webinars. It will be free for one week to anyone and after that, available to Legacy Family Tree Webinar subscribers. One of the most confusing things… Continue reading German States and Provinces as of 1912 and Their Current Locations
Category: Gazetteers
Finding German Church Records
The third session of my Newberry class “Discover Your German Ancestors’ Origins,” focused on finding German church records. Why are church records so important, you might ask? Church records are the main category of records that document our German ancestors’ vital events. Depending on the specific town, these records may date to the 1500s. Civil… Continue reading Finding German Church Records
Gazetteers for German Research
In the second session of my Newberry class “Discover Your German Ancestors’ Origins,” I talked about historical gazetteers for finding the jurisdictions that define the ancestral home town. What is a gazetteer? It’s “a geographical dictionary” according to Merriam-Webster.[1] As genealogists, we use gazetteers to determine the jurisdictions to which a town belonged historically. Why… Continue reading Gazetteers for German Research
GOV (Geschichtliches Ortsverzeichnis) – Historical Gazetteer
You may be asking yourself, “What is a gazetteer and why do I care?” A gazetteer is like a dictionary of place names. It tells you valuable information about the place in question. There is not necessarily a map component in a gazetteer. A historical gazetteer, such as the GOV, tells about places that historically… Continue reading GOV (Geschichtliches Ortsverzeichnis) – Historical Gazetteer