|
Click here to return to Genealogy Main Menu
Seminars from the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree in Burbank, CA (Continued)August/ September 2008The next genealogy meeting will be held Wednesday, September 3, at 1 pm in the Cedar Room. Our guest speaker will be Barbara Leak. Her topic is “Script or Scratch – Reading old h\Handwriting.” Visitors are welcome. The Genealogy group is offering workshops on using Ancestry.com, the world's largest genealogy database, which the Computer Club has subscribed to. You will be able to get help researching your ancestors. You do not need to be a member of the genealogy group. Contact Peggy McNamara to sign up - pegmac@surewest.net
Researching German Ancestors – The Agony and the Ecstasy presented by John T. Humphrey, well-known researcher and speaker. The Agony of German Research includes the names, language and handwriting.
Recommendation: look for records in American English using either first or middle name. Surnames – Very few surnames start with “c.” So if surname does start with a “c,” it was probably a “k” in German. American Lutheran church records and other German specific records recorded by German speakers would have more accurate German spelling of surnames.
The “Ecstasy”The good news for family historians is that Germans were “consummate record keepers.” They kept more records, and the records they kept go into greater detail. Church registers show that the German ministers recorded birth, baptism, marriage, burials and confirmations. The birth and baptismal information usually included the names of both parents, the father’s legal status within his community as well as his occupation, AND they recorded the names of the sponsors (usually members of the family). Germans also kept emigration records:
Myers Orts and Verkers Lekixon des Deutschen Reichs is a publication printed in 1912. It is now available on Ancestry.com. It furnishes information on administrative districts for villages where German immigrants had their origins. It notes where those record offices were located. Researchers can find out, for example, if their ancestral town had a vital records office, known as Standesamt. One can discover where the court records for the village were kept and can determine if the village or town had a church. One can go on to find out if the church was Protestant or Catholic. Ortssippenbuchern, or village lineage books, have been published by individual towns or by compilers of genealogical information in Germany. They provide fairly detailed records on families who lived in any given village for a considerable period of time. See http://widi-de.genealogy.net/wiki/Portal:Datenbanken http://www.volkmar-weiss.de/publ5.html Der Schlussel – the German equivalent of the Periodical Source Index (PERSI). It is published in Gottingen, in the German state of Lower Saxony. It has information on more than 90 genealogical and heraldic publications for German speaking areas of Europe – Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Indexes at the back of the book are invaluable to American genealogists – location index, surname index and subject index. Genealogisches Hanbuch Burgerlicher Familien and Deutsches Geshlechterbuch This publication has genealogical information on middle class families. Several indexes to this series have been produced, including a digital index available on CD from http://shop.ahnenforschung.net. The first 119 volumes are available for purchase on CD from the same vendor. Alexander, Elaine 21 Back-Doors to Naturalization Records by Elaine Alexander Some recommended references: Books: Alexander, Elaine. How to Find Naturalization Records.Los Angeles, CA:Delphic Press, 2004 Websites: Follow links to: Personal Historian – Bringing Life to Your Life Stories by Michael Booth, Inc Personal Historian is a software package that will assist you in writing your personal history. It provides timelines and memory triggers to enhance your writing. You can add documents, journals, photographs and genealogy records to give a personal touch. For information contact http://www.rootsmagic.com.
|
was the type face that was used by printers in both Germany and the United States for publishing newspapers and books as well as documents and forms used by family historians published before 1941. The computer, a word processor and the Internet can help the researcher decipher the letters in this font. See