The Joy of Digging Deeper — A “Christmas Present” !!

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I’m always looking for that “new thing” that makes it all worthwhile exploring the wonderful world of German genealogy.  Which, for this mostly monolingual American, can indeed make me feel at times like Indiana Jones!  And today was one of those days.  Come with me as I retrace my steps….

In my email inbox from before dawn this morning was this daily digest of my German mailing list for East Prussia:  OW-Preussen-L Nachrichtensammlung, Band 147, Eintrag 78.  The very first item caught my attention, partly because it contained a link to a webpage somewhere, and these are often interesting.  Furthermore, I did not fully understand the subject line:

Subject: Re: [OWP] Bedeutung von Zahlen und Buchstaben in Prästationstabellen

and that raised my curiosity.  What was that strange word, “Prästationstabellen”?  It does not appear in either Ernest Thode’s German-English Genealogical Dictionary, or my cherished 1936 edition of Cassell’s New German and English Dictionary.  And Google Translate said only that it meant “pre-station tables.”  Which means what, exactly?  I had no idea.  And so I went to the link in the message to see where it would take me.  And I found myself at:

1.  GenWiki Portal:Pillkallen (for Kreis Pillkallen – Schloßberg)
This didn’t appear to be related, on the face of it, and so I went looking for that word.  In the fourth section, pertaining to history & population, there it is — buried part way down the list of links — that strange word, “Prästationstabellen.”  Clicking the second link takes us to a further page:

2.  Hinweise zu den Prästationstabellen und Mühlenconsignationen, Erläuterungen von Prof. Erwin Spehr.
And near the top is this statement, first in German and then in “my” translation (using the above-named sources):

Prästationstabellen (PT) sind Listen, in denen die laufenden Abgaben (Prästationen) der besitzenden ländlichen Bevölkerung an das Domänenamt aufgeführt sind.  Da diese Abgaben nur von Grundbesitzern erhoben wurden, sind in diesen Tabellen lediglich Bauern, Handwerker und Eigenkätner namentlich aufgeführt, nicht jedoch z.B. Landarbeiter.  Auch wurden Bauern und besitzende Bürger der Städte sowie Bewohner und Bauern adliger und geistlicher Territorien nicht erfasst, weil diese dem Domänenamt gegenüber keine Verpflichtungen hatten.

Pre-station tables (PT) are lists in which the current taxes (pre-stations) of the propertied rural population are listed at the (state-owned) estate offices.  Since these were levied only by landowners, only peasants, craftsmen, and cottagers with their own garden are mentioned in these tables.  Farm workers, peasants and wealthy citizens of the cities as well as inhabitants and peasants of noble and spiritual territories were not included because they had no obligations to the estate office.

So there it is — a new type of German document of which I had been unaware.  Placed in the IGS Library vertical files in the folder covering miscellaneous document types, it may perhaps smooth the way for a researcher seeking answers.  Merry Christmas!!

2017 Desk Calendar

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The Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe (SGGEE) has produced a 2017 desk calendar featuring photos of Germans in Poland.
This project was done in collaboration with one of their members in Germany, whose father was an editor and photographer among Germans in Poland and Volhynia early in the 20th century. His surviving photo archive has been donated to the Herder-Institut in Marburg.
SGGEE has these calendars available for sale using PayPal in North America and invites anyone with an interest to visit their website for further details. It makes a quality gift for anyone whose German ancestors lived in Poland in the 1930s. Please note that this webpage also contains information in German about where to purchase copies in Europe.

James Beidler’s article

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We’re fortunate to have friends in high places!!  Free-lance writer and German genealogy lecturer James M. Beidler has just written about the Immigrant Genealogical Society for German Life magazine — DECEMBER/JANUARY 2017 issue — and it’s a nice treatment of who we are and what a treasure we have in our Library.  Go pick up a copy at your chain bookstore’s magazine racks.  This issue is rich with feature articles you’ll also want to see; “Beautiful Erfurt!” is one of them….  Consider sending in a subscription for yourself or a family member!!

Ortssippenbücher collection lists!

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It’s been a struggle to find and upload the lists we had years ago to help researchers identify the town heritage books we have in our collection.  But it’s finally done!

Go to the Resources tab on this homepage, and click on it.  There are just two lists, one which gives all towns in alpha order, and one that first breaks them down by home region before alphabetizing them.  But to see these books further organized according the regional jurisdictions, go to the appropriate Finding Aid for the region.  Here’s how:

If you want to select one of our older newsletters to view, or if you want to check out our Library Finding Aids, then use the pull-down feature of the Resources tab to see these more complex options.  In each Finding Aid, the Ortssippenbücher are arranged within jurisdictions, so that if you know the ones for your town [find them at meyersgaz.org] you can see which other towns “nearby” are included in our collection….

A Book on Immigrants from Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

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I first heard German researcher and author Astrid Adler (Tiefenort, Thuringia, Germany) speak to the Ventura County Genealogical Society in April of this year.  Some six million Germans emigrated in the 19th c., and some were from her region…and not a few were from her town!  Her extensive research into this local emigration and its causes led to an exhibition on the subject — for which she was honored by her state in 2012.  Her talk covering the high points of her German-language book on the topic was informative, entertaining, and definitely well-received.  Now she has published an English-language version for American readers.

Our Ancestors Were German: Emigration in the 19th Century from Grand Duchy Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach is an attractive volume that adequately covers this broad subject of emigration/immigration from a variety of perspectives.  She plans to promote the book beginning with a first presentation in Ventura County on January 14th at 11 am at the Port Hueneme Historical Society Museum, on Market St.  In May, a book tour will formally begin with stops in Southern California and in the Washington, DC area.

Orders for the book may be placed here.  Full information about all of her books (including a forthcoming one) may be found on that page as well.  A list of the towns from which the emigrants originated, as well as the states in which they located, may be found here.

New Maps – Always Welcome!

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The library has received three nice maps from Jean Kuehneman of Napa, CA.  She wrote that she was “clearing out my genealogy files” (How many of us need to do that??), and “found several maps that are too important to toss out….”  Thanks, Jean!!  We appreciate your thinking of us.

There is a map of the eastern Baltic countries, and a Polish map showing the portion of the country that used to be Pommern.  But the third one is in 1:50,000 scale — very detailed — and depicts the coastal area of Germany northeast of Rostock.  This is roughly the small region from Ribnitz-Damgarten to Barth, and a bit beyond.  There were “sticky notes” on it marking two villages of interest, showing that the map had been acquired with an eye to research.

Jean is concerned that she has few relatives who share her love for research, …relatives to whom she could pass along her collection for future preservation.  It’s a question we all face:  What to do with what we’ve carefully assembled over many years?  And so she’s doing the best she can to see that items get to where they might still be used.  We welcome such donations, and we’d welcome readers’ thoughts as to how to preserve family research notes, letters, photos, family lore, etc. etc.

Please reply to the webmaster if you have suggestions to share….

“German-American Genealogy,” 2016

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The 2016 issue of German-American Genealogy is at the printer now!  Four articles are in this issue, as follows:

“East German Colonization in the Middle Ages,” by James Westfall Thompson
“The Banat Swabians:  A Tale of Perpetual Hardship, Survival and Hope,”
by Alexandria Irimia
“Meyer’s Gazeteer Now Online, Indexed and Fully Searchable!”
by Fritz Juengling PhD, AG
“The Germans in Missouri,” by Jana Bickel

For members of IGS during the 2016 year, this issue should reach your mailbox around mid-December.  Other articles are in various stages of preparation for the next issue, possibly one for Spring 2017.

Do you have an interest in writing for it?  Many topics could be considered, but especially welcome would be more articles describing German colonies or emigrant regional groupings, such as suggested by the second and fourth articles listed above.  Please contact the webmaster or editor, if interested.

 

Details coming for the 2017 Int’l. Germanic Genealogy Conf.

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IGS members will be receiving details soon about the German-American Genealogical Partnership’s July 28 – 30 conference in the Minneapolis area,

CONNECTIONS  International.  Cultural.  Personal.

Look for them in your email inbox (if you receive your newsletter electronically), or with your newsletter mailed in early December by USPS delivery.

New (Co-) Editor for “Die Pommerschen Leute”

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The “DPL” is the quarterly of the Pommern/Pomerania Special Interest Group of our Society.  It was once a separate organization, founded by Myron E. Gruenwald (1930-1998) in Wisconsin in 1982, beginning with the publication of his newsletter to promote an appreciation of Pomeranian heritage.  Gradually Mr. Gruenwald also published a series of nine booklets relating to the history and culture of the Pomeranians, both in Germany and in America.  With Myron’s death, publication of the quarterly moved to California.

Now we are welcoming a new (co-)editor, Chris DeWuske of Minnesota.  An elementary school art teacher, he may be expected to present us with new ways of “seeing” our ancestors.  His resources include a firm grounding in the German language, having once attended the Freie Universität in Berlin, plus also a curiosity about his “roots” which parallels that of the editor he will gradually replace, David Marks.

His first issue is Volume 39, Issue 4 (Winter 2016), which will be mailed soon.  On page two, under “Editor’s Notes,” is the following:  “His help will enable us to continue to publish what we hope are interesting and pertinent articles, not only in researching your Pomeranian ancestry, but in understanding the history and culture so that you might better understand how your family lived.”  Readers will find that this issue continues the strong traditions and standards of past years.  Welcome, Chris!!

Want to buy a German-language history book?

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Here are some new offerings just mentioned in a German mailing list:

Josef Sallanz, “Dobrudscha: Deutsche Siedler zwischen Donau und Schwarzem Meer.” [ca. 350 Seiten / 19,80 Euros / ISBN 978-3-936168-73-0]

Ute Schmidt, “Bessarabien: Deutsche Kolonisten am Swarzen Meer.” [420 Seiten / 19,80 Euros / ISBN 978-3-936168-65-5]

“Nach Übersee: Deutschsprachige Auswanderer aus dem östlichen Europa um 1900” [303 Seiten / 9,80 Euros / ISBN 978-3-936168-70-9]

Basil Kerski (Hg.), “Danziger Identitäten: Eine mitteleuropäische Debatte” [288 Seiten / 5 Euros (Preisreduzierte) / ISBN 978-3-936168-58-7]

Mitja Ferenc, Joachim Hösler (Hg.), “Spurensuche in der Gottschee: Deutschsprachige Siedler in Slowenien” [245 Seiten / 5 Euros (Preisreduzierte) / ISBN 978-3-936168-53-2]

Basil Kerski (Hg.), “Stettin – Wiedergeburt einer Stadt Szczecin – Odrodzenie miasta”  [Deutsch-polnische Online-Dokumentation der wichtigsten Stimmen zur Debatte, mit zeitgenössischen und aktuellen Bildern sowie Begriffserklärungen und Verweisen]

It’s hard for us here to find much on Black Sea settlements, etc., and so this is mentioned for that one German-speaking reader who might be looking for interesting material….

My Wife’s 7th Cousin

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Every so often I read something in a genealogical periodical that catches my interest in a personal way.  And so it was over seven years ago, when I was browsing the newly-received journals at the Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, MO.  An article in the Germanic Genealogy Journal produced by the Germanic Genealogy Society (of Minnesota) made reference to a village from which my wife’s 19th c. immigrant Schwingel family had emigrated.  The issue in question was volume 11 number 4 (Winter 2008), and the article was “Chasing Family Myth Through Canada to Germany,” by Dick Kline.

The article was a research case study describing how the author had successfully located a place of origin in the German state of Saarland, and the place in question was one of three villages in the parish that had served my wife’s ancestors.  This author knew of the town family book that had been published for his Klein immigrant’s ancestral village, but did he also know that one of the remaining villages had also produced such a resource book?  I had to contact him in case he wasn’t aware of this, and so I wrote to the journal’s editor to get the man’s address.

It was a good move on my part, because in the ensuing correspondence between us he was able to assist me in my own research in an important way.  I’d begun researching this particular family in the days before we had personal computers and online databases, and I’d made the mistake of not revisiting my earlier research as new source material became available.  In this instance, I had failed to search the now-digitized images of passenger records that were available by 2009, in order to document the date of arrival of my wife’s ancestral family.

As we exchanged information, he had a hunch that he’d seen my wife’s immigrant family named on a companion ship that had sailed with the one carrying his own Klein-Schneider immigrant family.  He was right!  And was I ever grateful that I’d taken the time to reach out to this man.

Dick Kline continues to publish articles through the Germanic Genealogy Journal.  The latest one appears in the volume 19 number 1 (Spring 2016) issue, and is titled “Spinning Genealogy Into Family Stories.”  In it he describes how he’s produced two brief booklets about his father’s family, and how the rewards of that effort have paid off so handsomely for him through the responses of relatives to his stories of the earlier generations.

In between the 2008 and 2016 issues, he’s also written articles for the Summer 2009, Fall 2011 and Summer 2012 issues of the same journal.  The library of the Immigrant Genealogy Society has these back issues, and both members and visitors are welcome to come in and read the continuing saga of discovery of my wife’s 7th cousin.  It’s always a treat to have established such a personal — if distant! — connection to a genealogical researcher and author.  But many of you would also enjoy reading what Dick has to say, even if you’re not “kin.”

“Not Stated”

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I’m always interested when Ancestry.com has some new records posted, but I’m often alerted to these opportunities by German genealogists posting messages on the various Mailinglisten to which I subscribe.  Today I went to the listed URL, and found myself looking at Ancestry’s German website page “Deutschland, evangelische Kirchenbücher, 1519-1969.”  We can see the same page in English on our own Ancestry.com site, but I’m reasonably at home reviewing German-language genealogical pages (even though I’m not a speaker of German) because my genealogical vocabulary is fairly broad and, well, it’s just fun to be an explorer.

So I looked for the browse dropdowns, which isn’t hard to find because the page layout is pretty much the same for either site.  The box is labeled “Diese Sammlung durchsuchen” and the dropdown options are for “Historische Region” and “Stadt oder Distrikt.”  You’re with me, right?  The purpose of the box is for searching through the collection, the first choice is the region desired and the second is the specific location within the region.

Twenty actual regions offered are: Baden, Bayern, Brandenburg, Hamburg, Hannover, Hessen, Lübeck, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, OstPreussen, Pommern, Posen, Reuss Linie, Sachsen, Schlesien, Schleswig-Holstein, Schwarzburg, West Preussen, Westfalen and Württemberg.  But then there were two other possibilities, and it amused me to see that they were listed in English on a German web page:  “Military” and “Not Stated.”  The latter has sixteen options, and I was curious to see what might be included.  So I turned to Wikipedia, the English version, and tried a few of them.

The first one listed is “Avgustovo,” which has to be a typo for Augustovo, English for Augustowo or Augustów, a city in northeastern Poland.  It had been included in the 1795 Prussian partition of Poland, but was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland in 1815 and was later made part of Russia, according to Wikipedia.  I could see immediately that: (1) these would be places of complex history, and (2)  these could still be important to someone’s German genealogy, even if Polish today.

I tried another.  There were three renditions of Iława (or Ilawa, as it is shown on the page), so I looked it up and found that it was once Deutsch Eylau, an important city which “became part of the Duchy of Prussia in 1525 and the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701” and then found itself within the “new province of West Prussia in 1773.”

So the moral of this story is “Explore!”  If your ancestor(s) came from a place with a lot of history and an unfortunate habit of changing jurisdictions often, then you’ll always want to be poking into the corners of websites like Ancestry.com.  There will be many blind alleys, but on occasion you might be surprised with some treasure….