Michele Simmons Lewis – Page 2 – International Institute of Genealogical Studies

Practice Your German Language Skills

Michele Simmons Lewis, Student I have a tip for anyone working through the German courses. If you want some real life practice reading German documents I highly recommend that you volunteer as an indexer for FamilySearch. Not only will you be giving back to the genealogy community you will be putting what you are learning in the German courses into use and you will get feedback on how well you did. Don’t know what Indexing is? Here is some general information: The Family History Library is digitizing their microfilm. They need volunteers to index the images to make them more user friendly for researchers. You will download a small indexing program to your computer (FamilySearch will be switching over to a web-based indexing system soon). You can see what the program looks like and how it works HERE. You will need to watch/read all of the training materials You can then select a batch and off you go! “But I am worried that I won’t be able to read the handwriting and I will make a mistake!” All batches are indexed by TWO indexes. If the indexers disagree on anything the entire batch goes to an arbitrator who will decide There are batches for beginner, intermediate and advanced indexers If you ever pick up a batch and it looks too difficult you can throw it back into the queue and pick up a different one If there is something on a batch you need help with you can “share” your batch with another indexer or arbitrator for their opinion After a batch has been arbitrated you will have the opportunity to review the batch and see what the arbitrator changed You will be given your percentage of agreement with the arbitrators. As you gain experience you will see this number go up. This is a great way to monitor your progress The #1 reason an arbitrator has to change an entry has absolutely nothing to do with how well the person was able to read the handwriting. The #1 reason an arbitrator changes something is because the indexer did not read the specific instructions for that project. Each project has its own set of instructions and they can be very different from project to project. I have been an arbitrator for a long time and I have to say it is a bit frustrating when I have to go…

Learning More About the German Language

by Michele Simmons Lewis, Student I just completed my third National Institute for Genealogical Studies German course, German: The Language . I was looking forward to this one because I was wondering what the course could teach me considering that I am a native German. I was in for a few surprises. According to the course description found online, the course covers the classification of German words, fundamentals of German grammar for family historians, and basic spelling conventions. The description states “One does not need to become fluent in the German language to be a good genealogist in German records. This course introduces the key information needed about the German language so researchers can be successful in reading German. Pronunciation of and writing in German is not generally necessary for genealogical research.” This course begins by teaching the basic language structure and essential German genealogy vocabulary, and then you translate excerpts from actual documents. There are 16 translation assignments but before you start having palpitations, each assignment is pretty short. After you translate each section you will then get to see the translation from the instructor. You can put all of these together to make your own translation guide for each type of document to refer back to. One thing that you learn very quickly is that once you know the basic root words you will recognize a lot of words in the documents. For example, any word that contains Geburt has something to do with a birth. I bought one of the recommended books, German-English Genealogical Dictionary by Ernest Thode and in it there are 34 compound nouns listed with Geburt in them. Since the other parts of these compound nouns are also common genealogical words you can figure out what a document is in no time. Schein is the word for certificate so Geburtsschein is a birth certificate. If you know that the word Tauf refers to baptism you can now make the word for baptismal certificate, Taufschein. Germans love their compound nouns and you can have a lot of fun with this. You will immediately know what the document is referring to even if you don’t understand it 100 percent. The translation assignments come from baptisms, marriages, burials, gazetteers, web pages, lineage books, emigration records, published books and biographies so you get a good variety. Practice is essential because just knowing the words isn’t enough. You need…

Continuing My Journey Through German Records

By Michele Simmons Lewis, Student I chose Locating Places in Germany as my second German course from the National Institute for Genealogical Studies and I am happy I did. This course is packed with information to help you track down where in Germany your ancestor came from and how to locate the records for that location. Module 1 explains some of the pitfalls when trying to identify where in Germany your ancestor came from. It is easy to make a bad assumption. Some towns have the same name as other larger jurisdictions and there might be more than one town with the same name. This makes sense considering we have the same thing here in the United States. There is an Appling, Georgia (town) and an Appling County, Georgia. Appling the town isn’t even in Appling County, it is in Columbia County. I live in Harlem, Georgia, not to be confused with Harlem, New York. Another thing to consider is the name of the town could have changed when another country took over that area. The borders were constantly changing. To learn more about this consider taking Introduction to German Research for North Americans which gives a great basic history of Germany and the jurisdictional changes. You can learn more about this course in my previous blog post. Module 2 goes on to explain the different jurisdictional levels and it covers all of the German-speaking areas of Europe. Knowing the political divisions and at which level records are held will save you a lot of time. Being able to read a gazetteer is an essential skill and that is covered in Module 3. The most useful gazetteers are in German and you will need to be able to interpret the German abbreviations used. To make it even more challenging, the old gazetteers are in gothic typeface (Fraktur). Reading the entries is not an easy task even for me but this course gives you all the tools you need. The most comprehensive German gazetteer is the Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs, 5th ed., compiled by E. Utrecht. This is available in its entirety for free on Ancestry.com. If you don’t already have an Ancestry.com account you will need to register for a free guest login. I have to say, it is fun to try and figure out what the Meyers gazetteer is trying to tell you about a location. It is…

Introduction to German Research for North Americans

By Michele Simmons Lewis, Student So why would a native German take the German Records courses offered at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies? Most of the research I have done in the past 23 years has been in American records not German. I mistakenly thought that German family history research was pretty much impossible for those living in the United States. Although I was born in Germany, I came to the US when I was only six years old so I don’t have a good working knowledge of German geography or history. I do not know the laws that govern civil vital records, the traditions that govern the church records nor do I have knowledge about what records are actually available. These are the things I need to know, and the things I am counting on The National Institute for Genealogical Studies to teach me. Introduction to German Research for North Americans is my first course. In the first module, we learn the four essential things you need to know about an immigrant before you can do more in-depth research. I had the funniest problem with this week’s assignment! I needed to make a table of my German immigrant ancestors to include these four essential pieces of information. As far as I know I don’t have any German immigrant ancestors because my mother and I are the first immigrants. My family, both past and present, are in Germany so I contacted a genealogist friend of mine and borrowed a couple of her immigrant ancestors for the assignment. Module 1 goes on to explain the seven key elements to German research. One thing that I was happy to read in the text was, “…German research is often easier than British, Canadian, or U.S. research.” I was immediately mad at myself for not taking the time to learn about German research before now. At this point I was only in the first week of my first course and I had already learned more than the sum total of my previous knowledge. A concise history of Germany and the history of German immigration is found in Module 2. The assignment for this module was to do some in-depth research on two of the events listed on the timeline provided in the materials. This assignment had a direct bearing on my own research. I have a Prussian document dated 10 Jan 1922 that…