If your ancestors came from Europe, you join me in the same dilemma – finding records. European countries do not have a central location for their records. The challenge becomes finding the town your ancestor came from to find records. How do you do that?
First, do your research in the country the ancestors settled in. For many, that would be U.S. records. Find the first church they attended. It probably was a German church, Lutheran or Catholic. Check land, court, tax, probate records. Follow family, associates and neighbors (FAN method), check county histories, newspapers, passenger lists, etc. Hamburg passenger lists give the last residence (from 1906 on).
ext, try locating the place on a map. Many German location have similar names. Try Meyers Orts (see our earlier post) to find the churchcivil office, etc. Try a website like Kartenmeister to learn former names for current locations. Also look for church records. These started around 1500. Civil records from 1876 are located in the nearest archive. Ancestry, FamilySearch, Archion (for Protestant records, and Matricula (for Catholic records) are websites to check for records.
One minor issue many people have is that these records are in German and written in German script. There are many books to help you translate and read the old script. FamilySearch has a tutorial on this as well. Check secondary sources like village lineage books, some online at genealogy.net. FamilyTreeMagazine has an article on using this website. Search the internet for other websites. Don’t forget using social media groups as well.
It took me some time to locate my ancestor’s hometown but I did find it in a church record in the U.S. From there, the journey has been exciting. Let us know your search Journey in the comments below.
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