First off, we spent some time in the town itself, entering through the Cleves Gate, an impressive three storied city-gate from 1393. The bridge like entrance, which in earlier times ran over the town’s ditch, leads to the main gate.

Once inside this fairytale, medieval city our first stop was at the Market Pump, from about 1652. Before water pipes and well organized fire brigade were commonplace, a certain number of houses in the direct vicinity formed a community around a water pump. Such a pump-neighborhood was responsible not only for water-supply and fire protection, but also for an organized neighborly help. To this end they still have an annual pump festival, called the pump fair.  I think the statutes transcend time, looks familiar, doesn’t it? (Kids can’t wait for Mom to quit talking)

The focal point and jewel of the city is the Cathedral, which owes its status not to an Episcopal seat, but to its importance for the region. The church is a five-aisled basicilia with a monumental façade with twin towers. The patron is St. Viktor. According to legend Viktor and his companions, members of the Theban Legion, were executed at Birten.  As Christians they refused to offer sacrifices to the Roman emperor. Their bodies are said to have been thrown into a marsh and later recovered by St. Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, and buried in a Roman cemetery.

There are lots of other historical buildings, architectural styles (gothic, rococo etc.) and of course the market square surrounded by open air cafes. My favorite thing to do; afternoon kaffee und kuchen and watch the world go by.  But also at the end of the street we come to the reconstructed town wall and the impressive Kriemhild’s Mill, (a large windmill) which is not only one of the landmarks ofXanten, but is also a bakery and open-air café.  Xanten also has a Chocolate and Confectionery Museum, where the main attraction is the chocolate well with its bottomless filling of sweet chocolate. Yum.  As if this delightful town wasn’t enough to spend the afternoon seeing, we then went back outside the town walls to go tour the Roman Park.

After being in Italy a last year and experiencing the massive crowds trying to vie for a shot of this classic building or Cathedral or this statue etc., Xanten was heavenly and you truly are able to see ROME without the crowds. There were a couple of school groups visiting that day but we just timed our walk to the site they weren’t visiting and we had a wonderful opportunity to read all the signs, take pictures and imagine ourselves back in a chariot riding down the street.

For around 400 years Xanten was one of the most important Roman cities on the Rhine. Some 10,000 men, women and children lived in the impressive city, which was named Colonia Ulpi Traiana by the Emperor Trajan in A.D. 98. The fact that its area has hardly been built upon since the Middle Ages is a lucky chance for archaeology. The remains of the Roman City have been able to be protected, researched and presented in the Archaeological Park since 1977.

First thing we came across was the Amphitheatre. Like the Coliseum in Rome, this is where the “games” were held. On public holidays popular performances were animal hunts and fights to the death and then the gladiators would take the ring for their performances. Of course these pictures

show how the amphitheatre was rebuilt on the foundations of the original. In the original the three lowest, wider rows of seats were reserved for VIP’s. Wooden chairs were set up here. On the upper tiers the audience sat directly on the stone steps. The seats running right around offered room for 10,000 people.

Next up, the Harbour Temple, looks like the Roman Forum to me.  This was the second largest temple in the town but it is not known to which deity it was dedicated. It was nice to be able to roam around over this temple without fighting a crowd. It gives a good idea of how to picture what Roman life was like.

Then on to the most fascinating of all, the RömerMuseum.  This large, very impressive building of steel and glass was built on the original foundation walls of the entrance hall to the Large Baths. At the time, the Large Baths offered everything the inhabitants of the Colonia needed for relaxation and personal hygiene. This is where the Romans met with their neighbors and friends, exchanged news, cut deals and sometimes even made political decisions.  The baths are extensive and you can walk over them on ramps and platforms and you can almost feel the steam rising. It was fascinating.

We spent hours in the rest of the museum, highlights of the exhibition include the important collection of weapons and equipment of the Roman army, statues, a long mural painting and even a Roman barge that can be viewed floating freely in the air between two stories. At the entrance to the museum is a slab of walkway with actual footprints and wagon ruts from Roman times!!

So much history packed into one small town, you can travel back to the Roman times and end up in the Middle ages before you depart. It was a wonderful visit and if you are in the area I recommend it highly!

I’ve been cleaning my office (ugh) but I am finding a bunch of helpful things. This post is one of them. One step that might be helpful to finding your ancestor’s hometown is to check to see if they were naturalized.  This was an article I found on the Baden-Wuerttemberg mail list.  Hope it helps!

Immigrants to the USA were unable to apply for citizenship immediately upon
arrival. The standard residency requirement for someone who wanted to
become an American citizen was five years within the USA from the date of
arrival. A person could normally file what was known as the Declaration of

Intention or “first papers after having continuously resided in the USA
for approximately 2 years. They then had to wait an additional 3 years before
filing the “final papers,” formally known as the Petition for Naturalization.

The degree of detailed information these forms contain will vary from one
person to the next; some specify an exact town of birth, others state only
the country (or German “state,” such as Baden, Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, etc.)
As a *general* rule, Declarations of Intention are often more detailed than
Petitions for Naturalization, and documents for naturalizations AFTER 1906
tend to be more informative than those prior to that time. (There was a
change in the naturalization laws in 1906 which brought this about.)

Before undertaking naturalization record research, it is vital to note that
until 1940, foreign-born *children* under the age of 21 became American
citizens when their foreign-born *father* did, and until 1922, MARRIED
foreign-born *women* became US citizens when their foreign-born *husbands*
did. (The laws changed again these respective years.) The children and the
man’s wife DID NOT file separate and individual citizenship papers for
themselves—normally, only the father/husband would have filed this
documentation. This often makes it difficult to research the pre-1922
naturalization of a married woman or the pre-1940 naturalization of a minor
child who received derivative citizenship, as there may be no documents
which recorded the process—if documented, it will be under the name of the
father or husband receiving the primary citizenship, not under the
children’s names or that of the wife.

Children over the age of 21 and/or children who were married (regardless of
age) did NOT qualify for derivative citizenship. They had to file separate
papers for this process themselves, and they had to fulfill the other
requirements for citizenship separately from their fathers

Remember that any person BORN IN the United States was a citizen of the USA
from the moment of their birth, *regardless of any alien status of their
parents.* Be certain you determine whether the child of an immigrant
ancestor was indeed *foreign-born* before searching for a naturalization
record.

US Naturalization (citizenship) research can be complex and

time-consuming. For those with an interest in researching

United States naturalization, here are some excellent Web

sites which provide detailed practical assistance and background

information on US citizenship, its acquisition, and how to
research the naturalization process of your ancestors.

RootsWeb Lesson on Naturalization
http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson16.htm

National Archives Guide to Naturalization Research

http://www.archives.gov/research/naturalization/index.html

Immigration Law (publication) article on Women & Naturalization Circa
1802-1940 Part 1

http://www.ilw.com/articles/2003,0317-smith.shtm

I would to thank another of our  tour members for a guest post on her experience on our recent Rhineland tour. Thanks Connie

I think I have calmed down enough now to write…

I first got hooked on genealogy by finding my parents and grandparents on the census records at the Brown County Library. Then going to the courthouse and finding vital records made me want to find out more. There were many ‘aha moments ‘and big breakthroughs in the beginning years. Then the ‘aha moments’ slowed down and I worked more on putting the pieces of the puzzle together. My husband and I did make several trips to other states looking for dead relatives. (One exciting find came in a dusty basement storage room of the Springfield, Ohio Courthouse. There we paged through and copied the actual will and sale of possessions of my great great great grandfather.) The next logical step would be to go overseas, but I was never big on traveling that far. Then came my husband’s surprise gift; a trip to Germany geared especially for genealogists. As a follow-up from the last OCGS newsletter, I would like to share a few memories from our trip.

Family Tree Tours (http://familytreetours.com) is an organization consisting of two partners, one in America and the other in Germany. For first-time overseas travellers like ourselves, it is the only way to go. The organizers purposely keep the group small, 12 to 20 people. Together they do the most incredible job of organizing the whole tour. We didn’t have to worry about interpreters; they had an English speaking guide wherever we went. Transportation was no problem; they gave us our train passes (Bahn) along with the schedules. They set up meetings in the towns we wanted to visit with someone familiar with our ancestor’s history. They also set up tour guides so we could learn more about the history of our ancestors’ homeland. The tour also allows plenty offree time to explore whatever we wanted. We experienced little German communities that have the authentic atmosphere. All their beforehand work and preparation paid off in a worry-free visit. A lot of preparation went into getting ready for the trip, but once we got there, it was all worth it!

Our first day our group went on a day cruise down the Rhine River. This was the perfect start of our journey in Germany. The German landscape is filled with vineyards, castles and rolling hills. We learned several things about the German culture while there. One of which, they are very punctual people; if the train (Bahn) leaves at 9:09, you better be on time. And if something still works, don’t change it. The cobblestone streets and sidewalks have been there for hundreds of years and still work. Although, after walking on them for a few days, I think they are highly overrated.

We visited two churches of Jake’s ancestors and it was amazing to see they hadn’t changed in a hundred-plus years. Before leaving on this trip I had kidded it just may be like the WDYTYA show where they hand you all these documents upon arrival. Well, guess what. It turned out even better. Besides years of ancestor documentation, we also found living relatives.

Prior to the trip we sent in the information we had on my husband’s ancestors from the Rhineland District. Our first free day, our leaders organized a visit to Zerf. Jake’s great grandmother, Eva Rommelfanger was born July 15, 1836 in Zerf. At the age of 18, Eva came to America with her mother and 5 siblings. Eva’s father had died in 1846. It turned out the Mayor of Zerf, Manfred Rommelfanger is my husband’s 4th cousin. He is also a professor and could not join us, but his wife, Edith Rommelfanger met us at the train in Saarburg and graciously spent the day introducing us to Zerf. We first visited St. Laurentius Church. It was an awesome feeling walking into the church and knowing it was just the same as when our Eva was baptized there. After having lunch, we went back to her house. She served a wonderful dessert, gave us ancestry papers and even allowed us to scan some of the old pictures from the family album. Edith had a very good command of English and we will always remember her kindness. She then drove us back to the train in Saarburg.

Another day a visit to the city of our Jacobs ancestors was arranged. Jake’s great grandfather, Herman Jacobs was born in Bickenbach Dec. 4, 1822. The tour’s German partner had warned us that the only Jacobs family there were not very interested and at first didn’t want us to come to the house. He then contacted the Mayor of Bickenbach who agreed to show us the city and the church. When we arrived at the Mayor’s house he presented us with a book of the city; The History of Bickenbach. We were extremely fortunate Dr. Michael Frauenberger, esteemed genealogist from Boppard could join us, as the others spoke no English. After a few more calls to Willi Jakobs, he had relented. When we got to his house, his wife and their three grown children were there as well as his brother and his wife. We brought a scrapbook of our documentation, pictures and descendants of Herman Jacobs. Come to find out, Jake and Willi are third cousins. We showed them the baptism record of Willi’s great grandfather. Their great grandfathers were brothers and not only that, but Jake and Willi were both born June, 1939. They couldn’t have been nicer to us. They allowed us to copy some of his grandfather’s records with invaluable dates and names. A memory we will never forget. We had thought we could visit cemeteries, but that is a whole other story. In most cities in Germany, the cemeteries are very small and usually next to the church. They are only allowed to occupy a plot for 25 years. We asked what they did with the beautiful head stones and were told in most cases, they just throw them away. In the scrapbooks we brought to both German families we included a picture of Eva and Herman’s tombstones. Eva died April 24, 1891 and Herman died Dec. 22, 1900. The German relatives were amazed their plots and head stones were still there. There is so much more I could add about our trip. Another aspect that made it so much fun was the great group of people on the tour. We all shared a passion for genealogy and we all shared in the joy and excitement of each other’s discoveries. I have been asked many times if I would do it again. My response; “In a heartbeat!”

It truly was a genealogist’s dream trip!

I would like to post a story from a “guest blogger” this time.  A gentleman who was on our Rhineland trip this past September. He has written several articles for his genealogy society,  Fox Valley Genealogy Society of Illinois and I am posting one of them today.

Genealogy Tours

Gene Atkin

Thinking about your immigrant ancestors, have you sometimes wondered who their ancestors in the “old country” were and what their lives were like? It would be fun to travel to the places they came from, but you aren’t “ready” to go there. You don’t know the language they spoke or how to do research “over there”. This was my situation a year ago with respect to my mother’s German-speaking ancestors who had immigrated from Rhineland Prussia and Luxembourg. Like me, you would like to know whether there are cousins, descendants of ancestors who didn’t immigrate. You would like to see buildings the ancestors knew and that might still be standing.

A new genealogy method is evolving to help identify and better understand the ancestors of our immigrant ancestors and their other descendants who did not immigrate. I spent two wonderful weeks in Europe last month touring with a group that included only other genealogists (and some patient spouses). The tour company I traveled with (www.familytreetours.com) asked me to provide well in advance such information as I had about my Germanic immigrant ancestors. With this information, the company’s associate in Germany, a skillful genealogist, used contacts and other sources to identify more of my ancestors’ ancestors and the communities in which they lived, and also to find descendants interested in meeting an American cousin.

Central to the purpose of our travel, the tour company planned individual day trips for tour members to go by train from the group’s hotel to ancestral “home towns.” I went to five, two on an overnight trip. Each time, an English-speaking person met me at a train station and took me, as appropriate, to meet cousins and to local places of genealogical interest. The company even gathered timetables, rail platform numbers, and purchased needed train tickets from tour fees.

The tour I was on included group activities for other days — a day cruise on the Rhine, a scholarly lecture, and visits to an archive, two museums, and several Roman ruins — all of which provided good insights. Nothing is quite like a leisurely river cruise to help one adjust to the change in time zones. The various excursions were timed to provide occasions to learn to use German trains and ticket machines. The passenger trains are electric, go most everywhere, use wonderfully welded tracks that give a smooth ride, and almost always run on time.

For me, the trip was a great way to expand my genealogical horizons. With the tour company handling all the “infrastructure” planning details, all I had to do was follow travel directions, enjoy the people I visited, and find room in my luggage for all the new family trees and books about the local history I collected along the way. If you are inclined to learn more about ancestors “across the pond,” a tour with a company oriented to meeting the needs of genealogists may be just the thing for you.

We started easy our first day by relaxing up the Rhine on a river cruise. I say up because we were going South, which to someone who lives near the Mississippi going south is downriver, but the Rhine runs from south to north so our trip up the Rhine to Rudesheim was about 4 hours.  Very relaxing, weather was nice, not too cold and before long castles started appearing. Lots of picture taking, I posted some on Facebook and have a whole album of pictures from this Rhineland tour on Flickr. Will post the link at the end.

Our next day was very interesting and full of history. We had a tour of our home base town Boppard.  We had a very charming English (from England) guide who gave us an interesting tour of this very old city, back to the Romans, with the remains of a Roman fort in town (a piece of video is on my Facebook page) After this tour and lunch we then visited the Evangelisch Church Archive which is the repository of the Evangelish Church records for all of the Rhineland, where we were met by the President of the Rhineland Pfalz genealogy society and the Director of the Archive.  The Director gave us a wonderful overview of the Archive,what kind of records it contains, some of the interesting things people may not know of, such as military parish records. I think these tours of the Archives are very informative and going with a small group you get to see and learn a lot more than if you went as an individual. I doubt very much they would take you down to the bowels of Archives and show you such things. Like one of the interesting documents we saw from the 1300′s.

To round out the day, we had a lecture by a history Professor from the Univ. of Mainz, who has done much work on the emigration from the Pfalz area.  He presented a slide show with information on what the Pfalz area was like in the 1700′s onward, how it was divided up into so many territories and that if you even went 1 km away you could have crossed a “border” and owed someone else taxes or if you wanted to marry the girl in the next village and it was in a different territory you had to get permission from both governments and pay both, so it was very difficult to be a poor man at this time. The story progressed and he told the reasons for emigration, how they proceeded once they decided to leave and where and how they lived in the New World.  Although the video is not Hollywood caliber, I will try to have a special showing for newsletter subscribers this winter of this lecture,

Of course on the free days on our tours is when folks go out to their hometowns, we had folks go nearby in the Pfalz area and even some who went into Luxembourg. I always anxiously await their return to hear how things went and it sounds like they had a wonderful time. Some were led by local historians and one was surprised with about 15 cousins showing up.  For another we had arranged for someone to meet her at the Archives, where she was able to touch the actual emigration papers for her ancestor from the 1850′s. Of course she couldn’t take the originals but got copies.  She also learned of another daughter who had emigrated before (she thought she had stayed in Germany or died) but now she knows she must find her in the U.S.  It is always fun to hear their stories. I am going to ask if perhaps some of them will write a short story of their adventures to share with everyone.

After we moved to our second home base town  Speyer, we had a historical tour and then some of us took the train down to Ludwigshafen, where in all places at the train station is a small Archive for trade unions BUT it also houses a collection of over 3000 Ortssippenbuchs, which are family registers or genealogies so to speak, from all over Germany.  If you know your town and it has been lucky enough to have someone from the town or a local historian transcribe the church books or civil registers and put all this info into a book you have struck Gold

We were shown the shelves with all the books and learned how to use them and were able to check if any of our towns were there. I am lucky enough to have bought an Ortssippenbuch for one of my towns a few years back and you can use them to trace siblings lines etc, plus of course getting your direct line back usually as far as the church or civil books go. I also learned this time that this area of the Rhineland was under Napoleon’s rule in the late 1700′s-1815, where he had introduced civil registration and abolished church books. After his demise most of Germany that had been under his control stopped civil registration (until 1875 when the country of Germany started it again) but most of the Rhineland kept it, so if you have people from around this area you should know there may be Civil Register books for your towns.

Here is a link for the photos for the 2011 Rhineland Tour

http://www.flickr.com/photos/family_tree_tours/

Today we visit a “Freilichtmuseum”, an open air living history museum. These open air museums are scattered throughout Germany and give a good representation of how people lived in a certain region of Germany. We visited the one in Detmold, representing the Northern Westphalia area. One of the largest museums it has over 100 houses and farms.

We visited farm homes typical for this area where the house and barn were in the same building. The large building would house the animals in the front and the living quarters in the back. The “kitchen” so to speak contained the open fire pit; without a chimney the smoke would rise to smoke the sausage and meat hung above the fire. Plus it would permeate the room. Without many windows, smoke in the air, and the smell of animals, I don’t imagine life was too easy.

These larger farmhouses were home to the farm landlord or overseer. Most of our ancestors who decided to emigrate would have been from the landless classes, the tenants (Heurerlinge), day laborers. They would have lived in smaller cottages. Interesting thing I found out on this trip though was through one of our tour members, she had traced her line back to the 1600-1700; s and found many family farms. Due to inheritance laws lots of the emigrants were sons who would not inherit the farm, so throughout the generations they would have become the Heuerlinge and eventually they emigrated. So if you want to find the farmhouse you need to trace back as far as you can. Of course, everyone’s story is different but this is a goal to go back as far as you can.

(I have a few books left for sale by a local historian from this NW area who explains the farm system, the reasons for emigration, the voyage and how they made it to Bremerhaven or a port city and then the settlements in the U.S. There are lots of names of emigrants from the town and area around Venne, Germany. If you have an interest in this book let me know. It is called “Venne in America”).

In more explanation of a comment above, due to inheritance laws common during the 19th century, where in this area of Germany the youngest son inherited the farm. The other sons only had the opportunity to work for their brothers or as a day laborer at someone else’s farm. Through in some marriage requirements (they might have to prove they were healthy, able to work, owned a cow and were able to lease a cottage) and you can see how the pull from America and other places helped stir emigration fever.

See video from Freilichtmuseum.

http://www.youtube.com/user/FamilyTreeTours?feature=mhee

Emigration – Bremerhaven

So we saw how our ancestors lived at the Freilichtmuseum and learned a little about an occupation they may have had (cigar-making) at the Tabak Museum, then we had a very interesting lecture from the head archivist from the County Herford Archives about emigration. This archivist showed us one of the 13 volumes of Emigrant Books containing “permission to emigrate” papers they have collected over the years. They have worked hard to index these and great news for us these indexes will be put online later this year. This is great news because without an index it would be very hard to find these papers on your own. The papers are usually kept in an Archive or the local courts filed by year and then maybe by month and if you knew this much then you would have to look through all the papers for that month (plus reading old German script) to find your ancestor’s name.

After the decision to emigrate was made, a whole list of preparations had to be made. First, one had to get an emigration permit from the authorities’ at the government office. The emigrants who were tenants sold whatever they had of household goods, which was minimal. Those from the small cottage farms sold their house and land.

In addition to the cost of the ship passage, there were other expenses with which they had to contend with. The travel cost to Bremen or the port city was needed, meals and accommodations there until a ship was ready to depart, plus necessary travel accessories such as a mattress, pillow, blanket, and eating utensils. Imagine this journey with 4 or 5 children in tow; you thought a family car trip was bad.

We will have this video of the Lecture as a Webinar in the near future. Check back at our website or on Face book www.facebook.com/familytreetours to get the date. It is an interesting talk on the emigration process. Also there is more detail on the whole emigration process in the book I mentioned earlier, “Venne in America”.
Next post HOW THEY LEFT, our visit to Bremerhaven

It is always exciting for me to welcome another group to Germany on their discovery of their ancestor’s home place. They usually arrive with the facts of their family and hopefully they leave with a little more of the story of their family. So on Sunday the 19^th we greeted our group to the Northwest of Germany to help them get their family stories. We settled in at the hotel and after a little rest we strolled through our home base town of Bünde with a quick beer at a charming biergarten near a slow moving river and then to dinner.

Monday after breakfast we head for a tour of the Tabak (tobacco) museum in Bünde. This sounds funny now in our PC world but this industry was very important for our ancestors. The first tobacco factory in Northwest Germany opened in 1843. Tobacco had been introduced in Europe

to the nobility as a treasure from new worlds.                         

Our ancestors most often needed a second occupation to make ends meet, as farming and especially tenant farming was not enough to support a family. The northwest of Germany was a leading source for the manufacture of linen from the flax plant. The production and spinning of the flax into linen could be done during the winter months and in the evening after farming. But as the Industrial Revolution spread this occupation needed less manpower and the people were out of work. Once tobacco was more prevalent the manufacture of cigars was off and running. The tobacco arrived in ships mainly from the U.S. in the harbor in Bremen and then transported inland to smaller towns in the countryside where there were factories and home workers who made the cigars. Many of our ancestors brought this trade to the New World with them.

TO FIND THE KIND OF INFORMATION YOU NEED, turn first to ALL available U.S.
(or other non-European) records for an ancestor who emigrated to America,
and his descendants (starting with yourself and working backward, without
interruption). These include birth, marriage and death records (issued by
BOTH the civil government AND a person’s Catholic or Lutheran church in
America—the church records of the same events are often more detailed than
the civil ones).  Don’t limit these just to the immigrant—you might find
his birthplace in Germany specified on the birth, baptismal or christening
records of his American-born children, for example).  Look for passenger
departure and arrival records, US military records, US national and state
censuses, naturalization papers, obituaries, probates, and Social Security
applications (for those alive in 1937 or later).

Online, see what you my find by trying the FREE online LDS Family History
Library “Family Search” feature and look up the ancestor in the
International Genealogical Index (IGI) (go to
http://www.familysearch.org/default.asp ).  See if you can find your
ancestors in the FREE database searches for the immigrant processing centers
(for the port of New York) of Castle Garden [for immigrant arrivals from
1830 through 1891] at http://www.castlegarden.org/ and Ellis Island at
http://www.ellisisland.org/ [for immigrant arrivals from 1892 to about
1924]. Even if your ancestors came before Ellis Island was opened check it again,

they might have gone back for visit and filled out a passport.

Also online, to see who else might be researching the same names or
families, check the surnames and data posted by others on Rootsweb
http://www.rootsweb.com.

If you are just getting your feet wet in overseas research, I’d also
recommend the following great Web sites (all of which are FREE) to help you
get started in the right direction.
——————————————————————-

1) soc.genealogy.german Frequently Asked Questions List
http://www.genealogienetz.de/faqs/sgg.html#starters

This helpful site answers the following often-asked questions in detail,
among many others:

How can I start researching my German or German-American family?
Can you help me with surname ________________?
Where can I register/find my surnames?
Where is the town/village ___________________?
How can I find out what village my ancestor came from?
How about German cemeteries?
What does my German surname mean?
Is my family from a town with a name like their surname?
How do I write to a German Standesamt, parish, or archive?

—————————————–

2) RootsWeb’s Guide “On the Trail of Germanic Ancestors”
http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson26.htm

3) RootsWeb’s Guide “Tracing Your Immigrant Ancestors”
http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson15.htm

4) LDS Family History Library Ancestor Search [look up your ancestors' names
(free) in the immense collection of extracted data gathered by the LDS
Library] http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp

5) Cyndi Howell’s amazing database of genealogy links, Cyndi’s List (for
Germany):
http://www.CyndisList.com/germany.htm

6) Regional Research in German-Speaking Countries
http://www.genealogienetz.de/reg/regio.htm

This should keep you busy for awhile,  and if anyone has other helpful hints for how you found your town please let us know. Good luck!

“I can’t go yet, I don’t know the town”.  I hear that all the time and I agree it is special to be able to walk through the exact town your ancestor did but what if you never find that town?  I don’t want to burst any one’s bubble but that is a possibility. Not to say you won’t find it down the road but why deprive yourself a wonderful trip to the country your ancestor came from, maybe even more specific a general area they came from. You still will see some of the things they saw, learn about the culture and see how people from that area lived centuries ago and maybe even make a contact that can help you find that elusive town.  Don’t wait until it is too late to go and be able to walk through that village.

That being said, let’s talk about how to go about finding that town.  We will kind of focus on Germany but the principles are the same and we may cover other countries in future posts.  Essentially speaking, the most critical piece of information needed by everyone who wants to pinpoint their European ancestral origins is the name of the EXACT village, town or city within the State or County of your ancestral country.  Without this, your research about your ancestor’s life and family will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.  The reason for this difficulty is that European records are NOT usually amassed and made available in one (or just a few) centralized places like archives in state or regional capitals, as more modern records can be found in the US.  They are more often in or near the original places of origin—the towns or villages where they were created—and even if they’ve been relocated to central archives of various kinds, they are often still organized within those archives by “LOCATION” name— not arranged alphabetically according to personal surnames.

Therefore, just knowing the surname and the general area someone came from (like Wuerttemberg or Baden or the Black Forest region or similar) is not going to help you much.  Archivists are literally not in a position to look under a particular name for births or marriages or deaths in Baden, Wuerttemberg, Hohenzollern (or wherever else) in “the 1800′s” (or any other years) —they would have to know WHERE (in terms of the village, town or city WITHIN Baden) your particularly family members could be found.

Some important clues or details may be at your fingertips, or require some digging; others might take some thought, and even some lucky guessing.  When someone asks me for beginning advice on pinpointing a German ancestor, I usually ask if he or she has or can take a guess about ANY of the following information about that person (assuming nothing is known about the village, town or city in which the ancestor was born or resided in Germany):

— the ancestor’s given names and last name (NOT just the family *surname*)

— the ancestor’s father’s name

— the ancestor’s mother’s MAIDEN name

— the ancestor’s wife’s MAIDEN name or any children’s names

— the ancestor’s religious affiliation (i.e., Catholic or Lutheran; if you aren’t sure what it was in Germany, what religion did they affiliate with in the country to which they emigrated?)

— the ancestor’s occupation (again, if you’re not sure what he did in Germany, how did he make a living after emigrating?)

— the ancestor’s approximate date of emigration (at least the year or range of years)

— the ancestor’s ultimate place of settlement in the US or elsewhere

— the ancestor’s date and place of death

These details will be CRUCIAL not only in possibly locating existing records about an ancestor, but in identifying a specific ancestor and helping demonstrate that he/she is not some OTHER person with the same or similar name who was born, married or who died about the same time who has NO RELATIONSHIP to you (the great genealogical nightmare.)

If you don’t have exact details, try to make an educated guess to get the ball rolling.  This might be somewhat prone to error, but for other people to possibly assist you, the field of the search needs to be narrowed down as far as reasonably possible.  Don’t be afraid to approximate dates of birth, emigration, etc.  (This is important, first because not everybody’s ancestors were born or lived in the same era, and secondly, because some people emigrated as single adults, or with spouses and/or offspring, whereas others came with as children accompanying their parents or others.  This would be important to know when doing, for example, passenger record research.)

To not make this a long winded post we will continue this in our next post about WHERE to look for these records.

Less than two months before my next small group tour to Germany in June. This is about the time I tell the group to start walking.  Do a little bit every day so that you don’t get tired out while visiting Germany.  Also, if you plan on buying new walking shoes get them and break them in.  Why all the warnings?  Germany and Europe in general, is best appreciated by walking. Europe is not a drive by.  So many American tourists come over and get on a big tour bus and drive by the magnificent palaces and castles and get dumped off in a touristy city for a few hours and come home and think they have seen Europe. Yes, in a way they saw things but did they experience it?  Did they wander down windy, cobble stoned streets and get off the beaten path? Did you venture out alone with your few phrases of the language and try eating in a local’s only café?  Did you experience living like the locals and riding their public transportation?  To me this is the experience I am going for.  Scary, sometimes but it sure produces a lasting memory and makes me hungry for more.

When I started this business I wanted to find my home base towns and check them out personally, so with extremely limited knowledge of German and a map I got on a train and headed out.  What an adventure but I made it and people were nice and responded to my “Sprechen Sie English?” and I found some delightful towns we use as home bases today. These are towns that you might not hear loads of people speaking English or see a thousand of other tourists getting “off the bus”.   Yes, I know you want to see the famous sites and I try to include these in our tours especially for first timers but I also encourage you to experience the small villages we take you too.  Walk the streets and wander around, sit at an outside café and enjoy an “Eis” (ice cream), walk through the local church and cemetery, visit the winery up the hill.  Some of my favorite things I found just by wandering small town streets.  I sometimes play a game with our tour members by giving them pictures of things I have found in our home base town and for those that find all of the things by snapping a picture of it and showing me they get a prize. This way I know they have experienced the town.  At least I hope they enjoy the experience of wandering the town.  Here are a few examples:

Window boxes

Lane in Dinklesbuhl

Of course, our tours include the thrill of visiting your ancestral hometown and there is no more important place to wander than here.  This is where generations of your family walked the same streets, saw the same landscape, and probably even touched the same church door.

This is certainly not a drive by, you must get out and walk the streets and experience the surroundings, I’m sure you will feel the ancestors walking with you.

Ready?  Get your walking shoes on and let’s go!