Map Guides to German Parish Registers

Map Guides to German Parish Registers by Kevan M. Hansen makes locating records in Germany easier.

Before researching in Europe, you need to know where records are kept. For Germany, religious institutions recorded births, marriages, and deaths and kept this information in parish register books or local church archives. You need to identify your ancestor's parish before you can search for these vital records. 

Hansen's guide provides maps showing Catholic and Lutheran parish jurisdictions for towns in a specific region. Find your ancestor's town of origin on the map to discover their local parish.

FamilySearch has microfilmed most German parish registers and Hansen helpfully gives the FamilySearch microfilm number for each parish. Search for that number in FamilySearch's catalog to locate digital or physical copies of the microfilm.

Map Guides to German Parish Registers includes parish maps for Catholic and Lutheran Churches but also provides information on locating Reformed Church and Jewish records for the region--and includes the FamilySearch microfilm number for these records too.

The Genealogy & Local History Room has guides to parishes in the following locations:

Grandduchy of Hessen
Grandduchy of Baden
Mecklenberg, Granduchies of Schwerin and Strelitz
Province of Schleswig-Holstein - Kingdom of Prussia and Grandduchy of Oldenburg
Kingdom of Bavaria - Schwaben

Ortsfamilienbuch

In Germany, an Ortsfamilienbuch (town family book) contains birth, marriage, and death information
about every person living in a specific area in a specific town. This information is helpfully arranged by family!

Finding your family's local Ortsfamilienbuch will provide you with valuable information. Family data is generally pulled from parish registers, civil registrations, court and land records.

To find an Ortsfamilienbuch, you need to know your ancestors' town of origin. Once you know where the family lived, search for the town on GenWiki (a German genealogy site) to find a bibliography of Ortsfamilienbuch for that town or region. The FamilySearch Wiki can also help you locate the books.

Meyers Orts: Gazetteer of the German Empire

The gazetteer Meyers Geographical and Commercial Gazetteer of the German Empire (Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs) is the best place to locate place names when doing German research.

Compiled in 1912, this gazetteer includes all areas that belonged to the German Empire prior to World War I. You can find more than 210,000 place names in Meyers Orts.

Meyers Orts describes each town and the civil and religious jurisdictions it belongs to. This information should help you decide where to locate records for your ancestors. Each entry the gazetteer may include the following:

• Name of place 
• Place type 
• Name of state
• Government district 
• Population 
• Post Office and other Communications information 
• Railroad information 
• Courts 
• Consulate 
• Embassy 
• Churches 
• Schools 
• Institutes 
• Military 
• Financial 
• Business Institutions 
• Trades and Industries 
• Shipping Traffic 
• Local government services 
• Dependent Places

The Glenview Library has a physical copy of Meyers Orts in the Genealogy & Local History Room. You can also search the gazetteer online.

German Immigrants from Bremen

About forty percent of 19th century immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe left through the city of Bremen. German ports typically kept records of emigrants leaving for America and elsewhere; unfortunately, the emigration lists from Bremen were destroyed during World War II. German Immigrants: Lists of Passengers Bound from Bremen to New York compiled by Gary J. Zimmerman attempts to reconstruct these lists.

Based on passenger lists of arrivals at New York, German Immigrants includes information on about 35,000 immigrants spanning the dates between 1847 and 1871. This is still only about twenty-five percent of the total number of emigrants from Bremen arriving during this period.

This series spans four volumes and includes details such as age, place of origin, date of arrival, and the name of the ship, as well as citations to the original source material.

German Immigrants is a good starting point for finding your German immigrant ancestors.

German Emmigration

A great resource for finding information on German emigrants is the Deutsche Auswanderer-Datenbank (German Emigrants Database) at the Historisches Museum Bremerhaven. This project collects information on emigration to the United States. The main focus of the database is on European emigrants who left from German ports.

The German Emigrants Database collects passenger manifests principally between 1820-1897 and 1904-1907. The site also studies European emigration to the US and collects information about German emigrant ships.

You can search online for the names of emigrants in their collections or the Friends of the Museum Association will also perform searches for you for a fee.

European Genealogy Websites

The following links were taken from GenealogyInTime. GenealogyInTime also posts links to genealogy record collections from all over the world that have been recently digitized.

Here are few free European websites that GenealogyInTime included in its 100 Best Websites of 2014 list.

Denmark
Dansk Demografisk Database: Includes Danish census records from 1787-1930, emigration records, probate, church records, and more.

France
GeneaNet: The largest French genealogy database that includes links to online municipal archives and information to help you get started with French research.

Germany
Ahnenforschung: Contains databases, digital archives, dictionaries, and forums related to German genealogy.

Ireland
Irish Genealogy: Online resources, church records, and Irish research tips hosted by the Irish Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht.

The Netherlands
Wie Was Wie: This database includes vital records, population registers, Dutch family trees, and more.

Norway
Arkivverket Digitalarkivet: Digital archive that includes census records, parish registers, property and legal records and much more.
DIS-Norway, Slekt og Data: Norway's largest genealogy organization whose site contains forums, helpful links, and digital projects.

United Kingdom
GENUKI: Online gazetteer, parish maps, and many useful links for UK research.
RootsChat: The UK's largest family history forum.
FreeBMD: Search transcriptions of the Civil Registration Index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales.

Several of these sites are in the language of the host county. Google Translate can translate whole webpages into English for you if you need help.

German Immigration

The DANK Haus German American Cultural Center and Museum currently has an exhibit entitled Hamburg Emigration Port: A Visual Story of German Emigration..
Between 1850 and 1939, more than five million European emigrants left their homelands via the Port of Hamburg.  They came from Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Germany.   This exhibit reflects the complicated patterns of immigration in the nineteenth century.

The DANK Haus is located at 4740 N. Western Ave., Chicago, IL. 60625.   It is open on Saturdays between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.  Admission is free.  For more information call (773) 561-9181.

German-English Genealogical Dictionary

German-English Genealogical Dictionary / by Ernest Thode. --
Genealogical Pub. Co., 1993, c1992.

R929.103 THO GENEALOGY

Ernest Thode's Dictionary is designed for the family researcher who has little or no knowledge of German but who nevertheless needs to make a translation of German-language documents. The Dictionary covers thousands of German terms and defines them in single words or brief phrases. Among the many categories of entries included in the Dictionary are family relationships, days of the week, map terms, legal terms, cardinal and ordinal numbers, roman numerals, signs of the zodiac, coins, liquid and dry measures, measures of length, place names, historical territories, geographical terms, occupations, titles, military ranks, types of taxes, illnesses, calendar days, male and female given names, heraldry, abbreviations, books of the Bible, and common genealogical words from Danish, Dutch, French, Latin, and Polish. In conjunction with a standard German-English dictionary, the user of this work should be able to make a word-by-word translation of any German document and understand it.

(Thanks to Genealogical Pub. Co. for this description)

In Search of Your German Roots

Here is a wonderful resource to help with German family research, owned by the Library and published by Genealogical Pub. Co.

In Search of Your German Roots. Fourth Edition, 4th ed. Updated [2008] by Angus Baxter.
929.1072 BAX

This guide is designed to help you trace your German ancestry not only in Germany but in all the German-speaking areas of Europe. First, it discusses the LDS Church's International Genealogical Index (IGI), which contains hundreds of thousands of entries from German parish registers. Then the narrative takes the reader back to the old country, where sources and archives are discussed in detail, especially Evangelical and Catholic Church records and records of state and city archives. Finally, Mr. Baxter presents a list of family archives, a list of genealogical associations in Germany, a list of German genealogical associations in the U.S., and a bibliography. The 2008 update to the fourth edition includes many websites for these records.

(Thanks to Genealogical Pub. Co. for the use of this description.)

German Research Tools

The Library owns the following two books, which are indispensable to German genealogical research, and were recently reviewed by The Genealogical Publishing Co. in its newsletter, Genealogy Pointers:

Ancestors in German Archives R929.343 ANC GENEALOGY

Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs R914.3003 MEY GENEALOGY v. 1-3

The key to German genealogical research is to locate birth, marriage, death, and immigration records. The Brigham Young University German Immigrant Ancestors Project identified records in more than 2,000 German archives for emigrants, and created Internet-accessible databases describing their birthplaces, occupations, spouses, and children. Ancestors in German Archives is the result of this project.

It describes each archive in terms of its jurisdictions, records, and services. Vital records, religious records, military records, emigration records, passport records, censuses, and town and county records are included, along with guides or inventories to the collections.

To determine which archives today have jurisdiction over the records that were created by church or state institutions, use the Locality Inde to identify every town with an archive, no matter what kind.

Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs was published at the peak of German immigration to the United States. Serious German research begins with this massive gazetteer, which describes approximately 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets, and dwelling places in the German Empire prior to World War I. The facts presented about these localities enable researchers to determine the whereabouts of civil, religious, court, and military records.

German Roots

The German Roots web site contains internet resources and research information for Americans of German descent researching their family history.

American Historical Society of Germans From Russia

Are your ancestors Germans who came from Russia?

The American Historical Society of Germans From Russia (AHSGR) is an international organization dedicated to the discovery, collection, preservation, and dissemination of information related to the history, cultural heritage and genealogy of Germanic Settlers in the Russian Empire and their descendants.

AHSGR archives valuable records on the Saving Our Ancestral Records (SOAR) website. SOAR includes obituaries, cemetery records, and more, which ase in the searchable database.

The Northern Illinois Chapter of AHSGR is in Arlington Heights. Check out their Calendar of Events and their Genealogy Program, which makes available some interesting information such as an Ancestor List, Surname Charts, Ship List Index, and Family Charts.

Encyclopedia of German-American Genealogical Research

The Glenview Public Library owns a Reference copy of this wonderful book, call number R929.30942 SMI GENEALOGY

The Encyclopedia of German-American Genealogical Research, published by Clearfield, is still the best book available on German-American genealogy.

The emphasis is on research in America, with special focus on immigration records, German ethnic religious bodies in America, and manuscript and published source materials, both in America and Germany.

One of the most important parts of the book is the section on the "Locations of German-Speaking Congregations in the United States, 1906," based on a federal religious census of the time. This census gives considerable data on a number of the larger German-speaking denominations, enabling the genealogical researcher to establish the county in which German congregations were located.

The encyclopedia provides American researchers with background material on German customs, sociological stratification, governmental organization, and ethnographic considerations having a bearing on immigrant ancestors.

It also contains a section on genealogy in Germany, with emphasis on land records, state vital records, court records, census records, municipal records, and church records. There is a detailed breakdown of the sovereign territories of Germany and a history of the organization of the Holy Roman Empire.

Moreover, there is a section on language and names and one on heraldry, with a final section on German published sources.

German Genealogy Group

Do you have German ancestors, but don't know how to get started researching your family tree?

The German Genealogy Group can help.

They were established in New York in early 1996 by a group of genealogists interested in providing support to all those researching their Germanic ancestors. If your ancestors came through New York, a variety of online databases for church records, naturalization, surnames, and yearbooks may contain information you have been searching for.

There is more information about German Genealogy at Cyndi's List.

German Genealogy

Palatines to America (Pal Am) is a German genealogy society dedicated to the study of ancestors from all German speaking lands. Pal Am will offer the 2009 National Conference, “Research With the Experts” at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, June 18-20, 2009.

The featured speaker is world renowned Annette Burgert with four presentations on the basics for research of colonial German and Swiss ancestry, immigration, and European villages of origin.

Pal Am has an Illinois Chapter, which publishes six newsletters per year. The chapter also offers research assistance and an ancestor registry. The Pal Am website also features a query index.

Contact Pal Am by E-mail at palamillinois@palam.org ...or in writing at: Palatines to America - Illinois Chapter, P O Box 9638, Peoria, IL 61612-9638...or by telephone at (309) 691-0292.

Become a Pal Am member! There will be many benefits to your German genealogical research.

Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs

New genealogy book at the Glenview Public Library:

Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reichs / with researcher's guide and translations of the introduction, instruction for the use of the gazeteer, and abbreviations by Raymond S. Wright III.

This book is indispensible if you are doing German genealogy.

Originally published in Leipzig, Germany in 1912, this three-volume set describes the geographical and political setting for approximately 210,000 cities, towns, hamlets, and dwelling places in the German Empire prior to World War I. It assists in the identification of public services, governmental agencies, educational and religious institutions, and transportation and business facilities in each community, thus helping genealogists and other researchers to discover the agencies that created records about people who lived in Germany. The introduction is in English, but the body of the text is German, in a Gothic text font. Additional information and charts in the Appendix include statistical surveys of the German Empire, charts of electoral districts, the location of military garrisons, a summary of the constitution of the Empire, and descriptions of postal and rail systems, among others. There are several fold-out maps.