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Donated by Barbara A.
H. Nuehring; non-member
The article was in the
"Genealogy Gems: News from the Fort Wayne Library, No. 19, September 30,
2005", published by the Allen County Public Library's Historical Genealogy
Department. They state that it is intended to enlighten readers about
genealogical research methods as well as inform them about the vast resources of
the Allen County Public Library. They state that they welcome the wide
distribution of the newsletter and encourage readers to forward it to their
friends and societies.
Genealogy Gems email address is [email protected]
Allen County Public Library (ACPL)
200 East Berry Street
Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
General Information: (260) 421-1200
Transforming
a German Place Name into a Research Lead
by Don Litzer
If you have the name of
a German ancestral place of origin, and especially if you believe that you know
the region in Germany from where your ancestors came, several sources may help
in verifying that location and furthering your research.
Spotting a place name on a map is important, but only a first step; you need to
place it in a context with record sources. For German research, this means
identifying the location of the church your ancestors would have attended
(important because civil registration was not universal in Germany until 1876)
and administrative territories responsible for your ancestors' vital and other
civil records.
For years, the standard source for such research was Charles M. Hall's Atlantic
Bridge to Germany (929 H14a), published in ten volumes from 1974 to 1997. Each
volume of this ground-breaking series provides a historical overview, a
gazetteer of place-names linking variously to church and civil jurisdictions and
records locations, and maps.
The Atlantic Bridge to Germany series is now being produced by Linda Herrick and
Wendy Uncapher of Origins. A new level of polish and thoroughness is evident in
their revised editions for Baden (943.46 H434a), Alsace-Lorraine (944.38 H434a),
and Pomerania (on order). The new editions include 1:100,000 scale maps from the
Karte des Deutschen
Reiches collection representing Germany as it existed prior to World War I, and
which include all locations listed in the works' gazetteers. The upgraded
historical overviews, rich with maps and diagrams explaining administrative
history, territorial changes, and other genealogically significant information,
are capped off by useful bibliographies.
If a German village/town/city has its own church, the Atlantic Bridge to Germany
refers you to available LDS-microfilmed records. However, if a village's
residents belonged to another community's church, Atlantic Bridgeto Germany
won't indicate that church's location; you're still uncertain whether useful
parish records are available.
Kevan Hansen's Map Guide to German Parish Registers, discussed by John Beatty in
July's Genealogical Gems, addresses this need. Each volume of Hansen's series,
following a brief historical overview, has two sets of outline maps (one each
for Lutheran and Catholic churches, Germany's principal confessions, with a
narrative covering other religions). Each map, which shows the approximate
parish boundaries in an Amt (local civil district), is accompanied by a list of
the Amt's parishes
including, if its records are filmed, the LDS number for the parish's first
microfilm, and a list of the Amt's communities cross-referenced to the parishes
by which they're served. At the end of each volume is an alphabetical index to
place names.
Map Guide to German Parish Registers (943 H198m) have been published for Hessen
(Darmstadt), Baden, Mecklenburg (Schwerin and Strelitz), Schleswig-Holstein and
Oldenburg, Wuerttemberg, and Hessen-Nassau.
Options exist for regions not covered by the Hansen series. Brigitte Kreplin's
Die Gemeinde und Wohnplatze Pommerns (943.16 K88g) links places to parishes and
civil jurisdictions in Pomerania. Parishes of Ostfriesland (943.52 P219)
cross-references places to parishes. For Bavaria, Saxony, and Prussia's
provinces, pre-World War I gazetteers,
collectively referred to as town gazetteers or Gemeindelexikonen, indicate the
parish affiliation of small communities. These are
available from LDS on microfilm; see Larry O. Jensen, A Genealogical Handbook
for German Research, Volume I (943 J53ga), pages 61-70, and Fay Dearden's The
German Researcher: How to Get the Most Out of an LDS Family History Center (929
D33ga), page 38. For other regions, an area search, beginning with Meyers Orts-
und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reiches (943 W93m) is recommended.
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