It’s a rainy day here and I can’t be outside, so today is a good time to prepare for my research trip to Germany in October. One of my stops will be at the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg (State Archive of Baden-Württemberg) branch in Karlsruhe and probably the branch in Freiburg, as well. I have a lot… Continue reading State Archive of Baden-Württemberg
Category: German
Webinar: Germany’s Mega Genealogy Site
I am excited to announce that I have a pre-recorded webinar that was released today at Legacy Family Tree Webinars. It is all about how to use the website hosted by the Verein für Computer Genealogie [Society for Computer Genealogy] called CompGen for short. In the past, I have blogged about parts of this website.… Continue reading Webinar: Germany’s Mega Genealogy Site
Württemberg Church Records on Ancestry
In a prior post, I talked about accessing German church records on Ancestry. In this post, I want to talk specifically about the Lutheran records for the historic region of Württemberg. The collection that I will be talking about does not include records for historic Baden. These two regions joined in 1952, along with some… Continue reading Württemberg Church Records on Ancestry
German Surname Changes
Some historic regions in northwest Germany have a custom of surname changes. If you research in the historical regions of Hanover, Westphalia, Oldenburg, or Lippe it will be helpful to be aware of this custom. Farms of a certain status carried a surname and people who managed those farms used that surname. The right to… Continue reading German Surname Changes
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
Where Did They Come From?
This weekend, I began teaching a four-session course at the Newberry in Chicago. The title of the course is “Discover Your German Ancestors’ Origins.” This first week, I focused on best practices for finding an immigrant ancestor’s town of birth. Without this piece of information, the ancestral line cannot be extended further back in time.… Continue reading Where Did They Come From?
German-language Newspapers
Researchers in the United States are spoiled with access to newspaper “mega sites” like Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank, and News Archive. They’re not free, but they do have a broad geographical reach. They do not hold all available newspapers, but they represent at least some newspapers from every U.S. state and sometimes other countries. A one-year subscription… Continue reading German-language Newspapers
Dictionaries on CompGen
If you do German research, there is a German website that you want to become familiar with, if you aren’t already. CompGen.de is the website of the Verein für Computergenealogie (Society for Computer Genealogy), a German genealogy group that has created a goldmine of free online information. There are so many treasures tucked away, that… Continue reading Dictionaries on CompGen
German City Directories
City directories are an amazing resource. Not only do they list the residents who lived in the city in the stated year, but they give other helpful information. They are a mini census that details a person’s movements and job changes from one year to the next. Use of the city directory for its residential… Continue reading German City Directories
Lind Street Research 