Irish Research and Famine Video

I recently taught a class for my local genealogical society on Irish Research Techniques. As those of you who have Irish ancestors know how difficult it is to find their records and/or hometowns, we are always anxious to learn new tips or tricks.  I showed some websites that have indexes from Ireland’s County Heritage Centers where you can check birth, marriage and death records. We also checked others that have free access to the Griffith’s Valuation, the tax survey taken between 1847 -1864, which is helpful since most Irish censuses taken during this time period has been destroyed.

There were a couple sites that had some emigration databases you can search for when your ancestor would have left.  One of them is on the website, www.dunbrody.com which is the page for the 1845 Emigrant Ship exhibit in New Ross, Ireland.  On our research trip last year we visited this exhibit and were able to see what the conditions were like on this small ship, sometimes when you stand in a spot that holds such history you can feel your ancestor’s story, maybe comprehend a little of what they must have went through.  I recently watched a video that really brought home what our Irish ancestors went through during those Famine years and I recommend it highly to you.

The story is in the Spring of 1849, a coffin ship called Hannah, carrying 180 Irish emigrants fleeing Ireland’s potato famine; hit an ice reef in the strait near Cape Ray, off the coast of Newfoundland. The captain, a 23 year-old Englishman, took flight in the only lifeboat, leaving his passengers to either drown or freeze to death. Seventeen hours later, the survivors were rescued by another famine ship, the Nicaragua.   The video is a Canadian production of descendants of these survivors who travel the route their ancestors did and “feel” their story by being there.  I’ve read many books and watched other things about the Great Famine but for some reason this really hit me as to what the horrors actually were and made me all the more determined to learn more about my Irish ancestors life during this time and what happened to the ones left behind.  Sometimes we have tunnel vision on our research and are only interested in that next document find, but it is good to stop and realize these names and dates were people and they laughed and cried and suffered like all humans and they want us to know their story.  

Famine and Shipwreck, An Irish Odyssey

Good hunting and I hope you “feel” this video like I did.  If you would like to learn more about the Irish famine join us on our Irish Research trip in 2014. 

Family Tree Tours Irish Heritage Tour

Familienbuch, Burgerbuch and Ortssippenbuch.

Familienbuch, Burgerbuch and Ortsippenbuch's.

On our Rhineland trip this year (2013) we visited and toured the Evangelische Archivestelle Boppard (the Evangelish Church Archives in Boppard) This depository has microfilms and many books for the Protestant church records in the Rhineland, we were shown their collection of Familienbuchs and were taken down into the stacks where we were shown some of the original church books. A couple of our tour members were able to find some entries for their families, which was exciting.  We were joined by a very interesting local historian from Boppard, Dr. F (we will keep his name private) who has written many Familienbuch's over the last 30 years or so. I asked him if he would take a little time and tell us what all is involved in putting together these books and we had a wonderful impromptu lecture on the subject which was fascinating.

Here is some of what I learned from this:

My prized possession

There are 3 different names these books can be called, a Familienbuch (family book), a Burger book (citizen book) or Ortssippenbuch (inhabitants of a place book).  Of course the first and foremost important things for these books are records from the churches. Without church books you can do nothing.

The two major religions of Germany, Catholic and Lutheran’s records mostly began in the 16th century, about 1570 but these records are sketchy and not too many have survived the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) so books usually start in mid-1600's. Sometimes you may find a couple of Familienbuch's for the same town, this could be because one book was written for the Catholic Church families and the other for the Lutheran church. (If the town has more than one denomination in town.)  We were shown 3 books for the same town, which was the Catholic, Evangelish and the Evangelisch Reformed church records. Also you may find that the books contain records for surrounding villages if this was the parish that a village was part of. (I suggest you use the books by Kevan Hansen'a "Map Guides to German Parish Registers" available in the States. These books help tell you what parish your village belonged to. They also will tell you what microfilm to order from the LDS library in Salt Lake to find your people's church records).

Dr. F has worked on Familienbuchs for the past 30 years. He usually starts by recording the marriages. He then works on Baptisms, matching all children to the correct parents. Of course sometimes the marriage or a baptism of current inhabitants took place in another village, the birthplace town is sometimes mentioned and sometimes not. Death records are a lot harder as sometimes a person’s name may not be mentioned, such as: Wilhelm Mueller’s infant son died today, age about two. The wife of Johann Schmidt died today at age 50. And then there is the problem of recorded ages. He told us that for some reason he has found that people’s ages recorded at death are a lot of times much older than what they really were! If you follow the name of the person who died and you see he was born in 1750 and died in 1815 he should be 65 but they may say he was 80. We asked why that happened and he doesn’t really know but it can be very hard to make sure you have the correct person.

Then there is the matter of Civil Records. This area of the Rhine (left side of the Rhine) Napoleon started Civil Registration in 1798. These records are usually good, written in French and sometimes using a different calendar) but a lot of church records stopped at this time, so there could be a gap in church records of 10 years or so when Civil registration was in vogue. Dr. F. uses these records of course too.

Dr. F also told us that he starts his books not with the oldest books but the ones from the mid-18^th century because of surnames. The early records may not have surnames listed or names are spelled differently. (This led to a very interesting discussion of how surnames came about – too much for me to record here). He also told us that he also uses other sources too, records from the State or City Archives, so that he can tell more than just names and dates of each person, he likes to include occupations, where they lived, taxes they paid and more details of anything he can find. Wouldn’t you like to get one of his books for your family? In regards to taxes, we also sidetracked into why they liked being listed as the top 5 or 10 highest tax payers (this involved politics, voting and more interesting facts).

So, there is a lot of work put into these books and of course they are only as good as the author, which he also reminded us that if you have found a book for your town or see that there is a microfilm made for the book be sure to check the first couple pages to see what sources the author used to write the book. Perhaps it is only the Catholic Church records and you think it is the whole town. Dr. F. said he has heard that sometimes the first couple pages were not filmed by the LDS so on the microfilm it may not tell you what records were used. Just make note of that.

These books are not required to be written by anyone and they are only taken on as a project if there is a willing local historian, author or genealogy society that will work on it. There are a few places to check to see if your town has a book, a couple places that I know are:

Online heritage books

www.online-ofb.de

 

Printed books

 

http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/kategorie:Ortsfamilienbuch

Germany Town Genealogies and Parish Register Inventories on the Internet

 

https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Germany_Town_Genealogies_and_Parish_Register_Inventories_on_the_Internet

Also try contacting the St. Louis County Library Headquarters as they have a wonderful collection of German Ortssippenbuchs.

 

Church Books, Hometowns and Old Towns

Wednesday is a work day. I did not have a full tour for this May trip (it really is fun, you should have come), but I was meeting some people who came on their own. We had set up meetings in their hometowns for them or I was doing some research for them. First stop was meeting a cousin of another member of my German research group from home. We met Herr Horst early in Herford and proceeded to go over family lines and compare notes. Nice man, English good and he is looking forward to helping with information for his American cousins. Next stop was meeting some folks in Hoyel and working on church books. In some towns the church books are still kept in the parish office instead of having sent them to a regional Archive. My friend made some calls and we were able to view (and touch) church books back to 1700’s or earlier. I am amazed at what kind of paper they used, as it is not crumbly or falling apart after hundreds of years. In some years the writing is very beautiful and you can pick out the name you are looking for easily. It seems like the further back in years you get the more they tried to conserve the paper and they have crowded many entries onto the page. Anyway, it is extremely helpful to have someone who can read old German script with you. We were very successful and found my client’s ancestral name and went back quite a few generations. They were thrilled, plus we then walked over to the church and took pictures. This church dates back to the 1100 or 1200’s. Amazing. We left them to converse with some town folks who will give them a ride back to the train station and we headed to another appointment for client research in Neuenkirchen. We met with a local historian who has access to the church books, which are again kept in the church office. This turned out to be really fun too as we found the names we were looking for and since in this cabinet were kept baptism, marriage, death and even some family register books, dating back to the 1700’s we were able to get quite a lot of information. I think they will be very pleased. It seems like folks stayed in some of these villages for several generations but when you go back you find in a marriage record that one of them came from the neighbouring village, so then this means you must get to that village or find where the records for this town are kept. Sometimes in Archives as I mentioned before. So we did the best we could and then took some photos of the town for them. We did take photos of the church but this church was fairly new, 1800’s, as the old one burned, so it was not the one the ancestors would have attended but at least it is still on the same spot. Really long day, but very successful.

This is the "cabinet" with church books dating back to the 1700's!

Herr Voss transcribing an entry from a church book.

File drawers also filled with family cards in Neuenkirchen, Germany.

Next day, I did more sightseeing, research for a Northwest trip. We visited a very old town, in the heart of Lippe county, between the hills of the Teutoburg Forest and the River Weser, you will find Lemgo, one of Germany’s most architecturally pretty towns. The Renaissance town, which is over 800 years old, was founded in 1190 by Bernard 2nd of Lippe. We took a pleasant stroll through the streets with many artfully decorated half-timbered houses, shops and of course outside café’s. One of the things I am interested in discovering in Lemgo is a visit to their “Hexenbürgermeisterhaus”, a historical museum which has a exhibition on the period of the Lemgo witch hunts. There are over 200 “witch trial” files in the Town Archive but hopefully we can get a walking tour of the witch hunts and local history.

Right outside of Lemgo is the Schloss Brake, (Castle Brake), it houses a nice museum and old water mill. I didn't get into the castle for a tour, but that will be a must do on the next tour.