German Records – Page 2 – International Institute of Genealogical Studies

Reading German Records

By Michele Simmons Lewis, Student German: Reading the Records is my favorite German course from The National Institute for Genealogical Studies so far. The first half of this course concentrates on teaching you how to write in the old German script. Actually forming the letters over and over again gets those letter shapes in your brain and you have a much easier time recognizing them when you are reading documents. The second half of the course is all about reading real records. There is a required book for this course, Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents by Roger P. Minert. This is an excellent book and has countless examples of documents along with transliterations and translations. Each document is fully analyzed pointing out certain things you need to be watching for such as common abbreviations and common phrases. This is one of those books you will want to read from cover to cover. There is a little surprise in the class. German documents aren’t always written in German. You also have to learn how to read Latin and French. I happen to love languages so I was pretty happy to see these assignments. Now I have even more flexibility and these skills will help me in other areas, not just with German records. This isn’t an easy course. The assignments include documents that look like they were written by a second-grader. (Did you think that only happened with English records?) There are faded documents and some have the words cut off at the margin. These are the types of documents you will most certainly see when you are doing real research. The more practice you get with these less-than-perfect documents the less hair you will pull out of your head later on. Here are two hints. You can buy the same font used in Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents (it is listed as a resource) from http://www.delbanco-frakturschriften.de/artikelliste/kategorie/deutsche-schreibschrift.html. The name of the font is DS-Kurrent. It costs 20 €. You can use this font to see what words are supposed to look like. You can also download a free font called Sütterlin that was designed by Professor Don Becker at the University of Wisconsin’s German Department. You will find it here http://csumc.wisc.edu/mki/Resources/Suetterlin/sutterl.html. The Sütterlin font is a little more contemporary and it wasn’t used for as long of a period of time but it is very similar. The letters are more rounded.…

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…

Blogging about German Courses: Meet Michele Simmons Lewis

We are happy to announce that Michele Simmons Lewis is joining The National Institute as a blogger. She’ll be blogging her thoughts as she proceeds through the German Records Certificate program. Before you read her posts, we thought we’d sit down and ask her a few questions. The National Institute: How long have you been doing genealogy? What got you started? Michele: I have been doing research for 23 years. My dad accidentally let a family skeleton slip and I was determined to either prove or disprove what he said. I ended up disproving it and I haven’t stopped researching since. What amazes me is how much things have changed in those 23 years. When I first started everything was done on paper and the only way you found information was by doing onsite research. The National Institute: Do you have a favorite research project ? Michele: One of the biggest projects I am working on is determining the parents of James Simmons of South Carolina. He migrated with his family to the Mississippi Territory in about 1798. Right now I am plotting out all of the original land owners in Perry County, Mississippi. I am tackling it one township at a time using the records at the Bureau of Land Management. James had three parcels of land and I want to analyze all of his neighbors to see if I can find any sort of familial links. Perry County is a burned county as was its parent county, Greene County. It goes downhill from there because Greene County’s parent county, Wayne County, is also a burned county. There are very few records to go on. Getting James back to the correct county in South Carolina is a challenge. There are several James Simmons’ in South Carolina in the 1790 census. I am hoping that the people I uncover in the land records also migrated from South Carolina (people tended to travel in groups). If I can associate James’ neighbors to a particular county in South Carolina I might discover which of the James’ in the 1790 census is the correct one. The National Institute: Why did you decide to take courses from The National Institute for Genealogical Studies? Michele: I was born in Germany as was my mother so we are the first immigrants in her line. All of my relatives, both living and dead, are in Germany. Most of the research I have done has been on my father’s side because it…