(This file as listed below is located on the Marriage CD of Glogowatz Church records from 1836-1897)

 

Fellow Glogowatz Researchers,

 

This 3-CD collection set of Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths consists of key historical data on our ancestors who were born, married and in many cases died in the Village of Glogowatz. 

 

The information found in this CD Set is very precious and will reveal the social and family ties that bind us together as relatives and friends in our common quest for the knowledge of our history.

 

I am very proud to be part of this effort and I know that many of you who responded with contributions must also be proud to be part of the preservation of this data.

 

The real beauty of having this data on CD is that you have direct access to the images.  For anyone who has ever rolled through a microfilm reel, this is heaven.  The individual digital image also makes it easy to create separate groups of data that is mixed on a film and present it as one collection.  Even though there are death records on 3 rolls of film.  They are all collected together and are on one CD.  I have created an index for each CD with the starting year and month followed by the roll and image numbers, but don’t feel you have to keep them on the CDs.  If you want faster access then you need to copy the images to your hard disk in the following manner. 

 

·        First you need to make sure you have about 2 gigabytes of free space on your hard disk, that 2,000 megabytes and if you have a fairly new computer you probably have a large hard drive. 

·        Second create a folder to hold the indexes (BaptismIndex.htm, MarriageIndex.htm and DeathIndex.htm). Inside this folder with the three index files create a new sub-folder called ‘Images’. 

·        From each CD copy the contents from the ‘Image’ folder on the CD to the folder called ‘Images’ on your hard drive.  It’s important that all of the images are in the correct place or the indexes will not work.  For Example:  on my C: drive I create a folder called ‘Glogowatz’ so under ‘C:\Glogowatz’ I will have a copy the 3 indexes, and a subfolder called ‘Images’ or ‘C:\Glogowatz\Images’. 

·        Make sure you copy all the files ending in ‘tif’ into the ‘Images’ folder (directory).  Double click on the name of one of your indexes to start it up.  Click on a link or two to see that you have access to the images. 

·        If you copy all the images you will have a folder with at least 1,849 images in it.  You will definitely notice the speed difference, and then you can put the CD’s away for safe keeping.

 

If you look at the naming convention I used for the images (yes I renamed every single one of them to conform to the standard) you will see the files names look like this: ‘P2R1Image0001.tif’. The ‘P2’ stands for Part two as this microfilm set is the second one from Glogowatz.  The first set begins in 1770 and runs through 1835.  Anyone who has the first set of microfilm please contact me on how we can get that one converted as well. When we do the first set we will give it names that start with ‘P1’.  

The ‘R1’ or ‘R2’, etc represent the roll the image was found on and this if followed by the word ‘Image’ and a 4-digit sequence number with leading zeros so they line up correctly when listed. 

 

I spend a few days extracting and preparing the year and month HTML indexes to make it more useful and easy to use.  If you know the images that interest you it is possible for you to create your own indexes to images if you know how to create HTML documents.  Whenever you are viewing an image in a web browser, you can look at the address bar to see the file name and make a note of it.  Don’t trust the counter on the image because you need to know the roll number it comes from.  There are 4 images in most cases with the same number on the image counter.

 

I want to caution those who may be new to researching old records.  It is not an easy task, and many times you really cannot believe what you see. Look at the alphabet letter guide and you will see a common font used in some older German publications.  Notice the letters ‘I’ and ‘J”, they look identical!  The ‘P’ looks like a ‘B’, the ‘A’ looks like a ‘U’ and the lower case ‘x’ looks like an ‘r’. 

 

When a lower case ‘s’ appears in written text it is completely different depending on the other letters it appears with, so sometimes it looks like a ‘f’ and sometimes, is looks like ‘s’.  When you go from print to cursive writing, the problems get even worse. 

 

As you begin to view these documents you will notice changes in the handwriting, misspellings, and abbreviations that don't make sense.  You will also see the same names written differently using Hungarian, German, and Latin spellings depending on when and who penned them. 

 

Be patient, look at other names that you can recognize and see how letters or letter combinations are formed.  This will provide you with clues as to how a particular individual recorded the information.

 

I plan to post a special web page on the Glogowatz website later this month to provide statistical analysis of this data.  I will also include any comments or notes that may help further your own research.  I will email everyone when that webpage becomes active.

 

Software Utilities

 

There are some additional software items on this CD under the Utilities folder.

 

·        Belarc Advisor is a free software program that provides a summary report of everything on your PC.  You can visit their website at www.Belarc.com  for more details.  I included this for those people who needed a way to find out more information about their computer in case these CDs were not working right.

 

·        WinZip 8.1 is the latest version of the popular ZIP utility.  Most people should already have this on their PC systems.  If you have a MAC you need a different version.

 

·        The TIFF Viewers are included for those who have not installed a viewer and need a free one for viewing the images on these CDs.  Open the TIFF Viewers folder and you will find there are versions for Netscape and Internet Explorer.  Click here to read more on the Alternatiff Viewer, which is a plug-in for your web browser.

 

…And one more thing, for those who are wondering what my little surprise is well…I have included the 1935 issue of the Deutsch-UngarischerFamilien Kalender on this CD.  The Marriage images did not take up that much room and I wanted to fill the CD with other useful research material. 

 

So now you can see the photos, read the stories, enjoy the humor and marvel at the advertisements, but what is more remarkable are the subscriber lists.   David Dreyer has extracted many of these names and some of you may have seen his Kalender lists on the WorldWideWeb. 

 

Now see the complete entries.

 

The names of both spouses, including maiden names, village or country of origin, street address, city and state are all here listed alphabetically by location in the United States just waiting to be re-discovered.   Of the 192 pages in this issue there are 76 pages of information on subscribers and where they lived.  This is really a great resource for getting specific address information.

 

Photos…

 

On pages 43 and 51 you will find some photos of Glogowatz, page 69 shows a photo of over 100 parishioners from St Fidelis in College Point, NY., on page 81 there is a wedding photo from Glogowatz,

 

Names…

 

See page 120 for over 90 names from College Point, NY many from Glogowatz.

On page 126 you can find 6 Dumelle’s, on page 128 there are 8 Grubers, page 139 there is a Vormittag, page 140 a Wischler, and if you’re interested in embroidery patterns (Stickmuster) see the Ad from my grandmother, Eva Marx, on page 192.

 

Family Ties…

 

I recently discovered my family’s connection to this publication on a visit to my Aunt Kate (born Marx) in Chicago.  I asked her if she had ever heard of Deutsch-Ungarischer Familien Kalenders and as I was describing how Dave Dreyer had extracted the names from these lists and posted them on the web, she pulled out 5 of the original publications!  She began to enlighten me on our family history.  The Deutsch-Ungarischer Familien Kalender was started in 1932 by her father Josef Marx from Klein Betschkerek.  The 1935 issue that I have included on this CD is only one of his creations.  Josef Marx also started the Heimatbote, (Hometown Herald) in the early 1920’s in Chicago.  This weekly German paper was the largest of its kind in circulation at the time and focused on the Landsmann or fellow countryman from the Banat and the ‘Old Country’. 

 

Josef Marx married my grandmother Eva Schmidt (born Klein of Glogowatz-Blumental).  My grandparents, Adam and Eva (yes I go back that far) were divorced, but Adam still lived with Eva’s mother until his death in 1924. 

Sadly on the 3rd of July 1939, Joseph and Eva along with my aunt Eva Schmidt were killed in a car accident near Mayhill, New Mexico.  My father, John Schmidt was thrown from the vehicle as it went over a cliff, he was the only survivor.

 

My Aunt Kate has allowed me to borrow the five original publications she had.  I selected the 1935 issue to be on this CD because it includes a photo of her wedding on page 73.  Katharina Susanna Marx is in the center and her husband Nickolaus Muschal is third from the right.  My father John F. Schmidt is in the upper right corner of the photo.

 

I feel honored to help bring the spotlight back to their hard work and efforts to list all of those fellow countrymen and women who subscribed to these publications.

 

 

Dedication

 

With a new spirit of discovery I am dedicating this and future efforts to locating and preserving all of the works of Josef and Eva Marx so their publications will be available to future researchers, historians, and genealogists.

 

 

Thanks…

 

My thanks to those who have been patiently waiting and have made this endeavor a success, especially David Dreyer and Erwin Kilzheimer and…

 

I would like to thank my true love Anastacia (yes, she is my wife) who has been by my side throughout--pulling me away for another remodeling project.  We will celebrate out 30th wedding anniversary April 15, 2002.  I love her more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow!

 

To our eldest daughter Anna Lisa (Susie-Q) who will soon be married in June 2002 to Jason Moneymaker (It’s a good name to live up to.)

 

To our 2nd daughter Andrea (Twinkie) who is now in the US Air Force, and besides helping to win a war she has found time to turn us into grandparents (In military fashion her baby girl is due at the end of a long March 2002) 

 

To our 3rd daughter, Angela (Pumpkin), who is attending college and working to become an independent woman.

 

To our youngest daughter Donna (Cupcake), who’s effort to quality control check every single link and image on this CD Set has been filled with joy and hope and love.  (Yeah right!)   Well at least now she knows how to point and click with the mouse!

 

And finally to our little dog Gizmo who tested the packaging material and licked all the stamps for mailing.

 

Enjoy…

 

 

[email protected]

 

Knoxville, Tennessee

February 2002