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Kevan
Hansen's Map Guide
to
German Parish Registers
Genealogy Gems:
News from the Fort Wayne Library
No. 17, July 31, 2005
found by PML search
dated 1 August 2005
to the [email protected]
Kevan Hansen's Map Guide
to German Parish Registers
by John D. Beatty
One of the vexing
challenges for every genealogist doing research in Germany is dealing with
geography. One may have the name of a village or town from a family Bible,
passport, or other record, and may even be well-practiced using the Meyers Orts
und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutchen Reichs to identify whether a town has a
church. The town can then be searched in the Family History Library catalog for
the availability of church and civil records.
link to: Meyers Orts
und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutchen Reichs, http://www.pgsa.org/researchguide.htm
Invariably, however, a good genealogist will want to know more. What are the
other parishes located near the primary ancestral parish? What are their
boundaries? What villages were located within them? Did my ancestor have family
connections in those parishes?
These are important questions, and when using microfilmed parish records, a
thorough researcher will want to have a good handle on the geography of an
ancestral area in order to look for clues in the records of other nearby
churches. It is not at all uncommon to find German families spread out over more
than one parish, particularly if they were agricultural laborers. Couples often
found their future spouses in neighboring towns. A useful new research tool to
address these questions is Kevan
Hansen's Map Guide to German Parish Registers series, published by Heritage
Creations of North Salt Lake, Utah. Each of these volumes are devoted to
particular German states and offer outline maps of parishes located within a
particular Kreis or county. Thus, they are useful for determining the proximity
of towns to other parishes in the area. In addition to offering clues about
other possible records, they can "empower the researcher when confronted
with the necessity of a radius search."
Regrettably, they are not useful for identifying tiny villages located within
the boundaries of a particular parish, because the maps are simply not
sufficiently detailed. A more careful search of Meyers and the Karte des
Deutches Reiches map series (available on film from the Family History Library)
may still be worthwhile.
At this writing, 10 volumes of the Map Guide are now in print, covering the
Grand Duchies of Hessen, Baden, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Oldenburg and Schleswig-Holstein,
the province of Hessen-Nassau and the Kingdom of Wuerttemberg. Additional
volumes are planned for the rest of the German Empire, with the Rhineland
expected soon.
Few German families lived in the isolation of a single village. Knowing what
towns were located nearby will almost certainly help a researcher locate
additional family connections in nearby churches
Another
Good site:
http://members.cox.net/hessen/hesse.htm#Catholic
Another
Good site:
For research in Hessen Evangelical Church records, most records are
microfilmed and kept there. note by John..
according to a booklet issued by Landeskirchliches Archiv Kassel,
Lessingstr. 15A, 34119 Kassel, Germany.
Tel.: 0561/78876-0 Fax: 0561/78876-11
Webpage http://www.ekkw.de/archiv
e-mail [email protected]
they have microfilms:
Hattendorf Kirchenkreis Ziegenhain v.1720-1890
Hattendorf Kirchenkreis Ziegenhain see also
Immichenhain Kirchenkreis Ziegenhain 1648-1877.
My last correspondence with them was in 2001, at which time they told me that the films can not be
borrowed, but they
did recommend a genealogist (you know him from the Hesse-List at rootsweb.com)
Gustav G. Eichbaum e-mail
[email protected]
The non-Catholic church
records for Kirchhosbach are in Eschwege which was the Regimental seat for the
Regiment Erbprinz during the time of the American Revolution. The address
is:
Kirchliches Rentamt Eschwege/Witzenhausen
An den Anlagen 14a
37254 Eschwege
Germany
(P.O. Box 1430, 37254 Eschwege)
e-mail: [email protected]
donated by: Bob Brooks
Some
American Churches
There are earlier
HESS baptisms posted at this link for Goshenhoppen, which is in Washington Twp,
PA:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~reinsel/okeefe/goshb.html
Also a HESS marriage there at this link:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~reinsel/okeefe/goshm.html
Goshenhoppen, aka ST. PAUL'S MISSION, CHURCH OF THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT- It
is Catholic.
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